Cycle four and the related readings have brought a lot of issues to the surface for me as an educator. I am not sure that it’s as easy to answer how should curriculum be generated? as one might think after reading the Tyler piece. Nor do I think that many people outside of the realm of education understand the politics that play into curricular decisions as exposed by Shorto. Nonetheless, as an educator, it’s easy to see Ralph Tyler’s influence on education today, as well the almost unfathomable amount of political maneuvering involved in designing curriculum.
When I think about the question how should curriculum be generated? I automatically think about who should be involved in generating curriculum. For me, the Shorto article was an illustration not only of what to avoid when generating or creating curriculum standards, but also that there are a lot of people who want their views and opinions to be expressed through public education. I was angered that the Texas State School Board was so transparently biased. While I would never argue that making curriculum decisions can be completely devoid of bias, it concerns me that a politically slanted and narrow agenda is being endorsed by the most influential school board in the country.
I have had the opportunity to teach in Texas as well as in Michigan. Reading the Shorto article this week made me sad for public education across America. When I began teaching in Houston almost eight years ago, I didn’t realize the incredible possibilities there were relating to curriculum. I was simply handed teachers manuals for math, reading, science, and social studies and told to follow the manuals. It wasn’t until I moved to Michigan that I realized how flexible, responsive, and better curriculum could be when teachers, administrators, community members and even students are all an integral part of generating curriculum.
Unfortunately, I feel like the pendulum in Michigan is swinging more towards the direction that Texas has gone. Rather than people that actually work in the classroom being part of developing curriculum, individuals far removed from the realities of the classroom are making decisions without teacher input. Many school districts throughout mid-Michigan have been forced or strongly encouraged to become part of the MiBLSi (Michigan Integrated Behavior and Learning Support Initiative) grant. This grant essentially forces districts to use a “Core Reading Program” as well as adopt some sort of literacy screener like the DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills) or AIMSweb which offer little to no incite into how to meet student needs. While large publishing companies like Pearson say that their programs and “screeners” are “research based,” reading researchers like Richard Allington call these “screeners” examples of educational malpractice!
In the almost four years that I have been in Michigan, I have seen districts abandon their teaching for programs like Scott Foresman’s Reading Street or consider programs like Open Court, a scripted reading program used in many Houston public schools. I realize that there are numerous areas that are in dire need of improvement throughout education. I am incredibly concerned however when many states, Michigan included, are taking advice from a state like Texas. Perhaps in generating curriculum and in regenerating curriculum, we should realize we don’t necessarily need to abandon everything. But instead, we should look at the weaknesses as well as the strengths in our current curriculums and use our strengths to help improve our areas of weakness.
In the end, I am not sure that I agree with everything Ralph Tyler said throughout the chapters we read. I wouldn’t say that I disagree with Tyler, as much as I would say that I think that Tyler was writing about curriculum development at a time when testing hadn’t yet become such a driving force, when teachers felt a greater sense of autonomy in their classrooms, and when students were coming to school with a different skill set.
Ultimately, I thought Tyler was arguing that the curriculum should develop thinking skills, social attitude, interests, and help students acquire information. With that in mind, I think the most effective way to achieve these goals is to develop curriculum at a more local or district level. If we strictly create national curriculums that cannot possibly tap into every student’s various experiences and needs, there will be many children left behind. As the Shorto article highlights, when people far removed from the classroom make curricular decisions, the results can be devastating not only for one state’s students, but potentially for many students across the country. I think that it is teachers in the classroom and community member that interact with students in their everyday lives that are ultimately the ones that are most capable of designing curriculum that aligns with core standards and meets student needs.
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ReplyDeleteKarla,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading your blog this week. I think that it is fascinating that you have had a chance to teach both in Texas and in Michigan. Having the opportunity to teach in different places is a great way to gain perspective and (hopefully!) different skills. I am curious to know if you had a chance to talk about curriculum with other teachers in your building, and if they, too, just taught from the manual. Also, I wonder if that approach to teaching was specifically at your school, or if that really is a state-wide approach.
I completely agree with you that the pendulum in Michigan seems to be swinging in the same direction as Texas. There has been a push for the last several years to adopt state-wide curriculum across grade levels and subjects. For example, there is a website called Michigan Citizenship Curriculum that outlines Social Studies curriculum that is suggested for teachers across the state (http://www.micitizenshipcurriculum.org/). Last year when I was teaching high school U.S. History for the first time, I found it to be extremely helpful as a guide to planning my lessons, but I can’t imagine what it would be like if that were the specific curriculum that I was mandated to teach. While there are a lot of great ideas, not all of them work for all students, or for that matter, for all teachers!
I thought that your link to the website “How Might Middle School Students Be Involved in Classroom Curriculum Planning?” to be extremely thought provoking. What a wonderful way to get students excited about learning—ask them for their input! I really like the concept of teachers as facilitators, and having a student-centered classroom. I think that this approach would provide more opportunities for students to practice and develop the skills that they will need to be successful in the future, such as making goals, assessing their own progress, forming opinions, and being able to provide instructive feedback to their peers. I think that this would best be implemented as an end-of-year tradition, where students meet with teachers at the next grade level and plan for what they hope to accomplish in the up-coming school year. This would also give teachers a chance to plan over the summer and prepare different options to guide the students on their educational journey.
