Who and What Shape the Curriculum? (page 3)

Excerpt from: Teachers, Schools, and Society: A Brief Introduction to Education p. 354-358

Although all three curriculums are powerful forces, the public and the press typically focus on the most visible—the formal or official curriculum—when evaluating schools. Given the current emphasis on standards and testing, and the recurrent controversies over the teaching of evolution or the place of religion in the curriculum, the formal curriculum is constantly in the news. As a future teacher, it makes a lot of sense for you to begin thinking about who decides what you should teach. In fact, what you teach is decided by competing interest groups, and the product sometimes feels as though it was created in a pressure cooker. (See Figure 10.1.) Anyone, from the president of the United States to a single parent, can impact what is taught in your classroom. Let's take a brief tour of some of the chefs at work on the curricular pressure cooker.

Teachers

Teachers develop curriculum both formally and informally. They may serve on textbook selection committees that determine what texts the school will purchase, or they may actually work on writing a district's curriculum. In a less formal but no less powerful way, classroom teachers interpret and adapt whatever official text or curriculum guide has been assigned, stressing certain points in a text while giving scant attention to others; supplementing with teacher-made materials or directing students to the Internet.

Parental and Community Groups

Parents can be quite forceful in impacting the curriculum. They might advocate for more rigorous academic courses, concerned about poor student performance on standardized tests, or they may desire more practical vocational training, such as an increase in computer science courses. Banning certain books or videos from the curriculum is also not unusual. In more conservative communities, religious fundamentalists have objected to the absence of Christian values, while liberal communities have objected to books that use racial, ethnic or gender slurs and stereotypes.

Students

During the 1960s and 1970s, students demanded curricular relevance. Al-though students have not seemed particularly interested in influencing curriculum policy recently, they have been active in protests against standardized testing. Typically, students are given some freedom to select topics for independent projects, research papers, book reviews, and even authentic learning.

Administrators

Principals, in their role as instructional leaders, can wield substantial influence in shaping the curriculum. For example, a principal announces at a faculty meeting that the school's scores on the state standardized test in mathematics were disappointing, and this year's priority is to raise those scores. The result might well be a math curriculum that "teaches to the test." Sometimes central-office personnel, such as a language arts coordinator or a social studies super-visor, might create a new or revised school or district curriculum.

State Government

States are now assuming a stronger leadership role in education, and their interest in curriculum matters has sharpened through the creation of state standards, curriculum guides and frameworks for all state schools to follow. In more conservative states, the role of religion and the treatment of evolution versus creationism are hot-button issues. In more liberal states, instructional materials are expected to include diversity.

Local Government

Local school boards make a variety of curriculum decisions, requiring courses from AIDS education to technology. Supporters feel that local school hoards should have a strong voice in the curriculum, because they are closest to the needs of the local community and the interests of the students. Others feel that school board members lack the training and broad perspective needed to make curricular decisions.

Colleges and Universities

Institutions of higher learning influence curricula through their entrance requirements, which spell out courses high school students most take to gain admittance. As A. Bartlett Giamatti noted when he was president of Yale University,

The high schools in this country are always at the mercy of the colleges. The colleges change their requirements and their admissions criteria and the high schools ... are constantly trying to catch up with what the colleges are thinking. When the colleges don't seem to know what they think over a period of time, it's no wonder that this oscillation takes place all the way through the system.

Publishers

The major goal of textbook publishers is—not surprisingly—to sell books. That is why textbooks are attractively packaged and chock full of terms and names deemed important at the time (including this text!). Unfortunately, most elementary and secondary texts rarely provide in-depth coverage of topics and avoid unpopular points of view (unlike this text). Teachers need to re-member that textbooks are published to meet market demands, and not necessarily objective or complex viewpoints.

Federal Government

The federal government influences the curriculum through judicial decisions, financial incentives and legislation. In 2001, No Child Left Behind was a major piece of legislation that significantly altered the curricular landscape. (We will look closer at this law a little later in this chapter.)

Many times these groups have different agendas as they compete to shape the curriculum, but on one recent issue, technology, there is widespread agreement that computers should be part of the school curriculum. Prestigious commissions have issued reports about the importance of technology for the economy, parent groups pressure schools to buy computers for their children, and businesses arrange special prices and package deals to make such large-scale school purchases attractive. The federal government offers federal funds to help schools hop onto the Internet, and publishers sell new educational software. Clearly, the school curriculum is shaped by the computer age.