For the last two decades, every President in the White House has offered up a school reform initiative. The continual call for school reform is based on the belief that the blame for the low achievement scores of students in this nation lies squarely in schools that are poorly run and poorly staffed. While it is an oversimplification to place the blame for poor student achievement on poor school management, the fact remains that over the last decade, the focus of school reform legislation has been on improving academic standards, enhancing teacher quality and support, and holding schools accountable for student performance.
What has been missing from the school reform agenda is any talk of the role the school curriculum plays in student achievement. The assumption made by lawmakers, school administrators, and teachers is that the subject-centered curriculum designed around academic course offerings is the gold standard. Over time, schools have expanded their course offerings by introducing electives to enhance student engagement. These additions, however, are just that: additions. They are not intended to subtract subjects from the core curriculum, reorganize course offerings, or rewrite course offerings. The standardized college-bound curriculum authored by the Committee of 10 in 1892 still remains the gold standard.
Although there have been a number of reports and research studies that have questioned the worth and teachability of the subject-centered college-bound curriculum, it still remains the mainstay of all schools in this nation. The question remains: Why is a curriculum designed in 1892 still in its original form in a nation and world where global economies are demanding habits of thought and occupational skills that no longer align well with the college-bound subject subject-centered curriculum? The following outlines the six major barriers to school curriculum reform:
Conflicting Goals
All school mission statements write goals that fall into the following four categories: civic, vocational, cultivating humanity, self self-development. Putting aside the conflicts each goal has with the other goals, the organization of these goals into a coherent approach to teaching and learning is an impossible undertaking. Schools have solved this dilemma by mandating that all students fill their schedules with the sequence of courses from the core curriculum—the 1892 academic college preparatory course offerings—and, if space in a student’s schedule is left open they are free to sprinkle in elective course offerings that nibble around the edges of civic responsibilities, developing personal interests, or examining the human condition.
Credentialing
At the turn of the century, a group of reform-minded Superintendents aimed to reform schools by applying principles of efficiency and scientific management. They transformed the personalization of the one-room schoolhouse into an institutional school system whose goal was to standardize course offerings, time allocated for each course offering, and the awarding of credits for completion of each course. For over a century have been more focused on sifting and sorting students within these bureaucratic mazes rather than enhancing learning.
The 1892 Curriculum Works
Middle- and upper-class parents feel that the college-bound academic curriculum works for their sons and daughters. Any dramatic changes to the 1892 college-bound curriculum would pose a threat to powerful groups of parents who sent their children to college.
What real schooling looks like
As a Superintendent commented to me after a proposed interdisciplinary program was opposed by various parent groups: “Well, Al, nice presentation, but you know, everyone has been to third grade.” He meant by this comment that all parents have experienced institutional schooling. And yes, when you gather at reunion parties, the institutional model of schooling—seven periods, subjects, credits, Friday’s test— is disparaged by most. But, all would agree that this is how a school should look, and this is how school should be conducted.
What real teaching looks like
Teachers, like their parent counterparts, sat for many hours in desks, lined up in rows, and with a teacher in front of the room transmitting large amounts of facts, methods, and distributing Friday’s test. Most teachers believe that students should be taught like they were taught. So they define curriculum by textbooks, disconnected categories of knowledge, and academic exercises—the ten end-of-the-chapter questions.
Organizational Convenience
It is convenient to have a curriculum that focuses on academic subjects, which are aligned with the university discipline. It is convenient to have a differentiated curriculum, which allows teachers to specialize. It is convenient to structure a high school around a core curriculum that simplifies curriculum planning and the documentation of student progress.
No Cognitive Infrastructure
All the barriers to school reform are formidable; they are not insurmountable. What has held these barriers in place for over a century is the lack of counter-narratives, vocabularies, and messengers. The narratives and vocabularies now in place revolve around institutional goals and practices—credentialing, standardization, accountability, compartmentalization—rather than creating learning environments that are lively, challenging, and intellectually engaging.
Although a group of progressive educators at the turn of the century developed narratives and vocabularies that challenged institutional goals and values, the quest for organizational certainty in schooling all but erased these narratives and vocabularies from the educational landscape. The fatal blow, however, to the erasure of progressive vocabularies and narratives from the educational landscape was largely the fault of school administrators unschooled in the theories, ideas, vocabularies, and narratives developed over a century ago by the likes of John Dewey, Maria Montessori, Francis Parker, and William Heard Kilpatrick.
Even if a school administrator came across these narratives and vocabularies in their administrative training, the managerial tools taught in these courses, along with the institutional systems already in place in their schools, would offer school administrators little opportunity or incentive to pursue progressive approaches to teaching and learning. Without agents willing and able to articulate alternative models of schooling, students brought up in a Google information environment will remain stuck in a Gutenberg era curriculum.
Alan C. Jones 