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The Struggle Over the Curriculum
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Many young teachers, active parents, politicians and the media have questions about ‘’what is going on with the school curriculum these days’’. Curriculum is used broadly here, meaning both pedagogy and curriculum content, ‘’it wasn't like this back in the day’’. Well, the answer is known to education academics and researchers. Most understand that we have never had a totally coherent curriculum and we don’t have one now, speaking of North America but also many other jurisdictions.
A Wisconsin education prof, Herbert Kliebard probably did the best analysis on this question, published in 2004 as ‘’The Struggle for the American Curriculum 1893-1958. Yes this is American and the readership here is mainly Canadian and yes he stopped almost 70 years ago, but this work is still featured in many teacher training institutions and principal qualification courses to this day because he outlines the major schools of thought, and why they had shifted under political pressure but also the shifting structure of the economy, and the dominant narrative of the time to create the ‘Rube Goldberg’ unorthodox, some would say chaotic system we have today.
To put it in very simple possibly simplisticly, Kliebard sees the school system as a kind of temporary peace treaty between various factions, or schools of thought, that rest sometimes for long periods, but when they see an opening, try to press any advantage they have to at least tweek, and maybe shift big areas of curriculum in their preferred direction. Kliebard divides them as in the table below.
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The Humanist tradition grew out of the private schools and expanded into public education as it became available. The Developmental School really dates all the way back to Rousseau but became well known under G Stanley Hall as the educational psychologists became heavily involved around the WW1 period.
Fredwick Winslow Taylor, an American engineer, was really a management consultant and a proponent of social efficiency through ‘’scientific management’’. His theories translated into education throughout the 20C and its legacy today lives on in standardized testing and streaming (tracking in US). Psychologist Edward L Thorndike, or Franklin Bobbitt are the names most associated with educational Taylorism. Bobbit and Thorndikewere were both associated with eugenics and educational efficiency.
The Social Meliorists were probably first recognized during the Depressions, as the stark contradictions of capitalism emerged dramatically. The school of thought proposed by George Counts was known as Social Reconstructionism. In a 1932 pamphlet ‘’Dare the Schools Build a New Social Order’’ Counts lit the flame for many educators. The only difference with John Dewey was that Dewey focused on individual growth and Counts was more of a collectivist. Harold Rugg, a Columbia education professor, wrote social studies textbooks that were very popular and progressive until the American Legion ran a campaign calling his books ‘’pro-socialist’’.
In today’s educational wars these factional struggles play out on a daily basis. When left of center governments take over you are likely to see a more Deweyist pedagogy and a more Social Meliorist curriculum content. Many teachers in both countries look to authors like Howard Zinn’s Peoples’ History of America or Paolo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
If a right of center regime is newly elected you can quickly see a shift to their interpretation of what the business community wants. Mike Harris is Ontario quickly moved to one more math credit, and more emphasis on STEM subjects. Ford wants two on-line courses, and a ‘back to basics’ curriculum, Danielle Smith going after Pride flags and BC conservatives going after SOGI is right on brand. You can expect a more centrist government to land somewhere in between with emphasis on individual instruction,
The schools of thought don't always line up neatly with political parties, which are subject to polling and lobbying pressure. The change more likely follows a change in the Zeitgeist or ‘the spirit of the time. Progressive in the 1930s, and 1960s, conservative in the 1950s,
Probably the most important lesson from Kliebard is that they co-exist in time, inside a ministry of education, within a school board, within teachers’ unions and even between two teachers across the hall from each other where one prefers projects and presentations sometimes called Authentic Assessment, and the other prefers tests and exams. Naturally,
this newsletter prefers a developmentalist pedagogy and a Social Meliorist curriculum but that is not to say the social efficiency school doesn't have a point or a contribution to make, up to a point.
We are sure that many parents and often young teachers are confused and frustrated at the collision of these struggling factions but we all need to take a breath and realize that this conflict is world wide and probably endless. We've done pretty well with this hybrid arrangement, As the Spanish might say, ‘’la lucha continua’’.
