Religion in the Schools. In colonial America religion and education were symbiotic. The Latin Grammar school prepared young men to teach and preach. Protestant of various creeds settled in most of the colonies, and Roman Catholics settled in Maryland, clashes over Christian religious beliefs among the early colonists were inevitable. Conflicts were exacerbated over the years as immigrants of all faiths came to the New World, adding beliefs such as Judaism, Islam, Confucianism, Buddhism, Bahaism, and Shinto to those of the Native Americans and the early-arriving Christians.There are so many varieties of Christians in the United States that it is difficult to count them. They include Baptists, Catholics, Christian Scientists, Episcopalians, Greek Orthodox, Lutherans, Methodists, Mormons, Presbyterians, and Seventh-Day Adventists. Other religions also contain divisions: Judaism has Orthodox, Reform, Hasidic, and Sephardic groups. Sunni Moslem doctrine conflicts with Shiite doctrine. The Christian denominations have divided even further. For example, Lutherans of the Missouri Synod hold differing beliefs from the Evangelical Lutherans. The Free Will, Missionary and Southern Baptists are but three segments of that large denomination. America also is home to agnostics, deists, humanist, Unitarian, and atheists.
Forty-five simple words, written in 1791, have generated hundreds of disputes over their meaning. Disagreements over these words continue to this day and may very well continue as long as the republic of the United States lasts. The words I refer to are as follows:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
These powerful words, known as the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, are the center of conflicts over freedom of religion, speech, press, and assembly. Almost daily there is news of a lawsuit that contends infringement of one or more of these freedoms. The question of whether religion should be included in the public schools has evoked fiery debates over the years. Time and again the U.S Supreme Court has reaffirmed the doctrine of separation of church and state. This doctrine has been attributed to Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in particular, it was Thomas Jefferson who wrote of the “wall of separation between church and state.”
The question of how high and how impregnable that wall should be has yet to be completely resolved. Decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court, the ultimate arbiter of constitutional issues, have kept that wall relatively high-much to the chagrin of those Americans who would like to see it fall and those who would fortify it even more.
Those practices with religious connotations in the school that have most often necessitated court adjudication are prayer in the classroom and at school-sponsored events, released time for religious instruction off school grounds, celebration of religious holidays, teaching of evolution, saluting the American flag, permitting religious groups to meet in the school, and extracurricular activities that require a religious test for participation.
Decisions in the constitutionally of religious practices in the schools have frequently invoked the Fourteenth Amendment (due process), which has made the First Amendment binding on the states and hand figured so prominently in early racial discrimination cases. From the wealth of U.S. Supreme Court decisions, I would specify eight that have special relevance for the public school curriculum. (I have indicate the state of origin of each case in parentheses).
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Proponents of prayer and Bible reading in the public schools find it difficult to understand why a government founded on religious principles would declare religious practices in the schools unconstitutional. They maintain that the founding fathers had no antagonism toward religion, but rather sought to prevent the federal government from establishing a national religion.
Those who argue practices in the schools, however, often assume a largely Protestant ethnic. They downplay the pluralistic nature of our society and the fact that many beliefs-including non-Christian religions-are now represented in the public schools. Jewish parents and children find the New Testament unacceptable. Catholics read from Catholics version of the Bible, such as the Douay-Rheims, rather than the Protestant King James version. Furthermore, the wall of separation between church and state protects not only the freedom of religion but also the right of freedom from religion. Advocates of the separation of church and state note that Pierce v. Society of Sisters gave believers the right to send their children to private parochial schools where a religiously homogeneous student population can be instructed in the beliefs of that particular sect.
Decision of the Supreme Court notwithstanding, supporters of the inclusion of religion in the public schools continue to press their case. Former President Ronald Reagan and President George Bush are both advocates of conducting prayer in the public Schools. In 1991 George Bush’s Justice Department urged the Supreme Court to permit prayers at public school graduation ceremonies. Organizations are lined up to both sides of the issue of the separation of church and state.