I agree with your assessment that Tyler was arguing that the curriculum should develop thinking skills, social attitudes, interests, and help students acquire information. I have a mixed reaction to your stance that we need to develop curriculum at a more local level. I think that you are partially right; that as teachers we are more aware of our students interests, and thus if we were given more flexibility, we would be able to create a curriculum that connected to their previous experiences, providing them with a more authentic education. However, I believe that there is also something to be said for having a national “cultural literacy” that Hirsch outlined in our Cycle Two reading. I think that it is important for students to share a degree of traditional knowledge common to all literate Americans. The best thing would be to have a system that allows for both aspects of curriculum to be present.
Hi Karla,
ReplyDeleteLet me start by saying that I really enjoyed reading your post.
I was curious about a statement that you made at the very beginning of your post about people outside of the realm of education not understanding the politics of curriculum (paraphrased). Information is costly and it is difficult to be an informed citizen in a world saturated with economic, political, and social controversy. Why do you think it is that most people are uniformed even though teachers (agents of curriculum) have more contact with their children than just about anyone else?
Your experience of being handed a manual (something like a pacing guide?) is not all that different than how I conceptualize my experience teaching world history in Michigan. I’ve been given a curriculum to teach that I had no hand in creating. In fact, as I said in my post for Cycle Four until last week I hadn’t even bothered to look at the state of Michigan’s purpose for world history. In case you were wondering their purpose (and I mean “their” purpose) is incredibly vague and ambiguous. I would imagine this has a great deal to do with avoiding controversy from the political left or right.
Like you I agree that the purpose of curriculum as defined by the “Tyler Rationale” has been almost entirely removed from the grasp of the professionals at the “ground level.” When you mentioned Pearson my mind immediately started to try to understand that a private company likely has more influence on curriculum than teachers do in some cases. Your experience with “teaching programs” made me wonder if you think curriculum’s purpose is taking an ugly turn? That is to say, do you think our focus on standardization and assessment is providing curriculum with a purpose that that diminishes the other facets of the Tyler Rationale?
I feel as a professional that while deciding the purpose of curriculum shouldn’t be the exclusive domain of teachers it should most certainly provide for a greater degree of autonomy on our part. How do teachers begin to take a larger role in shaping the purpose of curriculum? I can’t help but think that just as the Texas state board of education is manipulating curriculum to suit their purpose maybe it is time that teacher leaders try and balance outside influence with the understanding that comes from daily face-to-face interaction in the classroom.
From the social studies perspective it looks as if the purpose of curriculum has been so sterilized that it has become nothing more than a politically neutral vague and ambiguous statement. As creating purpose is the first step of the Tyler Rationale I wonder if he had an opinion about what constitutes a quality curricular purpose. I’m also left wondering if the purpose of curriculum has anything to do with a lack of student engagement. That is to say, is purpose so removed from the experience of the child that engagement suffers as a consequence?
Thanks for sharing your thoughts – you took the readings from Cycle Four in a direction that I hadn’t really considered.
Cheers,
Corey
Hi Karla,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your writing this cycle! It was a strong, personalized, and insightful post (with great links to other very interesting texts).
A couple of your thoughts really stand out. First, "It wasn’t until I moved to Michigan that I realized how flexible, responsive, and better curriculum could be when teachers, administrators, community members and even students are all an integral part of generating curriculum."
Flexible and responsive. These are perhaps two of the more important adjectives I could imagine for describing an ideal curriculum. Your vision of working together with key community members, including students, is lovely. Teachers need to be at the heart of such discussions, and they need time to do so. We need to recover this ideal as a first step toward making it happen.
(As an aside, I assume the process of generating curriculum, as you describe it here, would be fun. I assume it would be a joyful and integral part of being a teacher--meeting with people from the community to discuss those things are students are doing well and those things that need more attention.)
Your second quote that caught my attention was, "Perhaps in generating curriculum and in regenerating curriculum, we should realize we don’t necessarily need to abandon everything. But instead, we should look at the weaknesses as well as the strengths in our current curriculums and use our strengths to help improve our areas of weakness."
This shows a deep insight into Tyler and what he was saying. What we are looking for is a process of gradual improvement. Not only can we make the curriculum better, but we need to continually adjust it. Times change. Neighborhoods change. Think of Mason--very different place than 20 years ago. So I would assume the curriculum, were it to be responsive to the community, would need to be updated as a matter of course.
And by update I mean--what are the challenges a community like Mason faces in the 21st century. What types of behaviors are Mason graduates exhibiting/not exhibiting (in terms of jobs, health, leisure, family, political behavior, etc.). What can the schools be doing now to help make for a better future?
Or as Dewey says, how can we use what is good about our society to improve those parts that are bad?
You seemed to gain a lot of insight in this cycle. I enjoyed reading your post!
Kyle