Cycle Two - How Should Curriculum be Created and Evaluated?

How Should Curriculum Be Created?

            “…students want to know just what it is they need to do to earn a particular grade” (Eisner, 2001, p. 330) are the kind of educational experiences today’s students are having.  Modern day classes can’t be considered an authentic educational experience - rather a situation. Secondary students pass through seven classrooms, five days a week, and are told information they need to know in order to pass a test.  If a teacher attempts to have students explore the material they need to learn in order to pass a high-stakes assessment, time constraints often force her adhere to time-efficient, but academically less-effective, lectures for the sake of covering the material the students will see on the test.  “Schools have become a place to mass produce this product” (p. 330) of extremely well, but not so successful, test-takers where no child is left behind. 

            Throw away your pre-conceptions about education and that a student’s job is to answer questions.  Instead of the teachers asking the questions politicians think students should be asked, let students ask their own questions.  Eisner mentioned the rising trend in students, including doctoral candidates, of not being able to formulate in depth, critical thinking questions (2001).  This side effect can be traced back to the K-12 school days where students have no longer been allowed to ask questions - only answer.

            So what kind of questions would students ask that teachers could design a curriculum around?  Speaking from a high school math teacher point of view: How about how to do taxes? How to create and stick to a budget?  How do I buy a car?  Ralph Tyler suggested that the problems student solve, or in this instance – ask, should “arise in real life” (1949, p. 69). 

How often have you found yourself starring at a blank tax form and thinking, “Why was I never taught this in school?”

            Those on the side of textbook-driven curriculums and standardized tests might argue that students may not learn “real math” (the intricate formulas and messy equations seen in example after example in the textbook lessons) if not from a textbook.  And, that’s true.  Students may not get to memorize these equations, but how much more real math can a student learn when discovering how interest compounds on his mortgage or how his car value depreciates?  Rather than forcing students to answer questions about these types of functions, a curriculum should have students ask their own questions about these exponential functions they encounter day to day without even realizing it. 

            Take a look at the comments a few high schoolers made regarding how standardized testing makes them feel.  It’s time for the political standard-setters to start asking a few questions too.  Is this really how we want our students, the future of America, to relate to school and earning an education?

How Should Curriculum’s Success Be Evaluated?

            A present and pressing issue that demonstrates the unreliable method of evaluating a curriculum can be seen by the spectacle that is the state of Texas.  When examining Texas’ issue of creating new American History standards for their students to learn these opinionated issues seem minor compared to the people writing, examining, and implementing these standards – individuals who are far removed from the field of education (Shorto, 2010).  Why are dentists deciding what our children should learn in American History when the dentist himself was in an American History class possibly a decade ago?  To further this conundrum, now the College Board is adjusting their standards and frame work for their Advanced Placement United States History exam to please public opinion that was against the current objectives.  How can a curriculum such as this be evaluated effectively if the curriculum itself can change as soon as someone important does not like it?

            Although curriculums can be changed as fast as legislatures can vote, “changes in ways of thinking…develop slowly” (Tyler, 1949, p. 83).  How can the Board of Education in Texas and the College Board expect students to block out George Washington as a great American hero, one day, and the next his name is wiped from the textbook pages because parents aren’t happy that their children are learning about a former slave owner?

            Standardized testing may be the most efficient way to assess students’ retention of what they have learned in school, but it is not the most effective.  If a student must meet certain learning objectives, and the way to learn an objective is through behavioral experience, and the behavior must be practiced in order to master the objective, then why shouldn’t the student’s practice and then mastery, over a period of time, be a sufficient way of evaluating a curriculum (1949)?   While cleaning out one of my mom’s closets, she and I stumbled upon an old writing portfolio from my kindergarten days when I was just starting to master the construction of sentences.  The portfolio showed a transformation over time of my large, disconnected letters refining into smoother, clearly defined words.  My sentences may have been missing a few prepositions and punctuation marks, but any one could confidentially say I had improved my writing skills over those 9 months.

            Here I am suggesting the use of portfolios as evidence for a student’s improvement in a class over a set period of time, in every class, so as to not discredit any subject area, as a way to evaluate a school’s curriculum to show growth over time.  However, curriculum evaluation doesn’t have to be a portfolio, and this collection of works doesn’t have to be examined every single year.  But, the current system of standardized testing as the determining factor of a student’s success is only  a snapshot of what a students is capable of doing and is destroying our children - take a look.

References

Eisner, E. W. (2001). What does it mean to say a school is doing well. The Phi Delta Kappan, 82(5). Retrieved from http://gse.buffalo.edu/fas/yerrick/ubscience/UB_Science_Education_Goes_to_School/21C_Literature_files/Eisner,%202001.pdf

Shorto, R. (2010, February 11). How Christian were the founders? New York Times Magazine.  Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/magazine/14texbooks-t.html

Tyler, R. W. (1949). Basic principles of curriculum and instruction. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press