Numerous conflicts over the separation of church and state can be found in the annual listing of such incidents published by American United for Separation of Church and State. This organization recorded 192 conflicts in 46 states between September 1989 and August 1990-an increase from the 118 incidents in 38 states that were reported the previous year.
Increasingly, educators and others are expressing concern over the schools’ failure to include instruction about the contributions and effects of religion throughout the history of the United States and the world. Some teachers and authors of textbooks fearful that they may offend people’s sensitivities, veer away from religion entirely. Many students, therefore, are to a large extent ignorant of the importance of religion in the development of this country.
A relevant curriculum would incorporate the study of comparative religions as a part of the general education of every student. Such a curriculum would focus on teaching about religion, not the teaching of religion, a person cannot fully appreciate the arts, literature, history, psychology, philosophy, or sociology-or even science, with which religion is often at odds-without studying the influence of religion on these areas of human endeavor. Certainly, students should gain familiarity with the world’s great masterpieces of religious literature, such as the Bible, the Talmud, the Koran, and The Bhagavad-Gita. A knowledge about religion is one attribute of the culturally literate person.
Curriculum planners must be mindful, however, that many of those who claim the schools advocate “secular humanism” would not be satisfied with teaching about religion. Secular humanism implies faith in humankind and subscription to social and moral values that are not necessarily derived from belief in a divine being. Though the public schools do not, in reality, promote a doctrine of secular humanism, the absence of sectarian practices in itself provokes some people to accuse the schools of promoting secular humanism.
The debate over versus sectarian curricula for the public schools will be difficult to resolve because about life and death underscore the controversy. In the following section on parental protest over schoolbooks, you will again find religion as a major source of conflict.
Protests Over Schoolbooks
Schools in many communities throughout the United States have become enmeshed in a struggle with individuals and groups in the community who seek to censor textbooks and library books and to prohibit certain types of instruction or, conversely, to promote certain types of instruction. Attempts to remove library books, textbooks, and other teaching materials from the schools have been on the rise in recent years. Judith F. Krug, director of the Office of Intellectual Freedom of the American Library Association, has put the number of reported incidents at approximately 900 per year. Edward B. Jenkinson observed that estimates of unreported incidents range from 25 to 50 per reported incident.
Protest over schoolbooks has been a big problem in some communities. One of the more publicized and heated controversies over textbooks took place in 1974 in Kanawha Country, West Virginia. The conflict over a list of 325 English/language arts textbooks recommended by a committee of teachers resulted in violence, closing of school, workers staying away from their jobs in the mines in support of the protesters, attacks on the books by ministers of some of the churches, and the resignation of the superintendent of schools. Though the books were ultimately permitted in the classroom, a set of guidelines was drawn up that required the establishment of teacher-parent committees to screen books to be adopted and retained by the school system.
Schoolbook protestors have made their appearance in communities from one end of the United States to the other. Jenkinson made a conservative estimate of 200 as the number of local, state, and national organizations that protest schoolbooks. People for the American Way reported 229 cases of attempted censorship of books during the school year of 1990-91.
Protest against certain schoolbooks include charges that they
· Portray too much sex or violence
· Use profanity
· Use poor English
· Promote “secular humanism”, are religious, anti-Christian
· Are un-American, lacking in patriotism
· Promote one-worldism
· Are racist
· Depict the “wrong” values
· Teach the theory of evolution instead of scientific creationism
Efforts to censor topics of public discussion, reading matter, films, drama, television, and art works recur in the schools-and in society at large-with great frequency, testing First Amendment rights to free speech and press. In recent years, charges of obscenity, for example, have produced vigorous challenges to art exhibitions, novel, film, and lyric to musical composition. The definition of obscenity has proved to be elusive. The U.S Supreme Court has let local communities determine what printed and visual matter violates their community standards and processes “no redeeming value”. Many people consider the sufficient standard to be U.S Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s famous statement about obscenity, “I know it when I see it”.
