A Theory of Secondary Curriculum Utility
Copyright 1998 by Randall Burks
Once upon a time the forest animals decided to start a school. They determined that the curriculum would include the following subjects: swimming, hopping, climbing, burrowing, running, flying, and slithering. All animals would be required to take all subjects. Everything started well enough, but the principal, Wise Old Owl, noticed some disturbing trends by the third day. For example, the ducks were getting straight A's in swimming but were failing the slithering course. The cheetahs excelled in running but were only pulling a D in burrowing. The rabbits aced the hopping class, but they bombed all the flying tests. The snakes easily got A's in slithering, but they had considerable difficulty in hopping.
At the emergency staff meeting, a debate arose among the teachers. Was this an instructional problem or a curriculum problem? They all agreed that the instructors were supremely qualified and that they were using the best research-based instructional techniques; and yet, so many animals were failing. Eventually they decided that the curriculum itself must be flawed. Professor Lion from Forest State University was called in as a consultant, and he discovered that the problem at Forest Academy was a low level of curriculum utility. He pointed out that the ducks really didn't need to know how to slither, and the cheetahs didn't really need burrowing skills. Neither did the elephants really find flying classes very applicable. "The bottom line," concluded Dr. Lion, "is that many of the animals are being forced to learn skills that are not applicable to their situations." Then he uttered this rule of thumb: "There are certain skills that every animal needs to know, such as how to obtain adequate food. But we should not force every animal into the same mold. They have different instincts and cultures . . . different paths to the future. For a curriculum to have utility, it must be applicable and appropriate to the students' current and/or future situation." He then helped the Wise Old Owl revise the curriculum to include instruction in universal animal social skills and food-acquisition principals, but they would also recognize and celebrate individuality and thus would allow different animals to specialize in the subjects most applicable to their species.
The animals all rejoiced when the new curriculum guides were made public. Spontaneously, they all shouted in unison, "Now this is a useful curriculum!" This story, which I have embellished from one told by Leo Buscaglia (1972), illustrates the obvious need for curriculum utility. McNeil (1995, p. 201) confirms that the best curricula have the following characteristics: "1. They address the wants and needs of learners ... 2. They respond to social conditions (local, national, world) ... 3. They draw on a wide range of resources of knowledge, including the academic fields, master practitioners of occupations, and the intellectual heritage of cultures."
However, the utility of a curriculum is not always so obvious. In fact, its usefulness and applicability may be obvious only to teachers, as usually is the case with Algebra I, where so many students traditionally whine, "When am I ever going to need this stuff?" Teachers know that their students will always benefit from the sharpened thinking skills that Algebra commonly develops in kids, whether or not they actually end up needing to compute a quadratic equation sometime in the future while working as a street cleaner, politician, or fighter pilot.
Besides the concept of needing to develop thinking skills, there is another reason why some courses really are useful even though they seem to have no extremely obvious applicability for the average future professional: Simply put, society has built a tacit tradition around certain professions and graduate programs wherein certain courses are held to be necessary prerequisites for certain career tracks. (For example, many future nurses complain about having to take Chemistry 101 as part of their nursing program. "After all," they whine, "I'm not going to be a chemist and I'm not going to make medicines; I'm only going to hand them out." The hidden utility of taking chemistry is that this study acts as a stepping stone or bridge to help them get what they want: the R.N. After all, not taking chemistry would turn out to be very unuseful, since it would fail to equip them with one of the keys to the door of the nursing diploma. In other words, the most visible utility of some curriculum elements may be the fulfillment of certain requirements imposed by higher authorities. It's useful to study such courses if not taking them would end up preventing the student from entering a program or profession that he/she really wants to enter. In practice, such courses end up serving as a sifter to weed out the "less-motivated" or less-able students. The students who do suffer through these courses successfully are considered to have gone through an academic "rite of passage."
Thus, we have mentioned at least four elements of curriculum utility to this point: 1) Content is useful if it relates to the general body of knowledge needed by average human beings for conducting daily life [e.g. reading, writing, and arithmetic]. 2) Content is useful if it relates directly to the specific present or future situation of the student [e.g. a boy who wants to be a newspaper reporter would consider advanced English-writing classes very useful; a future engineer should consider calculus useful]. 3) Content is useful if it develops thinking skills that probably increase the student's success in other subject areas or in general life-decisions [e.g. algebra and geometry]. 4) Content is useful if it fulfills unavoidable requirements imposed by tradition as keys to the door of certain vocational and professional programs.
As for the overall utility of a general high-school curriculum, a metaphorical approach may be helpful. Instruction is a moving van; curriculum is the map and the highway which it must travel to get to the new house. Instruction is a ship; curriculum is the rudder which guides it. Instruction is the chef's mixing and cooking of a cuisine, while the curriculum is the recipe. I think all three metaphors are appropriate to exemplify the purpose of curriculum. As contrasted with instruction (the actual teaching of information), curriculum is a plan which shows how to get from lack of knowledge to adequacy of knowledge; what to include in the instruction (the recipe); and it helps to avoid inapplicable content (as the rudder guides the ship away from the unintended destination).
