This cycle we are looking at how curriculum should be created. After reading the article about the Texas Board of Education and their changes to social studies curriculum, I realized I have stronger feelings about this question than I originally thought.
It had never crossed my mind to
think about who creates the state or national standards that we teach. I have always viewed it as an expert. This thought now kind of baffles me. Especially because I used to teach in Texas
and they were changing the reading and the math standards while I worked
there. I was irate over some of the math
standards that were changed. The rumor
was that they were bumping all standards down two grade levels, meaning that a
standard that was taught in fifth grade last year will now be taught in third
grade. As a third grade teacher who
watched my students struggle with the third grade standards and the time line
the district was giving us to teach them in I could not fathom my students
being successful with standards that were once expected of fifth graders. Even with all of that I still thought it had
to be a credible source choosing the fate of my students. Boy was I wrong! I now see that anyone can be on the Board of
Education and anyone can insert their own personal agendas into the lives of
students across the country. This is
where my feelings about who creates the curriculum changed.
I now strongly believe that the
people in charge of creating curriculum should be focusing on what is
developmentally appropriate, what is important to create successful members of
a community, and they must cover truth and facts. It is important to me that the people
deciding what I teach have knowledge and a background in education. They should be impartial to politics, religion,
and race when deciding what will be taught.
They should not be a dentist or a lawyer who have not step foot in a
K-12 classroom since their own days of attending school. I for one am offended, but not surprised,
that the Texas Board of Education allows people to make decisions about
education based on their religious and political views. The idea that someone could tell me that I
must teach my students to look and judge important figures in history based on
their own personal opinion or that I should have discussions boosting one
religion while putting down another. As
someone who is not Christian, that is not something that I could do. I believe that the view of curriculum that
started in 1954 of multiculturalism and inclusion are the way the people in
charge should be focusing. I believe
that church and state should be separate and I believe that if you talk about
religion or politics in school all sides should be taught. We are supposed to be helping our students
find their own voice, not creating them to think like us. This has to start higher up than the
teacher.
In the creation of curriculum there
should be a change. This change should
come from the who and not the how. I do
not understand after so many years how the decisions about education is still
being left in the hands of people who have never stepped foot in a classroom as
an educator or who have never taken a course on teaching and curriculum. Our society has this view that anyone can
decide I am going to teach or work in education and they will know exactly what
to do. This happens with allowing
organizations like Teach for America or programs, like the one in Texas, which
put someone with a degree in anything in the classroom and give them a few
classes with tips and pointers on teaching and allow them to teach. This happens with allowing a dentist to
create teaching standards that are set for the whole state and will be looked
at by the whole country. This is
demeaning to our profession and to those of us who work hard to make sure that
these kids are getting everything they need.
These actions tell me that my education and knowledge is not needed and
that someone who has no experience can walk into my classroom and can do my job
just as well as I do. I actually just
watched an episode of 1600 Penn on
NBC. The son in the show was trying to
figure out what to do with his life and the stepmom suggests teaching. I believe there was a line along the lines
of, “It’s easy to be a teacher. All you
need is a degree.” (Note that his was not in education.) Followed by, “No one wants to be a teacher.” People honestly believe that this is true and
this is why the education system in our country has not gotten better.
Curriculum should be decided by
educators; teachers and principals, people who are around the students, who are
in the classrooms, and who have taken the appropriate education themselves that
allow them to be knowledgeable on the topic.
It should be created with the consideration that every student is
different and it should be decided by a group of people that come in with an
unbiased opinion. This is at least what
I think.
This is an article about a school district that is allowing
their teachers to play an active role in choosing and creating curriculum. It looks at what their role would be and
processes they can use.
This article looks at the demands that administration has to
go through when working with curriculum.
It focuses on the societies role in their decisions.