Schools have both engaged in self-censorship and responded to pressures for censorship from outside forces. In the 1990-91 school year Little Red Riding Hood was under criticism, ostensibly because the main character was carrying wine to her grandmother. In various parts of the country other fairy tales and movie cartoons have been criticized for being excessively violent. This same year saw Mary O’Hara’s children’s classic My Friend Flicka, taken off the list of approved reading for same elementary school pupils apparently because some people objected to certain words that they considered unsuitable. Cases like these affirm that school administrators and boards are extremely sensitive to criticism about books and other teaching materials.
The teaching of values has come under attack by protesters who hold that some of the schoolbooks undermine traditional American values. Protesters have taken special exception to the book Values Clarification, ostensibly because the program that it proposes allows students to express their own views on personal problems.
The teaching of the Darwinian theory of the evolution of humankind has long been a cause of concern to the scientific creationists, who champion the biblical account of creation in Genesis. The Scopes trial in Tennessee in the 1920s reflected the sentiments of the creationists. In the case of Epperson v. Arkansas the U.S Supreme Court ruled that the theory evolution may be taught, however, challenges have continued up to the present and may be anticipated in the future.
Examples of the evolution versus creationism dispute are not difficult to find. In 1982 the federal district court holding that scientific creationism was a religion doctrine, struck down an Alabama statute that would have required instruction in scientific creationism in addition to the theory of evolution. In June 1987 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional Louisiana’s Balanced Treatment for Creation Science and Evolution Science Act of 1981, which would have required that scientific creationism be given equal instructional time with the theory of evolution made national news. Sentiment for teaching scientific creationism either in place of or in addition to evolution theory remains strong.
Often, protests over schoolbooks are not intended to force the schools to eliminate certain material but to adopt textbooks that incorporate particular topics, such as scientific creationism. Although the Supreme Court has ruled that reading the Bible and prayers for devotional purposes in the school is unconstitutional, many groups are still attempting to reintroduce or introduce these sectarian practices into the public schools’ curriculum.
Of concern to teachers, administrators, and curriculum workers is the judicial decision rendered in Tennessee in the fall of 1986. In 1983 the Hawkins County schools adopted the widely used Holt, Rinehart and Winston Basic Reader Series for kindergarten through eighth grade. Christian fundamentalist families objected to the readers on the grounds that the books violated their religious beliefs and that, by requiring their children to read these books, the schools deprived them of their First Amendment right. They demand that their children be allowed to use alternative textbooks, which the school board permitted for a brief period of time. However, the board soon disallowed this practice and resumed requiring the adopted textbooks.
When parents forbade their children to attend classes that used the controversial textbooks, school officials suspended the children. Seven families of Church Hill, Tennessee, though they did not seek complete removal of the readers from the schools, did file suit demanding the right for their own children to use alternative textbooks. Tried in July 1986, the case attracted as much or more attention than famous Scopes trial.
On October 24, 1986, U.S. District Judge Thomas G. Hull found for the plaintiffs, ruling that the school board could not force children to use textbooks that went against their religious beliefs and that the school board had violated the parents’ rights to freedom of religion. By the same token the school district must permit them to use alternative textbooks. He placed responsibility for finding the alternative text on the parents. In addition, the judge ruled that the families could seek monetary damages from the school board for the violation of their rights. In December 1986 the judge awarded the parents more than $50,000, which included the cost of tuition for their children at private school.
Some saw in the Tennessee decision potential disaster for the public schools if other sects demanded textbooks of their own choosing and insisted that their children be permitted to opt out of instruction when textbooks that they found objectionable were used. Others felt that, in actually, few parents would object to the use of local-and state-adopted textbooks. However, the Hawkins Country school board appealed the decision to the 6th U.S Circuit Court of Appeals. In August 1987 the Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the First Amendment rights of the family had not been violated by the school system. In February 1988 the U.S Supreme Court refused to hear the case, letting the appellate court’s decision stand.