The easiest curriculum question to manipulate may be in the police academy. The most obvious method of curriculum formation would be to analyze all the common tasks performed by working police officers, discover what knowledge, skills, and values are needed to carry out law enforcement successfully, and then base the curriculum on these concepts, skills, and values. This would become the recipe for instruction and the highway upon which the cadets would be transported to their new home: becoming police officers. The curriculum would also act as a rudder to keep instructors on course. For example, a sharp-shooting instructor might tempted to detour frequently into some political gripe about the criminal-justice system or waste time telling all the lawyer jokes he can think of every day. But the rudder of curriculum would bring him back on course to focus on the crucial elements of preparing cadets for life-and-death situations in the field.
There is probably a relatively high level of consensus among police-academy curriculum planners, which was confirmed by a quick browse through several academy catalogs. However, a general high-school curriculum is far more complex than a specialized vocational academy's, and the high-school atmosphere doesn't embody the same life-and-death immediacy. And yet, I feel that the same three functions are evident within a high-school curriculum: it serves to prescribe and supply the ingredients and to keep the instructional program relevant.
These functions occur on an overall, system-wide and school-wide level, and on departmental levels, as well as in each classroom, as described so well by Tyler (1949). If there were no curriculum at all--if teachers were just told to go in and teach whatever they please--the students would likely end up learning only what the teachers happened to be interested in. Their knowledge would be imbalanced. The school would be like a plane with strong engines but no wings. Westerberg (1997, p. 11) has implemented in his Colorado high school an essential-tasks project of basing the curriculum and instruction on basic, essential learnings. He reports that "We have a direction. We have a focus. We have something in common to talk about" because we "have experienced the power of a system of education built on commonly-held, clearly-defined essential learnings." Westerberg's high-school ship has a rudder; his plane has wings.
Most likely, Westerberg's approach hails back to an earlier era. There are cycles in education as well as in fashion. Henson (1996, p.157) reminds us that, "For the first three centuries [starting with the earliest settlers], teachers were the main curriculum developers in American schools," but by the early 1900's some experts "openly expressed their lack of confidence in teachers' abilities to select content." Now, unfortunately, far too many teachers and schools use textbooks as curriculum. Rozycki (1996, p.154) bemoans society's current over-reliance on texts as a curriculum source. "In fact," he says, "much curriculum is counterproductive to learning." He compares the American public schools' textbook-based curricula to a patchwork quilt, "not a set of finely developed instruments aimed at achieving educational goals. Rather, it is a set of compromises symbolizing the pluralism of ends pursued by members of our society." Not only do many teachers rely solely on texts, but many can't even agree about what a the word curriculum means.
Hampton and Eresh (1996, p.188) point out that "Definitions of curriculum range from the massive binder created at and distributed by the central office, which teachers stash in their desk drawers, to the activities, sometimes impromptu, that take place in each classroom." The assert that "as more and more districts subscribe to school-based decision-making theory, more and more teachers are exploring curricula unique to each group of students." This is as it should be. After all, the original meaning of the word curriculum was the course of a chariot race, and metaphorically, "race course can be interpreted to mean journey or journey of learning, growing, and becoming," says Schubert (1996, p.169). Schubert reports that "the most perceptive curriculum scholars throughout history have realized that curriculum, at its root, deals with the central question of what is worth knowing; therefore, it deals with what is worth experiencing, doing, and being" (p.169).
McNeil (1995, p. 201) summarizes the questions that practicing teachers should be asking about curriculum: "1. What should be the purposes, goals, or intents of the curriculum? 2. What activities or learning opportunities can best contribute to these purposes and also be of intrinsic worth? 3. How can the activities be arranged to extend and broaden learning?"
I personally propose that teachers and all curriculum makers should ask, "Does it relate to the general body of knowledge needed by average human beings for conducting daily life or the tasks of the job at hand? Does it relate directly to the specific present or future situation of the student? If it is to be implemented by another teacher, is it practical to implement? Do the students find it of interest? Does it recognize individual differences? Can it develop thinking skills that may increase the student's success in other subject areas or in general life-decisions? Does it fulfill unavoidable requirements imposed by tradition as keys to the door of certain vocational and professional programs? Is it balanced in the its scope and logical in its sequence?" If the answers are "Yes," I would declare that this curriculum has a high level of utility. It is a good recipe, map, highway, and rudder. It is a plane with wings.
REFERENCES
Buscaglia, L. F. (1972). Love. Thorofare, N.J.: C. B. Slack.
Eresh, J. & Hampton, S. (1996). Restructuring curriculum for "real-world" experiences. Educational Horizons, 74(4), 187-191.
Henson, K. T. (1996). Why curriculum development needs reforming. Educational Horizons, 74(4), 153-162.
McNeil, J. D. (1990). Curriculum: A comprehensive introduction (4th ed.). Glenview, Ill: Scott, Foresman and Co.
McNeil, J. D. (1995). Curriculum: The teacher's initiative. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall.
Rozycki, E. G. (1996). Beyond the textbook? Unlikely changes in the curriculum. Educational Horizons, 74(4), 153-155.
Schubert, W. H. (1996). Perspectives on four curriculum traditions. Educational Horizons, 74(4), 169-176.
Tyler, R. W. (1949). Basic principles of curriculum and instruction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Westerberg, T. (1997, March/April). Developing and implementing essential learnings: One school's experiences. The High School Magazine, pp. 4-10.