On Curriculum

The first stop I had was when Eisner gave the example of using the system of reading books and getting the reward of leaving to lunch 5 minutes early. When I first read it, I thought it was a pretty good system to keep the students motivated. However, as I kept reading, I, too, realized that I am just modifying the students’ goals to what the school wants. I should’ve asked for what they wanted to accomplish, instead of just blindly giving out the rewards like so. The second stop is on the topic of honours classes, where it’s more based on the students’ background rather than their ability to learn. My parents have always put me in honours classes whenever possible, but thinking back now, it’s quite interesting to reflect on the fact that I am able to get in thanks to the extra-curriculars that I was signed up for. Furthermore, I also agree with that it almost invalidates everyone else as an A in a regular class is worth a B in a honours class, which can create less inclusivity. The last stop I had was on the tradition of teaching subjects. Like Eisner mentioned, it’s quite disheartening that the current school systems don’t focus much on learning economics, laws, and subjects that are more practical outside of the standard subjects such as math and history. Schools should be emphasizing on those “practical” subjects since that is what they are for: to prepare the future generation for the society and their future. I believe that even something as simple as budgeting, investing, and doing taxes, for example, should be required in schools, even though it’s not from the tradition curriculum. It’s at this point in the article I started to understand the idea of the null curriculum, and I believe that us teachers and students can both benefit tremendously from this.

Treating curriculum as explicit, implicit, and null is a great way of putting the definition of curriculum together. I think that curriculum covers a very broad set up topics, not just what is on the textbooks. I love the idea that not only is the curriculum teaching the students about the traditional knowledge, such as calculus and metaphors, we are also teaching them about hardwork, perseverance, making friends, and many life skills from completing all the explicit curriculum. I think the biggest strength that the BC curriculum has is the implementations of life skills. We are starting to cover more on economics and investing in math, we are offering shops classes for students who wants to pursue trades instead of academia, and of course, we are offering more creative subjects, such as drama and graphic design. It’s important for all students to try at least a little bit of each, to only guide them to find their own path, but also to remain creative to help them tackle problems in their lives.