The Tennessee case is not an isolated episode: while the district judge was making his ruling in Tennessee, parents in Alabama were suing the Alabama board of education for the removal of state-adopted textbooks in social studies, history, and home economics because of the books’ purported liberal bias toward “secular humanism”. On March 4, 1987, U.S. District Court Judge W. Brevard Hand (the same judge who in Wallace v. Jaffree upheld the Alabama statue providing for silent mediation or prayer) banned more than forty text-books from use as primary textbooks or primary sources in elementary and secondary schools of Alabama. Thirteen days later Judge Hand modified his order and allowed use of portion of the home economics books and use of the history and social studies books if they were appropriately supplemented. In August 1987 the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Judge Hands’ ruling.
Underlying the protests over textbooks in the perennial conflict of differing secular and religious values in a pluralistic society. Controversy continues over interpretation of the Jeffersonian doctrine of separation of church and state and over the protections accorded by the First Amendment, just as schoolbook protesters point to the First Amendment as the source of their rights, efforts to combat censorship have revolved around the First Amendment with its guarantees of freedom of the press, and, by extension, freedom to read.
To respond to various social and political pressures, curriculum planners need not only professional knowledge and skills but also skills in public relations and working with community groups. When dealing with controversial issues in the curriculum, they should have channels through which they may determine the seriousness of problems, the strength of community feelings, and the ways in which issues might be resolved before they become magnified and disproportionate.
Sexism
Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972 passed by the U.S. Congress caused school personnel to examine programs and to remove practice that discriminate between the sexes. Restricting home economics to girls and industrial arts to boys, for example, is a sexist practice. Funding of interscholastic athletics, with the lion’s share traditionally going to boy’s athletics, has been challenged as sexist. The integration of females into male athletics teams and males into female teams has stirred controversy within the profession and outside.
That sex stereotypes and unequal treatment of boys and girls by teachers in the classroom still exist can be seen from recent research reported by Myra and David Sadker. They studied over 100 fourth-, sixth-, and eight-graders in four states and the District of Columbia observing language arts, English, mathematics, and science classes. The Sadkers concluded that, regardless of the subject or grade level, boys dominated interaction and received more attention from the teacher than did girls.
Children’s attitudes about gender roles are shaped early and, like many at attitudes and values, are strongly influenced by the children’s significant others-parents, relatives, close friends, teachers, coaches, role models, and other person whom they respect. A recent study by Jacquelynne S. Eccles and Rena D. Harold at the University of Michigan found that “already by the first grade, girls have a more negative assessment of their general athletic ability than do boys. Athletic skills at early ages are virtually comparable regardless of gender. Not until puberty can physiological differences between boys and girls account for differences in athletic abilities. Sex roles are to a large extend culturally determined, the school often perpetuates those social determiners, either through the intentional of the hidden curriculum.
As mentioned earlier, as recently as 1972 Robert J. Havighurst perceived the achievement of a masculine or feminine social role as one of the developmental tasks of adolescence. The accomplishment of these roles is no longer simple, if it ever was. Though traditional attitudes toward the roles of men and women are still held by sizable segments of public-especially in groups of certain nationalities, certain areas of the country, and certain religious groups-the distinction in roles have been changing rapidly. What once appeared to be male occupation, like truck driving, construction work, and police work, are no longer the exclusive of the male.
Conversely, a “house-husband” is no longer unheard of, and the female were formerly considered only for women, such as nursing, elementary school teaching, and secretarial work. Schools today are counseling girls to take science, mathematics, and industrial arts, courses formerly viewed as more appropriate for boys. On the other hand, boys are advised to elect the fine arts and home economics subjects often considered particularly suitable for girls. The unisex philosophy has shaken, if not toppled, some of the stereotypes of men and women.
