History of Curriculum

Audio Transcript Auto-generated

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  Hello everyone and welcome to the historical

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  context of curriculum in the United States.

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  My name is Ren Corliss and my cln project was reading the school in the United States,

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  a documentary history,

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  I was just really curious about the historical context behind

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  a lot of decisions that are made in curriculum development.

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  So as part of this we're going to have a community kind of chat room.

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  You will see the palette that has been uploaded as

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  well as the president that you can go through yourself.

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  What I'd like you to do is you can see three big ideas here

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  and at the end of each or at the beginning of each kind of subject here,

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  I'm going to pause so that you can write your own thoughts and

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  um and then

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  as you go through the timeline and then I will give my perspective.

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  So if you could please

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  click on the first one, if you do, you'll zoom in and you'll see the timeline.

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  You can click around

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  and see different things.

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  If you want to zoom in closer, you can scroll backwards, move around,

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  there should be a little home button on the side where you can go back

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  to the main screen if you get lost or if you just want to reset.

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  So please take some time to blow around on this first objective.

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  Hopefully you'll notice that they are based on big ideas are big questions.

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  Um go ahead and get started and write your response, you can respond to other people,

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  leave comments or give them a heart if you like what they said.

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  All right,

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  all right, welcome back and again. Please pause the video if you are

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  not ready to move on.

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  So the first

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  thing I want to share is kind of the

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  Era between 1768 and then the 1955

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  um this era I would categorize with teaching english the

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  importance of teaching english morality and especially in the very beginning

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  christian ideas and then later on

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  patriotic ideas.

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  So starting with the new England primer. Again, it was mainly used to teach english.

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  They had the alphabet and every single one of

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  the letters had a biblical context to it.

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  Um,

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  this later on the Noah Webster spelling book came out which was

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  designed to teach the english language or have the basics of it.

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  And then

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  In 1836 the Macguff Ease 6th Eclectic Reader.

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  So this is a way little short stories and ways to teach English

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  uh, and pronunciation, but a lot of stories had morality built into it.

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  So what does it mean to be a good person in society?

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  And I like the quote here that saying that words should

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  be like beautiful mint coins and only issued from the mint

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  later on. Uh scott foreman and company produced the famous Dick and jane series.

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  They also had a whole bunch of other readers meant to teach english.

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  Um

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  a lot of them were very

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  uh focused on what it means to be patriotic.

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  You can see the example there and so again, it's not just english,

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  it is morality with it.

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  So, the curriculum of english was important,

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  but also kind of that hidden curriculum

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  of morality

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  and what it means to be a good citizen.

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  So jumping ahead,

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  This kind of next era

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  from 91 to

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  2016 really focuses on

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  multicultural education and what I would call it, a differentiation.

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  Um

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  Starting off with these two, Arthur, M. Schlesinger and Sonia Nieto,

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  they discussed multiculturalism.

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  So Schlesinger believed that education should be not focused

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  on multiculturalism and should not be taught in schools.

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  Uh and that uh the United States schools are meant for assimilation,

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  there are potent force for assimilation.

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  He said

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  while

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  Sonya believes that multicultural education is important, saying that

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  um

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  that you should focus on um

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  on raising everybody up to the same level

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  and embracing their historical heritage because

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  it adds context to their learning.

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  Going off of that,

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  the common core standards was a way to kind of focus the kind of scattered states.

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  Every state had different standards.

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  This was an attempt to get them all to the same standards.

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  It was done not through the federal government, but through the state government.

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  Uh and according to an article, you can see the 2016,

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  they argued that the common core standards were ultimately failed in

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  their main objective of creating a non federal state standards.

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  Um but they did focus their content on equity across

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  um

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  uh states education, and in that respect.

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  They give credit to the common core state standards of

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  starting conversations that would not have been started without it.

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  So, even though the attempt at creating state are a countrywide standards

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  failed, they did succeed in

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  highlighting um

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  inequities.

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  Alright, so that is the first time line.

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  Now, we're gonna go into what is the purpose of public schools,

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  and how has that purpose changed over time again.

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  Take a few minutes here, you can pause the recording and read through the timeline

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  and record your responses on the pad lit.

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  Alright, So,

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  diving right in.

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  So the first little bit is just on the

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  um

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  what is the stance of the United States Government on education? Uh thomas?

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  Jefferson was

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  attempted to get three bills through the Virginia Legislature.

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  Um but he was not successful, but they outlined what he thought was important

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  when that schools should be teaching, and those were reading,

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  writing and common arithmetic at the same time,

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  making them acquaintance with different histories,

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  again, focusing on that english as an important part

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  Relating back to the previous timeline.

