When
considering the different curriculum ideologies that have been formulated to
help us think about education, it is easy to try to segment education into four
separate and very different arenas. This
is not, however, how education works.
Most models of education are a combination of two or more of Schiro’s
curriculum ideologies that work together to serve as the foundation of the
greater school curriculum. I would argue
that we need to change our curricular focus as students get older. First, we need to focus on students’
individual needs and as students get ready to join the work force, our focus
becomes preparing students to be contributing members of society.
Currently
it seems that we are focused only on preparing our students to be contributing
members of society. Standards dictate
the end goal that we are working toward and all students, no matter how
successful or unsuccessful they are, must work toward that goal. In his “Changing Educational Paradigms”
presentation, Ken Robinson refers to this as the ‘production line
mentality.’ We tend to look at education
as a factory where we bring replicas of students in, fill them with
information, and send them on their way.
There is so much standardization that there is little room for
individualization. The problem with this
model is that students are not all the same; they are not cookie-cutter
replicas of one another.
Especially in elementary school,
students need to be given the opportunity to learn at their own pace. Models like Reading and Writing workshop focus on meeting
individual students’ needs while also looking at the bigger picture. This approach allows teachers to help reach
students where they are at developmentally and academically. (Watch this video for an overview of
the Reading and
Writing Workshop with Lucy Calkins). When
I taught general education this approach was immensely helpful because I could
target my instruction for small groups of similar learners and create lessons
for individuals through conferring. Now
that I am back teaching special education I see the need for a learner centered
curriculum to be even stronger. Not only
do my students have varied needs among themselves, their needs can be
significantly different from their regular education peers. The purpose of special education is to
provide individualized instruction, but my students are not with me all
day. They participate in general
education too, which means that the general education curriculum needs to be
more flexible to meet their needs as well.
The
workshop method seems to fall under Schiro’s Learner Centered ideology. In this ideology, the curricular focus is the
whole child- the child’s academic, social, and emotional well-being. John Dewey built a school in Chicago with this ideology in mind. Dewey’s school was built with a focus on
students’ developing personalities; he used their individuality to build a
greater community within the classroom that could transfer outside of the classroom. As Dewey worked with students, he saw that
learning could not be isolated into subject areas, nor did he find it
beneficial to group students according to their age. He responded by creating larger groups of
students- students ages 4-7, ages 7-10, and ages 10-13. This is similar to the structure of special
education. Students do not have to be
grouped based on their age, but can instead be grouped by their ability. This allows the teacher greater flexibility
in determining how best to meet student needs (Kleibard, 2004).
Dewey
wasn’t just limited to focusing on the needs of the students, though. He also believed in preparing students to
serve the greater community and wanted to prepare them to enter the work force. This matches the philosophy of John Bobbitt,
among others, who brought about the idea of social efficiency in education (Kleibard,
2004). The focus of social efficiency is
to teach young adults how to be “contributing members of society” (Schiro, 2008). Bobbitt believed that education should focus
on preparing students for their eventual career; students should be taught
skills that they would use on a daily basis in the workforce and that they
shouldn’t be taught skills that they wouldn’t use. While it may have been common practice for
one to choose a career and keep that career for a lifetime, it is commonplace
for one to have multiple, quite different careers before one retires. Reports such as this one from Business Wire (http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20040923005586/en/NYC-Professionals-Expect-Careers-Lifetime-NYU-Survey)
estimate professionals will have three or more careers over their lifetime.
I also find it difficult to believe
that a child could determine, or that an adult could choose for a child, what
career that child would enter. What
happens when the child changes his/her mind about the career he/she wants to
pursue? While choice may not have been
an option in the past, choices are expected.
It wouldn’t work to limit a student even to one field of work in order
to determine what skill set was necessary to teach.
If we use a
child-centered approach in elementary school and wait to use a social
efficiency approach in middle and high school, our students are more likely to
be prepared to make decisions that affect their future. It should be expected that high school
curriculum focus on job readiness skills or college preparedness skills. Many schools already have programs like these
in place and those programs are successful.
The University
of California has
developed a College Prep curriculum for a wide variety of subject areas. They also provide supplemental material for
students and teachers online at http://www.uccp.org/. When we approach high school learning in this
manner, we are preparing our students to better society, but we have also
already met their individual needs in elementary school. It’s the best of both worlds.
As much as
I believe that education should be learner focused, I also believe that
standards should be in place so that students are ready to be independent when
they leave school. There needs to be a
transitional period where schools go from being more Learner Centered to
focusing on being more Socially Efficient.
I doubt there will ever be a perfect blend of curricula to meet every
students’ needs, but I think as educators we need to think about two specific,
but very different, ideas- what skills does each student need to succeed for
themselves and what skills does each student need to succeed for the larger
community? Sometimes these skills may
overlap, but other times they may not.
As educators, we need to be cognizant of the needs and desires our
younger students have, to help build their self-confidence and to help them
grow as young adults. As they get older,
we need to ensure that they have skills they can use to secure and maintain a
job so that they can give back to the community that supported them when they
were younger. I acknowledge that I have
an idealized picture of the student-centered ideology. I have had the opportunity to work in schools
where it has flourished; I know it doesn’t work that well everywhere. I also realize that many of my examples
regarding social efficiency are quite dated when trying to apply the ideology
to today’s school atmosphere. Yes, I
want my students to contribute to society, but I don’t feel that I have the
right to tell them how. I see my job as
providing my students with as much information as possible so that they can
decide how they want to contribute.
Resources:
Kleibard, H. 2004. ‘The
Curriculum of the Dewey from The Struggle for the American
Curriculum (Taylor & Francis).
Kleibard, H. 2004. ‘Scientific
Curriculum-Making and the Rise of Social Efficiency’ from The
Struggle for the American Curriculum (Taylor & Francis).
Robinson, Ken. Changing
Educational Paradigms.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U&feature=player_embedded
Schiro, S. 2008. The Curriculum Ideologies. Curriculum
Theory (Thousand Oaks, CA:
Sage Publishing).
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