I think the whole idea of having a centralized curriculum is flawed and holds education back from developing. Schools should be free to teach whatever they consider to be useful for students.
Diversity is good and if children in different schools learn different useful skills that benefits society as a whole as every student can go on to apply their skills.
If you get rid of the whole idea of a curriculum teachers are suddenly free to innovate.
If you get rid of the whole idea of a curriculum teachers are suddenly free to innovate.
They are also free to teach e.g. young-Earth creationism. At least some degree of standardisation is beneficial, since it creates boundaries against worst excesses. Also, curriculum makes it easier for a beginning teacher to organise her classes, although this could also be arranged by having loose guidelines instead of strict curriculum.
Also, curriculum makes it easier for a beginning teacher to organise her classes, although this could also be arranged by having loose guidelines instead of strict curriculum.
There are many textbooks out there that are easily available for a teacher who wants to use them. A teacher doesn’t need a central authority to tell him what to teach to be able to find resources. Not having the central authority even makes it easier for market participants to create textbooks that teacher want to use.
I actually agree with you on all points, but I think you are underestimating how overwhelming things can be for a teacher just beginning her career. Without any central curriculum a teacher has to inspect textbooks much more carefully in order to find a book that would suit her needs. It’s a lot of extra work.
This is a smaller problem in math and science teaching and a larger one at humanities and social sciences. This problem could be alleviated by having teacher education include classes where you get familiarised with different textbooks and different approaches to teaching your subject.
This problem could be alleviated by having teacher education include classes where you get familiarised with different textbooks and different approaches to teaching your subject.
Teaching a teacher about different approaches of teaching his subject seems fairly straightforward for teacher education for myself.
I once tried to learn something about reading by looking at what an academic journal has to say. It spoke about fancy terms like Heideggers notion of meaning. I’m well educated despite having spent a lot of time in school and do have an idea of what Heideggers notion of meaning happens to be. On the other hand it’s useless for a teacher who wants to teach his students to read.
Teachers education could simply switch to teach the actual practice of teaching instead of trying to teach fancy educational theories and the problem would be solved.
I think that getting rid of curriculum provides a lot more benefits in the humanities and social sciences than it does in mathematics.
To me it would make a lot of sense to teach students during humanities or social science classes nonviolent communication (NVC). It a fairly straightforward framework with decades of history. On the other hand I do know that your average high school teacher doesn’t have the skills for teaching it, so it’s impossible to just write it into a centralized curriculum.
Berlin has 12 districts. Each of those has a democratic representation. While my sister was in school there was a political change that lead to the voting age for that particular democratic representation be lowered from 18 to 16 years. There were a lot of people in her class that could vote because they were 16 but not 18.
A good political science teacher would have addressed that opportunity to actually teach how this kind democratic representation works. I use the term democratic representation because it’s not a parliament because it can’t make laws and I don’t know whether there a term in English that directly translates the German word. Her teacher didn’t because she was too busy teaching to the curriculum.
Most of the stuff she taught the student will probably be forgotten after 5 years. She missed a crucial chance of actually teaching students who were voting at the first time in their lifes how the institution for which they vote works and what it does.
Worse she had a fairly bad idea of what the political institutions in Berlin actually do. She knew how to teach the textbook or the curriculum but she failed at the crucial task of teaching her students of how politics works in reality. Even how it works on the basic level of what the formal responsibilities of the body for which they vote happens to be.
Teacher simply teaching to the curriculum is often like students guessing the teachers password. There no transfer of real knowledge.
I think that humanities teachers who just try to teach whatever the curriculum says instead of teaching what the think will be valuable knowledge for the students abandon their real responsibility as a teacher.
When a student ask why he should learn something the answer should never be “Because the curriculum says so”.
Yes, there are costs to standardization. But there are also benefits. Standardizing the curriculum means that the work of preparing educational materials (such as textbooks) can be shared across many teachers. Students move between schools pretty often, and certainly they move between teachers within schools. Standardization makes it easier for students to move without getting completely lost. Standardization also allows easier assessment, which some people think is important.