In response to changing attitudes about gender-based stereotypes, authors have to “de-sex” their textbooks. They no longer use the single generic pronoun “he” to refer to both sexes. Just as authors may no longer portray all persons in their textbooks as Caucasian, so also they may no longer depict males and females as performing only socially predetermined occupations.
There is growing awareness that women have been discriminated against in the workplace. Such discrimination includes fewer opportunities for women to gain executive position in some occupation, and the fact that women often receive lower salaries than men do in comparable positions. For example, how many school superintendents and secondary school principals are female?
Like racism, sexist stereotypes and discriminatory practices are difficult to eradicate. Nevertheless, curriculum workers must proceed to design curricula that will help to eliminate bias based not only on race, creed, and national origin, but also on gender.
Whole Language
Literacy education-that is, the development of the linguistic skills of reading, writing, speaking, and listening-has gone through a number of transformations in curriculum and instruction. Local, state, and national assessments have consistently revealed that our pupils have deficiencies in language skills. Students’ poor achievement in the fundamental processes has evoked parental and general dissatisfaction with the public school’s curriculum. Pressure for reform in this areas resulted in the “back-to-basics” movement.
Reading, the sine qua non of education, has been at the center of controversies over what methods are most effective and which programs most successful. The continuing controversy over methods of teaching reading can readily be found in the professional literature.
Somehow the profession has managed to survive the controversy over the “look-say” methods versus phonics. Educators have argued eloquently about the use of worksheet, pre-primers, primers, and basal readers. Although one goal of reading instruction is to interest for pleasure, the profession notes that, in spite of commendable sales books, magazines, and newspapers, there is still a continued disinterest in-even dislike for reading among the majority of the American population.
The whole-language movement is a recent response to the failure of the schools to produce literate citizens. In one sense, whole language challenges the skills approach to the teaching of reading. In another sense, it is more than just a reaction against old methods. Looming large in the 1980s the whole language movement has rapidly gained champions and, as with any educational development, critics. P. David Pearson declared, “never have I witnessed anything like the rapid spread of the whole-language movement.
Dorothy J. Watson observed:
Never in the history of literacy education has three been genuine excitement on the part of educators. Teachers, many discouraged and burned out, are ignited by a new professionalism…. This new professionalism, movement, philosophy, spirit is called language.
These comments reflect the intensity of interest in the whole-language movement.
On one level, the whole-language movement is a development of a concept about language learning. On another level, whole language is a perspective on learning in general. Whole-language advocates caution teachers against viewing whole language as a specifics program or set of techniques or materials. Programs, material, and techniques for q whole-language approach will vary from school to school, teacher to teacher, pupil to pupil.
The whole-language movement borrows concepts from the progressive education movement with its premises of child-centeredness, learning by doing, and project instruction, from individualized learning with its appeal to individual needs and interests, from cooperative learning with its emphasis on collaboration, from the principle of the integration of subject matter with its fusion of various disciplines, from the principle of integration of content within the learner with its stress on pupil choice and creativity, and from instructional methodology, which casts the teacher in the role of facilitator. Based on such concept, whole language challenges the language arts curriculum per se, “look-say” methods, phonics, mastery learning, direct instruction, large-group instruction, and standardized test. In some of the whole-language literature, pupils are referred to as “curriculum informants” with whom the teacher “collaborates”. The current buzzword “empowerment” that appears in the literature on whole-language refers to the espousal of pupils’ control over their own learning and teachers’ control over their own teaching.
The whole-language approach allows pupils to learn to read by reading, to write by writing, to speak by speaking, and to listen by listening. The students create their own stories. They speak on matters that concern them. They listen to stories that they like having read to them by their teachers and their peers. They tell what the stories mean to them. “Authenticity” is a key word for whole-language instruction. Whole-language proponents point to the success of literacy education in the New Zaeland, where basal text are not used and where teachers process considerable latitude in the selection of materials and method based on pupils’ need and interest.
