Language Arts Education Curriculum, History of

Early 20th Century Trends

As early as 1917, policy statements and reports issued by the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) documented a need to move beyond a departmentalized framework for the teaching of English that prepared students for the eventual meeting of college entrance requirements. Postindustrial advances in science and psychology influenced work in education by encouraging the reenvisioning of the learning process and the learner from a fragmented, behaviorist perspective to a more holistic, whole child appreciation. [Page 522]Within this context of synthesis, NCTE published its influential 1935 report on the necessity of a correlated curriculum that is also popularly known as an integrated curriculum. The premise of a correlated curriculum is that learning occurs through the varied uses of language and experience across and within interrelated subject areas for a variety of real and relevant purposes and enables the learner and teachers to appreciate patterns: world patterns, subject patterns, experience patterns, and psychological growth patterns. Ultimately, such a curriculum is transformative: The learner prepares not only to adjust to the demands of life, but also to transform or improve the conditions of living.

The correlated English curriculum of this era was organized on a continuum in six forms:

• 1.
  The integration of English with other subjects through incidental references and isolated projects
• 2.
  An English course based on relationships with other subjects, but not requiring the cooperation or modification of other subject courses
• 3.
  The fusion, or blending, of English with another content or subject area
• 4.
  The integration of groups of subjects
• 5.
  A whole curriculum based on the integration of all subjects
• 6.
  A seamless curriculum, or one that does not acknowledge subject area boundaries

Recognizing the strengths and limitations of such English language arts curriculum configurations, educators were encouraged to ask several guiding questions throughout the design process that would ensure the curriculum be balanced, reflect important values, be genuine, be interesting to students, be administratively feasible, be within the range of faculty abilities and knowledge bases, and contain the resources necessary for implementation.

Events Leading to Language Arts Curriculum Change

As enthusiastic as the progressive voices in education were during the period leading to the early 1950s, the launching of the Russian satellite Sputnik in 1957 signaled a rapid reexamination of educational reform in the United States, in particular by critics of progressive education. In an emerging political climate characterized by fear for the U.S. position as a world power, curriculum efforts once again embraced conservative ideologies. Many progressive ideas and efforts were replaced with a renewed focus on the role of technology in education and society and the reestablishment of a separate-subject approach to curriculum. Consequently, widespread attention to curriculum integration during the 1960s and 1970s waned during this period, although school restructuring would eventually rekindle the focus.

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