You might be right that we should give up on the idea of a standardized curriculum, but it’s not the least bit obvious to me which way the cost-benefit tradeoff goes. It’s not even obvious to me how we could test this. You’d have to have some curriculum-agnostic way to know how well the education system was working, and I don’t know how to do that.
You might be right that we should give up on the idea of a standardized curriculum, but it’s not the least bit obvious to me which way the cost-benefit tradeoff goes.
You are right that I’m calling to a revolution that’s not immediately obvious. Thank you for pointing that out. It might make sense for me to start a deeper project for making that case on a deeper level that mind produce an article.
Standardizing the curriculum means that the work of preparing educational materials (such as textbooks) can be shared across many teachers.
Getting rid of a central curriculum would stop two teachers from using the same textbook. On the other hand it would make it easier for the people who write the textbook. The could simple write the textbook that they consider to be optimal for learning instead of having to focus on covering exactly what the specific curriculum of a school district or a particular state’s education policy lays out.
The people who write the textbook should decide what goes in it. Not a politician or bureaucrat that draws up a curriculum. If the textbook is good teachers are going to use it.
In the US, at the k-12 level, the school buys the textbook, not the teacher. The books are owned by the school, rented to the student, and used by several students over several years. Teachers turn over quickly, however, and so it would be quite costly if each time a new teacher starts teaching a course, the school has to buy a new set of books.
The increased costs of producing textbooks for every preference show up as acquisition costs, and the schools are reluctant to pay those costs simply to satisfy the preferences of teachers who might not be there next year or who might change their minds.
A student can choose whether to go to school A or B. I’m not opposed to schools making decisions about what to teach at school level.
It might be even good if it’s general knowledge that students who go to school A get taught from the Bayesian statistics handbook while school B rather teaches math like calculus.
Schools should be free to develop profiles of what they want to teach because of what they consider to be useful for students to learn.
How much freedom a specific school gives individual teachers can be up to the school.
I think that when a school makes a decision to buy a particular textbook it has a lot to do with what kind of textbook the teachers at that school find helpful.
I think that if a school buys textbooks based on what a bureaucrat thinks instead of based on what the teachers who interact with the students on a direct basis think, that’s bad for education.
I think the whole idea of having a centralized curriculum is flawed and holds education back from developing. Schools should be free to teach whatever they consider to be useful for students.
Diversity is good and if children in different schools learn different useful skills that benefits society as a whole as every student can go on to apply their skills.
If you get rid of the whole idea of a curriculum teachers are suddenly free to innovate.
They are also free to teach e.g. young-Earth creationism. At least some degree of standardisation is beneficial, since it creates boundaries against worst excesses. Also, curriculum makes it easier for a beginning teacher to organise her classes, although this could also be arranged by having loose guidelines instead of strict curriculum.
There are many textbooks out there that are easily available for a teacher who wants to use them. A teacher doesn’t need a central authority to tell him what to teach to be able to find resources. Not having the central authority even makes it easier for market participants to create textbooks that teacher want to use.
I actually agree with you on all points, but I think you are underestimating how overwhelming things can be for a teacher just beginning her career. Without any central curriculum a teacher has to inspect textbooks much more carefully in order to find a book that would suit her needs. It’s a lot of extra work.
This is a smaller problem in math and science teaching and a larger one at humanities and social sciences. This problem could be alleviated by having teacher education include classes where you get familiarised with different textbooks and different approaches to teaching your subject.
Teaching a teacher about different approaches of teaching his subject seems fairly straightforward for teacher education for myself. I once tried to learn something about reading by looking at what an academic journal has to say. It spoke about fancy terms like Heideggers notion of meaning. I’m well educated despite having spent a lot of time in school and do have an idea of what Heideggers notion of meaning happens to be. On the other hand it’s useless for a teacher who wants to teach his students to read.
Teachers education could simply switch to teach the actual practice of teaching instead of trying to teach fancy educational theories and the problem would be solved.
