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Where does school curriculum come from?
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This saying is attributed to Otto von Bismarck: “Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made.” I’d like to nominate K-12 curriculum to join the list of things the public should know more about, even if it is afraid to ask.
Every state has K-12 curriculum standards, which in general terms spell out what every child should know by a certain grade. At first glance, they look organized and authoritative, if suspiciously similar to each other. Once you find out what goes into such sets of standards, they become less appetizing.
It usually begins with a committee with representatives from teachers, subject matter specialists (usually a university professor), then some community and business representatives. The committee sits in a conference room somewhere in a state capital, and argue about what should and what should not go into curriculum. Whoever sounds more authoritative, or just more persistent, usually wins. In most cases, whatever was in curriculum for a long time, ends up being there after each revision.
Once in a while, a professional community of one type or another steers up a public campaign to argue that their particular field is so very important, it needs to be beefed up in school curriculum. For example, in the early 50-s, math and science advocates were very successful in scaring the public into funding increases for school math and science. It does not matter that Soviet Sputnik launch had nothing to do with the state of math and science in either American or Russian schools. Many smaller examples of smaller campaigns can be found. Everyone from music teachers to foreign language teachers tries to argue for their favorite subjects to be taught more and better.
However, there is no good answer for very simple questions. Why do children study mathematics rather than chess? – Certainly not because math is somehow more useful in their future jobs and civic lives. Why do we make kids to learn about Macbeth, but not about Star Wars? These questions are very difficult to answer without just citing tradition, or making claims of cultural authority.
Some people still believe that it does not matter what to learn, because learning improves and discipline’s learner’s mind. That idea was disproved by Thorndike in mid-20-th. We learn what we learn, and there is very little transfer of knowledge and skills into other, different domains. Learning Latin does not make you smarter; learning math or music does not make you think logically. Learning math makes you good at math, and learning music makes you able to play music. Yet there is no public debate on what public schools curriculum should be.
These are not trivial matters. We spend enormous amounts of public money to subsidize high school education, with little evidence that high school actually helps to prepare young people to their future jobs, civic, or family lives. We do not spend nearly enough money on early childhood education which seems to give a much bigger bang for the buck. This is just another example of how education can benefit from deeper reform, not just from improving what is tried, accepted,… and sometimes just wrong.
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