Curriculum Studies, The Future of: Essay 2

In a 1930 speech, W. E. B. Du Bois reconciled the need for both academic-liberal studies and industrial training as part of the curriculum African American college students needed to confront the realities of the current day and the future. He saw [Page 239]industry, commerce, capital, and credit transforming into a superorganization with global influence and wanted the Black community to be in a position to create its own independent institutions of commerce, capital, and so on and have a role in transforming this superorganization to improve the lives of Black people instead of being enslaved by it.

Eighty years later, the need for a curriculum that prepares students to participate in a diverse society and global community is perhaps even more urgent for poor and working-class students. The United States and the world are breaking new boundaries as demonstrated by the first African American U.S. president, global acknowledgment of environmental and energy crises, the emergence of China and India as world powers, U.S. relationships with Arabic and African nations and our southern neighbors of color in Mexico and in Central and South America, and so on. As an increasingly diverse society in the global community, how we prepare all future generations will have a direct impact on our nation's place in the world.

The future of curriculum studies will require not only academic discussions of high theory, but also a continuous struggle over the direction and focus of what is taught. Today, the focus on accountability and outcomes has had a profound impact on school curriculum and classroom pedagogy. Current national educational legislation and policy instituted mandatory student assessment tests, which, not surprisingly, drive the curriculum at the state and local levels. This revitalized behavioral approach using performance objectives and systems management reduces curriculum to certain prescribed knowledge that prepares students to pass the test. Curricular questions of what, how, and why certain knowledge is selected and whose interest it serves, as well as questions concerning the testing industry itself, have taken a backseat to the resurgent obsession of testing and measurement. Interestingly and troublingly enough, both the prescribed curriculum and testing and measurement serve the same ends—they reinforce and preserve the societal hierarchy through the elevation of certain groups of students and the subordination of others. The results of high-stakes testing is a structured differentiated curriculum—children of middle-class families receive discipline-centered pedagogy, which gives them access to higher levels of knowledge, while working-class urban or rural poor students receive basic instruction. Consequently, when all students confront the same state-sponsored assessment test, it is not difficult to hypothesize which students will score better. The use of testing as a diagnostic tool is one thing, but using it as a life sentence is a very different purpose. There are those who support this test-driven policy, perhaps because of strongly held beliefs that it forces uninvested or apathetic teachers to teach. Such sentiment comes from those who are justifiably concerned about and have critiqued failing performance in poor underserved schools. Yet a lingering concern for this curricularist is why is there such insistence and persistence on hierarchically structuring, measuring, and assessing humanity.

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