I think that getting rid of curriculum provides a lot more benefits in the humanities and social sciences than it does in mathematics. To me it would make a lot of sense to teach students during humanities or social science classes nonviolent communication (NVC). It a fairly straightforward framework with decades of history. On the other hand I do know that your average high school teacher doesn’t have the skills for teaching it, so it’s impossible to just write it into a centralized curriculum.
Berlin has 12 districts. Each of those has a democratic representation. While my sister was in school there was a political change that lead to the voting age for that particular democratic representation be lowered from 18 to 16 years. There were a lot of people in her class that could vote because they were 16 but not 18.
A good political science teacher would have addressed that opportunity to actually teach how this kind democratic representation works. I use the term democratic representation because it’s not a parliament because it can’t make laws and I don’t know whether there a term in English that directly translates the German word. Her teacher didn’t because she was too busy teaching to the curriculum.
Most of the stuff she taught the student will probably be forgotten after 5 years. She missed a crucial chance of actually teaching students who were voting at the first time in their lifes how the institution for which they vote works and what it does.
Worse she had a fairly bad idea of what the political institutions in Berlin actually do. She knew how to teach the textbook or the curriculum but she failed at the crucial task of teaching her students of how politics works in reality. Even how it works on the basic level of what the formal responsibilities of the body for which they vote happens to be.
Teacher simply teaching to the curriculum is often like students guessing the teachers password. There no transfer of real knowledge.
I think that humanities teachers who just try to teach whatever the curriculum says instead of teaching what the think will be valuable knowledge for the students abandon their real responsibility as a teacher. When a student ask why he should learn something the answer should never be “Because the curriculum says so”.
Yes, there are costs to standardization. But there are also benefits. Standardizing the curriculum means that the work of preparing educational materials (such as textbooks) can be shared across many teachers. Students move between schools pretty often, and certainly they move between teachers within schools. Standardization makes it easier for students to move without getting completely lost. Standardization also allows easier assessment, which some people think is important.
You might be right that we should give up on the idea of a standardized curriculum, but it’s not the least bit obvious to me which way the cost-benefit tradeoff goes. It’s not even obvious to me how we could test this. You’d have to have some curriculum-agnostic way to know how well the education system was working, and I don’t know how to do that.
Thoughts on how this could be tested?
You are right that I’m calling to a revolution that’s not immediately obvious. Thank you for pointing that out. It might make sense for me to start a deeper project for making that case on a deeper level that mind produce an article.
Getting rid of a central curriculum would stop two teachers from using the same textbook. On the other hand it would make it easier for the people who write the textbook. The could simple write the textbook that they consider to be optimal for learning instead of having to focus on covering exactly what the specific curriculum of a school district or a particular state’s education policy lays out.
The people who write the textbook should decide what goes in it. Not a politician or bureaucrat that draws up a curriculum. If the textbook is good teachers are going to use it.
In the US, at the k-12 level, the school buys the textbook, not the teacher. The books are owned by the school, rented to the student, and used by several students over several years. Teachers turn over quickly, however, and so it would be quite costly if each time a new teacher starts teaching a course, the school has to buy a new set of books.
The increased costs of producing textbooks for every preference show up as acquisition costs, and the schools are reluctant to pay those costs simply to satisfy the preferences of teachers who might not be there next year or who might change their minds.
A student can choose whether to go to school A or B. I’m not opposed to schools making decisions about what to teach at school level.
It might be even good if it’s general knowledge that students who go to school A get taught from the Bayesian statistics handbook while school B rather teaches math like calculus.
Schools should be free to develop profiles of what they want to teach because of what they consider to be useful for students to learn. How much freedom a specific school gives individual teachers can be up to the school.
I think that when a school makes a decision to buy a particular textbook it has a lot to do with what kind of textbook the teachers at that school find helpful.
I think that if a school buys textbooks based on what a bureaucrat thinks instead of based on what the teachers who interact with the students on a direct basis think, that’s bad for education.