All of the Above

I have been thinking about the question of curriculum off and on for years. What should we be teaching our kids? Who is to say what is and is not taught and included? Curriculum is such an all-inclusive concept. It is astounding to think of just how important and far reaching the K-12 curriculum is in terms of developing the hearts and minds of our children. Curriculum legend Ralph Tyler offers this description: “…educational objectives are essentially changes in human beings, that is, the objectives aimed at are to produce certain desirable changes in the behavior patterns of the student…” (Tyler 1949) What should we be teaching our kids? How should the curriculum be created?

One could argue that teachers shouldn’t be involved in setting overall curriculum, because they are overly involved in the education process and lack perspective. They are the soldiers in all that is the work of education. We need the general of the generals to set curriculum. Teachers are too wrapped up in all of the idiosyncrasies of their subject areas to be of any help in overall curriculum design. Each teacher will fight for their subject and their field to be included and represented. If nothing else, a survival instinct will lead teachers to make sure that they continue to have a job. Teachers are biased toward their fields, their students and their needs.

One could argue that parents shouldn’t be involved in setting overall curriculum either for similar reasons. Parents are selfish and naturally biased about their own children. Each parent wants what is best for their child(ren). Damn everyone else’s kids. The parent of a special-ed kid wants millions more in funding for special-ed research and programs. The parent of a talented sports player wants more funding and emphasis on physical education resources and sports programs and fewer academic requirements and restrictions. A highly religious parent may demand certain subjects be included in the school curriculum (intelligent design) and other topics be strictly excluded from the school curriculum (human sexuality). Parents are biased toward their kids, their talents and their needs.

One could argue that community representatives including school board members should not be involved in setting the overall curriculum due to their distance from the teaching and learning process. Business owners, community leaders, and professionals all have other more important, more pressing things on their minds than school curriculum. School curriculum may be something thought about and considered for a few hours per year. For many of these folks, being a school board member is one of many things to do on a long list of obligations. Their hearts, minds and experience aren’t genuinely interested in kids and education. The state of the educational process is a passing obligation or passing interest. For some, it may truly be an area of interest or even a passion. But the truth is that for these community representatives, their experience and knowledge of educational matters is very limited. “It is the most crazy-making thing to sit there and watch a dentist and an insurance salesman rewrite curriculum standards …” (Shorto, 2010) Community representatives are biased toward their own individual business matters and severely limited by lack of knowledge and exposure to education issues.

One could argue that politicians should not be involved in setting and making curriculum decisions and choices. Politicians may be as far removed from the educational process as compared with any other group on my list. Politicians also may wield the most power. Here in the State of Michigan, our schools are limited and weighted by the MEAP exam, NCLB standards and the coming Common Core mandates. Well-meaning politicians and work committees create layer upon layer of standardization and regulation for our schools. We never seem to replace standards but instead add and add and add. My local school district recently devoted a two week block of time for standardized testing. Two weeks! This is two weeks lost from learning, exploring, experimenting and growing. The coming onset of Common Core Curriculum standards has many on edge and concerned about another layer of requirements and mandates. “The overuse of standardized tests for high-stakes decisions has shortchanged students, teachers, and our education system in too many ways for far too long,” says NEA President Dennis Van Roekel. “We’ve lost sight of the reason tests were designed: to help gauge students’ comprehension and progress.” Others, such as parent, blogger and political science professor Nicholas Tampio, directly question the reach and impact of the Common Core in “Do We Need a Common Core?”. As the saying goes, “the tail wags the dog”. In our US K-12 culture, political education workgroups are the tail wagging the US K-12 educational system as the dog.

And finally, one could argue that university educational experts, such as university PhD’s and EdD’s should not be involved in setting and making curriculum. These are the researchers and big thinkers. These experts are seemingly the most qualified of the bunch to make curriculum decisions, yet, this is also another group extremely far removed from classroom activities and realities. What works for a small town in Japan may be an outstanding, innovative idea; but it may not work scaled up across the entire US K-12 system. Research and theory is one important piece of curriculum work representing innovation and the sharing of key research studies. However, practice and implementation may be more important and more powerful to curriculum work. Thinking and working through what works and why it works may be the most important piece representing both the daily work of classroom teachers as well as research efforts by university education professionals.

The truth is that all of the above categories of individuals should be vigorously recruited, encouraged and supported in taking part in local, state and national curriculum decision making. There is no single expert on overall curriculum decisions. If any of these groups do represent a leading opinion, it is the teachers who are closest to the teaching and learning process that should take the lead. Just as Salman Khan found, teachers are hungry for new approaches to course materials and open to radically different teaching methodologies such as “the flipped classroom” concept. This teaching idea originated with Woodland Park Colorado high school chemistry teachers and was popularized by Salman Khan’s online math lessons and is documented in The History of the Flipped Class. There is no limit to the positive insights and curricular developments that can arise from a truly collaborative effort of teachers, parents, community, politicians and experts.