[Exploring Life] The purpose of a curriculum is to impose a uniform scope of and sequence of knowledge and skills that are to be taught to a group of people. The presupposition of curriculum lies within the concept of the prerequisite. In other words, the design of education originates in the assumption that the imposition of a predetermined scope and sequence of knowledge and skills over time is the most efficient and effective way to organize and deliver the experience of education. Curriculum is a kind of technology since it represents an application of knowledge (i.e. – the scope and sequence of knowledge and skills) that is used to meet an objective or solve a problem (i.e. – to prepare people for participation in society).
For, after all, obliteration of individuality, the maximum integration of the individual into the hierarchy of the educators and scholars, has ever been one of our ruling principles. …The hierarchic organization cherishes the ideal of anonymity, and comes very close to the realization of that ideal. (Hesse 1970)
We experience the curriculum educational institutions over a period of many years. Since education dominates the early stages of life the effects of curriculum have a significant influence on our formative years. What are these effects? In order to explore the effects of curriculum we first need to reveal the character of its underlying structure. This structure is unrelated to the specific kinds of expertise being communicated. In other words, the content of what is being taught is of less interest to us here than how the experience of the curriculum conditions our mind and sensibilities.
The Underlying Structure of Curriculum
Time: Curriculum controls the use of time. The first source of control is mandatory attendance. Most societies legislate the minimum amount of time that a student must be in school by commonly requiring them to reach a minimum age before leaving school as well as minimum amounts of time to be spent in school in order to be eligible to graduate each year. Graduation also increases the options we have for employment. Those students that do not complete the minimum educational requirements imposed upon them by society may face negative consequences when entering the work force. Graduating through the minimum time requirements are a right of passage, but not a guarantee, to better employment opportunities and therefore the hope of an improved material lifestyle.
Time is also micro-managed by curriculum. For example, the amount of time given to a specific kind of subject matter is specified on a daily or weekly basis. This use of time is enforced whether or not it makes sense to devote more or less time to something. In other words, there is little to no flexibility to alter the use of time on a daily basis.
Place: Curriculum, in harmony with time, controls place. To meet the minimum time requirements also means to be in a specified location for specified amounts of time. During our formative years this place is called school. Attendance is the integration of time and place. The school system is a distributed network of physical locations throughout society that enforce mandatory attendance requirements.
Age Segregation: Within the school system time is broken down into a sequence of school years, most commonly from grade one through grade twelve (with variations on either end). The third area of control is age. The twelve years of school are often divided into systems, elementary and secondary. Within this structure we may find further divisions based on age, for example, the primary, junior and intermediate divisions of elementary school. Students of the same approximate age are grouped into grades, thus grade one is typically comprised of student that are approximately five to six years old.
Communication: Curriculum results in a system of communication that is distinctly one to many. The source of communication is the scope and sequence of knowledge and skills outlined in the curriculum itself. Schools systems are mandated to disseminate this curriculum to its local community. The main agent of dissemination is the teacher, and the main recipient of communication is the student. Students communicate back to the teacher in response to the demands of the curriculum. Teachers communicate the relative success of students to the administration and community in a manner that is framed by the curriculum. While other kinds of communication obviously take place, the underlying structure of the environment remains distinctly one to many.
Right of Passage: The curriculum will specify what constitutes success or not. Teachers use methods of evaluation in order to assess the students’ ability relative to the curriculum. Evaluation, or the power to determine success or failure, represents another significant source of influence in curriculum. Success means that students acquire the right of passage through graduation and therefore increase their opportunities in the work place. Failure means that students do not graduate and significantly impair their opportunities for employment.
The formal authority granted to curriculum to control time, place, age segregation, communication and right pf passage over a period of several years is absolute. These five areas constitute, to my thinking, the most basic elements of the underlying structure of curriculum. You may have noticed that I did not describes particular kinds of subject expertise such as geography, history or science. The reason for this is that I believe the specific nature of the content presented in curriculum is not as relevant in describing its effects on our mind and sensibilities. Describing curriculum in these terms seems to invoke a sense of confinement and submissiveness, however, curriculum is presented as a means to provide guidance and assistance to people in order to help them to be successful in society.
What are the Effects of Curriculum on Our Mind and Sensibilities?
Each of us emerges from our schooling in different ways. For some of us, our education may have put us on a path that allows us to pursue our passions and talents. For others, education may have helped us to attain the knowledge and skill required to obtain a desired form of employment. There are others, however, that may complete their education without really having a sense of what they want to do. And finally, there are those that do no finish their education.
And it is only in those terms, standing aside from any structure or medium, that its principle lines of force can be discerned. For any medium has the power of imposing its own assumption on the unwary. (McLuhan 1967)
Anonymity: One of the most fundamental effects of education is that we develop a deeply rooted belief that learning is something that is done to us. Even though learning is something quite different than education, the meaning of both learning and education have become nearly synonymous in use. The effect of this is a habituation toward reliance instead of the development of self-reliance. Since the curriculum does not recognize nor is it influenced by the thoughts and ideas of students, the students must become subservient in order to be successful. The students and teachers are resigned to being anonymous participants.
Abstraction: The level of abstraction in education is significant. Although the content matter for thought may change in the form of subjects, the context of the content remains remarkably similar. For example, the environment that history is experienced in is not significantly differently than the environment that mathematics is experienced in. Both take place in a classroom presided over by a teacher whose purpose is to disseminate the scope and sequence required by the curriculum to the students. Most of this takes place through lecture and print-based materials. Other classrooms such as science, art or music may integrate other kinds of tools to enhance the delivery, which can help to enhance the educational experience. However, the students learn about history not by doing what historians do, but instead by being passive observers of history.
This is not, to be certain, a criticism of teachers or school systems. It is, however, a weakness in curriculum design. In attempting to efficiently and effectively educate students, the curriculum has in fact sterilized and abstracted the experience of learning. Our mind becomes an instrument to manipulate the symbols of language rather than engaging in the actual experience of the content. The end effect of this is we tend to develop a preference to read and write about experience, rather than participating in the authentic experience.
Fragmentation: Since time is used as a means to divide experience into controlled chunks of content, our sense of continuity and unity suffers. Our minds struggle to make connections across the implied boundaries that are now hard wired into our brains. Expertise is a hole that keeps digging itself deeper, and before we may realize we have become immersed in it and have lost our view of other possibilities. It may be that one of the reasons many people are gravitating toward more unified and integral modes of experience is the deeply rooted sense of isolation and fragmentation that has been caused by years of curricular confinement.
Subservience: To be successful in education demands subservience to the imposed curriculum. The concept of success is therefore also closely aligned with being subservient to imposed demands. Evaluation is not something that comes from within, but is instead a generalized system of classification that organizes people in to classes of achievement.
Summary
The experience of education originates in the design of curriculum. The curriculum is a system designed to impose control over time, place, age, communication, and right of passage. Its underlying structure has effects on our mind and sensibilities resulting in a sense of anonymity, habits of abstraction, fragmentation of experience, a lack of self-reliance, and a subservience to external demands.
The teacher, particularly the teacher dedicated to liberal education, must constantly try to look toward the goal of human completeness and back at the natures of his students here and now, ever seeking to understand the former and to assess the capacities of the latter to approach it… For there is no real education that does not respond to felt need; anything else acquired is trifling display. (Bloom 1987)
Comments are closed.