Curriculum Purposes

Curriculum purposes typically include the goals, aims, and objectives of an educational program. As such, purposes have long played a central role in curriculum studies. For Franklin Bobbitt, curriculum purposes focused on those skills necessary to adult life, but which were unlikely to be learned effectively outside of school. Ralph Tyler, unlike Bobbitt, did not argue directly for purposes that would concentrate on preparation for adulthood. Rather, his approach sought to identify the sources useful in formulating curriculum purposes. These [Page 228]sources included studies of learners, studies of contemporary life, suggestions by subject matter specialists, and philosophy—thus providing a broad basis for addressing Tyler's central question: What educational purposes should the school seek to attain? More recently, the objectives movement of the 1960s and 1970s took up the logic that any educational program should begin with a clear determination of what that program was to achieve. This emphasis on outcomes has also been evident in the standards and accountability movements that followed the publication of A Nation at Risk in the 1980s and the U.S. federal government's efforts to establish definable outcomes in education.

In all of these examples, curriculum purposes have been intended to guide the outcomes of schooling. Nevertheless, purposes and outcomes are not necessarily the same. It is conceivable that a curriculum could deskill students or reinforce social prejudices even with admirable purposes. Whatever the outcomes of a program, its purposes are usually ameliorative; they seek to improve someone or something. On this point, two broad and overlapping traditions have characterized curriculum thought. One tradition focuses on social needs and the other on individual development. Both are considered below.