Teachers who use a whole-language approach seek to develop students’ self-concept and confidence by deemphasizing mastery and accepting errors and partial mastery. By tolerating error, teachers encourage pupils to take the type of risks that in a more structured situation might be met with disapproval and censure. Whole-language advocates believe that pupils often lose interest in reading due to picayune criticism of their grammar, and syntax. Students learn language skills by using materials of the real (rather than the academic) world. Whole-language methods require teachers to become proficient in assessing pupils’ needs and interests-a skill Yetta M. Goodman calls “kid watching” -in order to ascertain the most appropriate from of instruction.
Pupils’ linguistic activities cannot take place in a vacuum because they must use those skills in many disciplines beyond the confines of the language class. Kenneth S. Goodman stated, “the whole-language curriculum is dual curriculum, every activity, experience, or unit is an opportunity for both linguistic and cognitive development.
Those who promote whole language see it as a theory that is concerned with much more than communication skills. Watson clearly this sentiment: “Whole-language is a perspective on education that is supported by beliefs about learners and learning and teaching, language, and curriculum. In a rebuttal to an article in which Michael C. McKenna, Richard D. Robinson, and John W. Miller recommended a research agenda on whole language, Carole Edelsky argued that whole language is definitely not “another way to teach reading and /or language arts”. Whole language, Edelsky stressed, is “a theory in practice about education generally. It takes seriously a distinction between using language and doing language exercises;” it is “a set of beliefs and not methods;” it “entails congruent practice in its richest sense (not just methods and materials but research, evaluation, curriculum design, interpretive norms, preferred classroom organization, and so on). Harste commented, “all this means that although whole language developed as a theory of language, it rapidly became a theory of learning.
Question about whole language remain to be answered. Can such a high degree of individualization, no matter how commendable, be attained universally throughout our educational system, which is always strapped for funds? Can teachers successfully follow the whole language approach when they have large classes? Will schools be able to furnish the wide variety of materials needed? You will recall that one of the major deficiencies of the defunct secondary school core curriculum approach, which integrated subject areas, was the lack of large assortment of materials. Will schools be able to secure teachers who have been trained in the whole language approach? The lack of trained teachers was one of the problems of the core curriculum approach.
Research has already shown that some pupils learn better by one method than another and for certain purpose than for others. Will a phonics approach will perform on the inevitable SATs and ACTs as well as on international, national, state, and local criterion-and norm referenced assessments. Will teachers and parents who have been satisfied with many positive aspect of whole language maintain a high level of approval if assessment result fall short? Will they willing to accept other indices of achievement that may more compatible to the whole-language philosophy?
Elfrieda H. Hiebert and Charles W. Fisher made a thoughtful observation about the future of whole language:
Since whole language represents the vanguard of a broader set of influences on education, the experiences of students, teachers, and others as they encounter it can either support a transformation or constitute yet another short-lived pendulum swing in educational practice.
To promote the movement, whole-language advocates have established a net work affiliated under the aegis of The Whole Language Umbrella, which held its first conference in August 1990.
Whole language is a promising curricular innovation that is gaining in popularity. Experience will demonstrate whether this approach to language and learning will supplant, supplement, or be replaced by other approaches.
THE IMPACT OF PROFESSIONAL PROBLEMS UPON CURRICULUM
Teacher Organizations
Teachers’ association and unions wield considerable influence in the schools. Many years ago Robert M. Ms Clure spoke of the positive impact of teachers’ organization on school improvement as follows:
Unfortunately, the anti-establishment mystique in our society has drawn greater attention to teacher militancy and the struggle between the National Educational Association and the American Federation of Teachers than to the considerable impact made by the professional associations on school improvement. The less conspicuous but major efforts of the NEA and its affiliates provide an impressive list of examples: the NEA Project on the Academically Talented Student; the NEA Project on Educational Implication of Automation; the Contemporary Music Project of the Music Educators National Conference (an NEA National Affiliate); the Staff Utilization Studies of the National Association of Secondary School Principals (an NEA Associated Organization); and the NEA Project on the Instructional Program of the Public Schools (Project on Instruction).