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  In 1787, there were five new states set up with this legislature,

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  but it's famous for this one line that religion, morality,

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  and knowledge being necessary to good government and happiness of mankind.

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  Schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged

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  again reflecting back to religion, morality, and knowledge,

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  and those are reflected in those readers

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  also being reflected the in 1819, going back to Schlesinger's argument of

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  school is being a tool for assimilation.

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  The United States,

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  Congress passed the civilization fund act basically making it so that uh

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  funding education of native americans on tribal land.

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  Uh this was a really a assimilation attempt.

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  They're trying to open these schools to teach them morality and Christianity, and

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  um but also um

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  different agricultural techniques and reading and writing and arithmetic.

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  So, again, those

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  same things that thomas, jefferson laid out with the

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  um addition of morality

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  moving up to 1903,

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  there was a very interesting debate between Booker T Washington and W.

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  E. B du Bose,

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  basically,

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  they were both concerned about the education of black people after the Civil War.

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  Booker T Washington believed that because these

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  people were just freed from slavery,

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  they really didn't have any tradition of learning

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  in the same. And so the same methods that were used for New England would not be,

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  it will not work.

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  Um and so he believed in um setting up a new new

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  style school so that it would start from different places and allow for

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  different inherited traditions too

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  come out.

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  Uh DeVos believed that Washington's view was too narrow

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  and he did not give black people credit,

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  where credit was due.

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  I also believe that he thought that they were giving up too much,

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  giving up political power, civil rights and access to higher education.

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  So, in around the same time,

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  uh there was talk about higher education and this

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  is really where high school came about beforehand.

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  It was um

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  There's a lot of dropout like 5th grade or so on.

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  The National Education Association or the Committee of 10 as it was nicknamed,

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  came up with a report that had four

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  years of secondary education and it had a curriculum

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  which you can see in the picture.

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  The National Education Association later wrote that the committee of 10

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  their curriculum was too strict and that they didn't allow for changes in society.

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  Uh they instead believe that secondary education should achieve health,

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  command of fundamental processes worthy of membership, vocation,

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  civic education, worthy leisure,

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  where the use of leisure and ethical character.

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  So

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  taking away a strict curriculum and putting in more um

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  cardinal principles as they would call it,

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  john Dewey believed that there needs to be reform in education as well.

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  Uh He believed that the vocation um

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  schooling was too narrow in that in the era of the Industrial Revolution,

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  the world had changed and a broader education needed to be embraced.

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  And he believed that

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  not having educators making decisions about education was a mistake.

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  Alright, moving on. So,

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  uh this kind of theme of,

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  there needs to be changed in education and what does that

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  higher education look like um continues on until until now.

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  So we have the, in 1983, the nation at risk

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  basically said that um

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  that the our students are not being educated properly for the future,

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  in that, that we are being left behind in the areas of commerce, industry,

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  science and technology.

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  Um, Johann Neem in 2018,

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  proposed that are said that schools have a nobler

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  purpose than just preparing students for a career.

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  So

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  going back to

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  the

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  um

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  the Committee of 10 versus National Education Association with the kind of,

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  that cardinal principles of education.

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  So it's not just career readiness, it's also building um an ethical character

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  and that brings us to our final question.

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  Our final timeline here, please take a moment and pause the video, read through it.

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  Look at the timeline and come up with your responses.

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  So this timeline, I believe that there's a lot of things hit and the other timelines,

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  but it was kind of skipped over what school should look like,

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  which fair school should look like.

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  So starting off a lot of these are famous cases,

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  but Mendez versus Westminster basically says that um

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  Mexican and latin students should have access to white schools.

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  Brown versus Board of Education says that separate is not equal

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  and getting rid of segregated schools.

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  There's a great

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  um great um,

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  story by daisy Bates that's going into what

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  happened at Little Rock and her experience.

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  Uh and it wasn't just in the south that they're having troubles too in the N

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  double A cp boston branch had a lot

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  of issues with school desegregation and proper funding

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  In 1975 or 70 for Title nine. Basically you cannot discriminate based on sex

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  in

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  Uh, and received federal funding or federal assistance.

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  And then the same thing in 1975, education for all handicapped Children act,

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  so

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  whose school is for and what fairness looks like in schooling.

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  Um,

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  important things to consider when building curriculum and a

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  lot of things that we just take for granted.

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  So I hope that this was interesting. I hope that you learned something new.

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  I'm looking forward to reading your palate responses and thank you for your time.