Curriculum

“ The organized body of materials of instruction constitutes one of the most important factors which enter into the life of the school system. Along with the board of education, with the grading system, and with the staff of teachers and supervisory officers stands the curriculum as a kind of dominating personality always exercising a leading influence in the determination of every educational policy. ”

“ These four ‘studies,’ representing real life, irrespective of the school, constitute the curriculum, and the ‘three r’s’ are studied only as they are needed. Their content, therefore, being used, as in life, in meeting real needs, is studied most effectively. ”

“ With regard to secondary education, we may anticipate that to meet varied needs three different courses will be provided. A curriculum of roughly the same type as the present will be retained for those boys and girls of the highest grades of intelligence; that is to say, those who have the ability to proceed to university studies and who, in favourable circumstances, intend to do so. ”

“ We are constantly brought back by our discussions of the organization of classes to a consideration of the curriculum. The materials of instruction are capable of advantageous and economical use only when they are adapted to pupils. Our next problem, therefore, is to consider some of the general principles which underlie the organization of the general curriculum and of particular subjects. ”

“ From whatever point of view we approach the problem of teaching our subjects, the answer is the same: meet present situations, solve present real, vital problems, make subject matter meet the needs of the children you are teaching. This analysis of the curriculum makes apparent the important part to be played by the teacher in making available the experiences which the school subjects are organized to present. ”

“ If, then, the programme of a public high school is of the right sort, it will show as well as the curriculum of a classical preparatory school does, that an attempt is being made to guard against such one-sidedness as would be the outcome if one of the six main classes of interest were slighted. ”

“ The differentiation of the curriculum here demanded is required in order to keep in school those pupils who have reached the point where any simple uniform curriculum would fail to furnish the variety which they require to meet their developing tastes and their demands for special training. ”

“ In spite of these handicaps the movement toward the introduction of social studies into the general school is now sufficiently under way to be described as one of the most hopeful innovations in the curriculum. ”

“ As, nevertheless, the curriculum of a general popular, say, public-school or artisan education, varies to some extent, at least, from a preparation for a future profession, the special course in the experimental departments of the two will have to differ respectively. ”

“ The result of this curriculum goal is obvious. Every legitimate teaching aid, every real instruction, and every sensible guide to learning will be misinterpreted, since they are all for facilitating the learning this strange curriculum is against. ”

“ As matter of fact, such schemes of values of studies are largely but unconscious justifications of the curriculum with which one is familiar. One accepts, for the most part, the studies of the existing course and then assigns values to them as a sufficient reason for their being taught. ”

“ There is, it is true, in this School, a definite curriculum of studies, and that curriculum you have honorably completed. You have just been received by public acknowledgment into the community of educated women. But you will be false to the honorable sisterhood, false, I am sure, to all the teachings you have received here, if you [Pg 222] entertain for a moment the thought that no further intellectual acquisitions are before you. The branches which you have learned thus far are chiefly valuable to you for the power they have given you to make still further improvement. ”

“ Our school methods, and to a very considerable extent our curriculum, are inherited from the period when learning and command of certain symbols, affording as they did the only access to learning, were all-important. ”

“ We must not, however, divide the studies of the curriculum into the appreciative, those concerned with intrinsic value, and the instrumental, concerned with those which are of value or ends beyond themselves. The formation of proper standards in any subject depends upon a realization of the contribution which it makes to the immediate significance of experience, upon a direct appreciation. ”

“ If teachers are learned and skilful, and of strong character, if they awaken interest in studies and not disgust, if they have insight into the moral order of the world as revealed in all departments of learning, the whole curriculum of study, from the kindergarten to the university, will be a disclosure of ethical conceptions, a practice of right activity, an encouragement of right aim. ”

“ It is maintained by some, that all the Normal School work is professional, in that throughout the curriculum the aim is to present the subject matter of instruction in the way that the teacher should present it to his or her class of children, and so to make the lessons model lessons. ”

“ The undergraduate of to-day, if he reads the magazines, discovers that a great many people are worrying seriously about his condition. College presidents and official investigators are discussing his scholarship, his extra-curricular activities, and his moral stamina. Not content with the surface of the matter, they are going deeper and are investigating the college itself, its curriculum, the scholarship of the instructors, and its adequacy in realizing its high ideal as a preparation for life. ”

“ In response to the demand for vocational studies the old school curriculum has undergone a striking change. Today it is the disposition of educators to challenge every subject to demonstrate its value. A subject which cannot demonstrate that it helps to fulfil some one of the recognized purposes of education is given a subordinate place in the curriculum or taken out altogether. ”

“ It is not maintained that all subject matter groups itself naturally around industrial activities, and that these activities should, therefore, form the center of the curriculum; rather, it is sought to emphasize the relationships to the real needs of children and the possibility of utilizing these genuine motives in the teaching of school subjects. ”

“ In our common schools we have introduced so many new subjects as to crowd the curriculum. Signs of a reaction are evident. I am alluding to the matter here only as another example of our modern passion for wide selection and for the combination of things that apparently defy amalgamation. ”

“ On the other hand, since all studies are both subjective and objective in the interests they arouse, it would be possible to awaken all the six classes of interest enumerated by teaching but a fraction of what we now consider needful in a good curriculum. ”

