EDG 4376: Reflection #1

The progressivism and behaviorist movements in the early twentieth century sparked a revolution in the educational system. Many philosophical theories came about that changed the American paradigm of how learning was to be conducted and transmitted through the generations. Franklin Bobbitt, John Dewey, and Ralph W. Tyler had entirely different views on the concept of a school curriculum and how it should be utilized effectively, yet all three made a significant impact on the system. A school’s curriculum should be a planned process that attempts to effectively deliver knowledge in order to achieve the final product, being student comprehension and achievement. A curriculum’s main objective is to prepare students for the real world, so they can discover their main purpose in life. It should be simple, rational, and clearly organized, focusing on what a school seeks to attain, the process of attaining it, and assessment to ensure success. It is imperative that educators work with the curriculum’s objectives in order to achieve classroom success. All in all, a school’s curriculum varies according to surrounding societal influences, the subject matter and skills that are to be taught, and the educators, administrators, and students themselves. It can incorporate cognitive processes, academic rationalism, social adaptation, and/or technology. An additional valid theoretical approach to the definition of curriculum is that it is the active development of preparation, what actually happens in the classroom, and valuable evaluation. Lawrence Stenhouse equated curriculum theory and practice to culinary arts in 1975. To him, a curriculum, like a new recipe, is first an idea that is subject to experimentation and ultimately varied in recipe according to taste. Stenhouse believed a curriculum should “enable educators to make judgments about the direction their work was taking,” and personally, I agree completely. Furthermore, I concur with Stenhouse’s idea that a curriculum’s strength is cultivated by the teachers and the level of inspirational knowledge they pass on in the classroom. To me, whatever definition one places on “curriculum” is trivial compared to the educators motivation in instilling it.