Mindless curriculum

The term mindless curriculum in curriculum studies, refers to policy and practice that instantiates curriculum without careful, reflective study, thought, or anticipation of consequences. Mindless curriculum is often reactive vis-à-vis social, political, and economic pressures and sometimes refers to deskilling teachers of their thoughtful propensities by teacher proofing the curriculumthat is, by telling local educators rules to follow rather than enabling them to exercise intelligent judgment. Mindless curriculum is critiqued in a widely touted study of schooling in the late 1960s by Charles Silberman, published as Crisis in the Classroom in 1971. Similarly, one can find criticism of mindlessness in John Goodlad's A Study of Schooling. In the main volume published from it, Goodlad depicts the status of schooling in the late 1970s and early 1980s in A Place Called School. These and many other studies commissioned to examine education in the United States have revealed and criticized a follow-the-rules mentality. The use of mindless to characterize a nonreflective, reactive tendency in school is ironic in view of the fact that schools were presumably created to teach students and thus society to be reflective. The term mindless may or may not be used, although the sentiment is often there.

This and contemporary exposes of schooling hearken back to the first such study in the era of curriculum development. Joseph Mayer Rice, a young pediatrician who actually sought progressive tendencies in school practice, was commissioned by a journal called The Forum in the last decade of the 19th century. His explorations led him to decry the routine and lock-step character of schools and their mindless perpetuation of procedures. His reports were published in 1893 in a volume called The Public School System of the United States and contributed to his lack of faith in the creativity to be expected in schools. Thus, in 1913 he published a call for greater efficiency in school management under the title, Scientific Management in Education.

Many curriculum scholars today draw upon work of Paulo Freire who has often critiqued the dominant banking approach to curriculum, an approach which increases mindless practices. Freire, however, seeks a resolution in democratic involvement of all concerned rather than through increased efficiency and control. He advocates overcoming mindless curriculum through a problem-posing approach.

The central point for curriculum studies of the term mindless curriculum does not reside in the frequency of the term's use. Rather, it lies in the idea that unimaginative procedures govern an institution or school that is supposed to stimulate and release the human imagination.