“ Organization, administration, instruction, are highly authoritative, doctrinaire. The ideal has been uniformity in methods and product. The educational system [Pg 105] has become as autocratic and military as the industrial. As for content, the curriculum is the old medieval one, not transformed, but patched up, in the good old Anglo-Saxon way, as interests which had been the concern of the few were gradually demanded by the many. Art study, nature study, physical education, science, organized play, manual training, have been added to the public school work. ”

“ It will not escape notice, as evidence of the breadth of training then demanded from scholastics, that hardly one of John s masters was lecturing on the subject which he had chosen for special and mature study : their general acquirements were such as to enable them to give competent instruction in almost any branch of what we may call the customary academical curriculum. ”

“ What are the aims? At present the secondary school’s main function is to give sufficient training in the humanities, in mathematics and science, to enable pupils to pass the entrance examination of a university. (We may for the purpose of the present [23] argument disregard the social activities of the school.) In other words, its business is to produce scholars of the intellectual type fitted for university training. It is true that art, handicraft, domestic science, and physical exercises appear in the curriculum but they occupy more or less subordinate places. ”

“ Only slight variations in the with curriculum largely unchanged. curriculum have ever been allowed since the Ratio Studiorum was issued, until the revision in 1832. In that year work in mathematics, natural science, history, and geography was added in the lower colleges, but the classics still compose the body of the course. ”

“ Either we must train the pupil in a general way so that he will be able to acquire specialized skill more quickly and more effectively than will the pupil who lacks this general training; or we must give up a large part of the general-culture courses that now occupy an important part in our elementary and secondary curriculums, and replace these with technical and vocational subjects that shall have for their purpose the development of specialized efficiency. ”

“ What, then, are the faculties which education is supposed to train? In my attempt to answer this question I will confine myself to the elementary school,—the only school which I can pretend to know well. A glance at the time-table of an ordinary elementary school might suggest to us that there were two chief groups of faculties to be trained—those which perceive and those which express, those which take in and those which give out. When such subjects as History, Geography, or Science are being taught, the child's perceptive faculties are being trained. ”

“ Then the trustees passed an ordinance to the effect that any professor in the university could be called upon to teach any branch, upon penalty of dismissal if he refused. We were determined that our teachers should be men of broad general culture, and not mere narrow specialists. Of coarse, every one of them had studied a variety of branches at school or college, and surely any man ought to be able to teach any thing which he himself had ever learned. ”

“ Consider the influence you may have upon the other institutions of our country, by attaching yourself to some one under the existing organization. If you take an [Pg 231] academy or a private school, constituted and organized like other similar institutions, success in your own, will give you influence over others. A successful teacher of an academy, raises the standard of academic instruction. A college professor, if he brings extraordinary talents to bear upon the regular duties of that office, throws light, universally, upon the whole science of college discipline and instruction. ”

“ The elective principle was broadened so as to bridge the gaps between preparatory school and college, and underclass and upperclass years, giving the student in his underclass years a broad general training in subjects deemed fundamental to real education, and in his upperclass years requiring him to follow continuous work in one of three divisions of studies, the literary-philosophical, the historical-economic, or the mathematical-scientific. ”

“ The school and college will probably give only the keys and apparatus of thought, a necessary language or so, thoroughly done, a sound mathematical training, drawing, a wide and reasoned view of philosophy, some good exercises in dialectics, a training in the use of those stores of fact that science has made. So equipped, the young man and young woman will go on to the technical school of their chosen profession, and to the criticism of contemporary practice for their special efficiency, and to the literature of contemporary thought for their general development.... ”

“ We should form a mistaken estimate of the purposes of this institution if we were to suppose that its only, or even that its main object, was to furnish the means of instruction to those who, by the accidents of their position have lacked, or have enjoyed but to a limited extent, the advantages of the scholastic or academical training. That, no doubt, is one of the beneficial aims which this society endeavors to overtake. ”

“ Such training prepares for a special vocation; but our system tends to hand that over to the secondary school, reserving for the elementary school only that preparatory and liberal training that enables one to get some appreciation of the various lines of human culture before entering upon a course calculated to prepare for a trade, business or a profession. See Education, History of; Education, Modern; Normal Schools; Schools, Rural and Schools, Secondary. ”

“ In connection with higher education there are such new tendencies as university extension, correspondence courses, summer sessions, university interest in the practical problems of the people, the correlation of the first two years of college with the secondary school, more flexible entrance requirements, an increasing number of fields of professional work, and, above all, the professional training of teachers through Departments of Education, Teachers Colleges, and Schools of Education. ”

“ In a public school, therefore, when all classes of the community are to be taught, the truths and exercises should be selected in such a manner, that they shall, if possible, be equally useful to all; leaving the navigator and the agriculturist, the surgeon and the lawyer, to supplement their general education, by the study of those special branches of learning which their several professions require. ”

“ These lectures are called University Extension Lectures.' Another definition which has been given is this: 'Advanced systematic teaching for the people, without distinction of rank, sex, or age, given by means of lectures, classes, and written papers during a connected course, conducted by men "who believe in their work, and intend to do it," teachers who connect the country with the University by manner, method, and information.'" R. D. Roberts, The University Extension Scheme, pages 6-7. EDUCATION: A. D. 1887-1892. University Extension in the United States. ”