To these examples we could add the many contributions to curriculum research and study of such professional organization as the American Association of School Administrators, the American Educational Research Association, the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, the Association of teacher Educators, the national association of elementary, middle, and secondary school principals, and association in the disciplines.
The two most powerful organizations the interest of teachers are the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), which is affiliated with the AFL-CIO. Although the NEA is not a union in the sense of being affiliated with organized labor, the missions of the NEA and the AFT often coincide. In fact, some years ago the two organizations talked seriously of merger.
Teachers’ organizations influence the curriculum both directly and indirectly. Some curriculum decisions are made not at the customary curriculum council table but at the bargaining table, in negotiation between teachers (labor) and the school district (management). Ordinarily, these negotiations are concerned with working conditions, rights of teachers, salary, benefits, and the like. However, some items of negotiation are clearly curricular in nature. In communities in which school management and a teachers’ organization have effected a contract, the process of curriculum planning will likely nee to be modified from that of school systems without formal contracts. Regardless of their personal desires, school administrators are bound by the terms of a negotiated contract.
Ways need to be established to integrate efforts of the teachers’ organizations into the school district model for curriculum development. As members of the teachers’ organization themselves, curriculum planners can strive to enlist the teachers’ organization in the cause of continuous curriculum improvement.
Improved Dissemination
The curriculum workers’ efforts would be greatly enhanced if we had better ways of disseminating results of research and experience with innovative programs, though we have the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC), the National Diffusion Network, regional education laboratories, national research and development centers, and many professional journals, the results of research and experimentation do not reach the classroom teacher to the degree they should.
The rapid spread of concepts, programs, and practices such as mastery learning, critical thinking, cooperative learning, and whole language would seem to refute the premise that dissemination of curriculum innovations is show. However, speed is a relative concept. Forty-five miles per hour may be too slow on a four-laned interstate highway but too d\fast on a country road. Innovation still take a considerable amount of time to permeate some 15,000 publics school districts with their 59,000 elementary and middle schools, their 21,000 secondary schools, their 1.3 million elementary school teachers and their 1 million secondary school teachers.
Curriculum decisions are still made on the basis of limited information and without all currently available data. Curriculum leaders must take special responsibility to stay informed of current research so that they can channel essential information to the classroom teacher and other curriculum workers.
Improved Research
Not only do results of research need to be disseminated, but both quantity and quality of educational research need to be expanded. The school systems need to be close partners with institutions of higher learning in the conduct of research. For instance, the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) – the voluntary accrediting agency to which schools and colleges of education may belong – promotes cooperative research between school systems and schools and colleges of education.
The profession is in particular need of more experimental research and more longitudinal studies. We have many status studies and surveys of opinions and practices (favored by doctoral candidates in education) but not enough controlled research or, for that matter, less controlled action research. Curriculum planners should encourage teachers to participate in controlled research studies and to engage in their own unsophisticated action research to determine answers to simple problems that may be applicable only in their own classrooms.
Improved Preparation
Better programs are to prepare curriculum leaders and planners. To gain some perception of the preparation needed by curriculum developers, we might refer to Chapter 1 on the areas of learning from which the field of curriculum is derived, to Chapter 3 on the multiple levels and sectors of curriculum planning, and to Chapter 4 on the roles of various personnel in curriculum development. States might reasonable institute certificates in curriculum development. Such certificates would parallel those now offered in administration, supervision, guidance, and other specialities. Such a certificate would go a long way toward establishing curriculum as a field of specialization in its own right. Furthermore, teacher education institution should assure that their graduates gain what might be called “curriculum literacy” – that is, knowledge about the curriculum field and basic skills in curriculum development. Solutions to all of these problems could help to improve the efficacy of curriculum development.
Source: Oliva, Peter F. 1992. Curriculum Development Problems And Products. HaperCollins Publisher: New York.
