Fundamental Questions on Curriculum

The twenty-sixth yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, published in 1930, is considered a landmark book on curriculum; it was the first attempt by a group of curriculum scholars to synthesize the meaning and practice of curriculum making. Volume II presented a list of "fundamental questions" on curriculum making, intended to stimulate discussion among teachers and curriculum leaders. The questions have stood the test of time; they are relevant even today.

1. What period of life does schooling primarily contemplate as its end?
2. How can the curriculum prepare for effective participation in adult life?
3. Are the curriculum-makers of the schools obliged to formulate a point of view concerning the merits or deficiencies of American civilization?
4. Should the school be regarded as a conscious agency for social improvement?
   1. Should the school be planned on the assumption that it is to fit children to "live in" the current social order or to rise above and lift it after them? Are children merely to be "adjusted" to the institutions of current society or are they to be so educated that they will be impelled to modify it? Are they to accept it or to question it?
5. How shall the content of the curriculum be conceived and stated?
6. What is the place and function of subject matter in the educative process?
7. What portion of education should be classified as "general" and what portion as "specialized" or "vocational" or purely "optional?" To what extent is general education to run parallel with vocational education and to what extent is the latter to follow on the completion of the former?...
8. To what extent should traits be learned in their "natural" setting (i.e., in a "life-situation")?
9. To what degree should the curriculum provide for individual differences?...
10. What should be the form of organization of the curriculum? Shall it be one of the following or will you adopt others?
    1. A flexibly graded series of suggestive activities with reference to subject matter which may be used in connection with the activities? Or,
    2. A rigidly graded series of activities with subject matter included with each respective activity? Or,
    3. A graded sequence of subject matter with suggestion for activities to which the subject matter is related? Or,
    4. A statement of achievements expected for each grade, a list of suggestive activities, and an outline of related subject matter, through the use of which the grade object may be achieved? Or,
    5. A statement of grade objectives in terms of subject matter and textual and reference materials which will provide this subject matter without any specific reference to activities?
11. What, if any, use shall be made of the spontaneous interests of children?

Questions

1. What principles of psychology and school of philosophy do the questions reflect?
2. To what extent would you modify the questions set forth in the statement? Which questions do you find relevant? Irrelevant?
3. What groups are most appropriate to ask and answer these questions?
4. As you grow professionally, which of these questions will most influence what you teach and how you teach?

Source: "A Composite Statement by the Members of the Society's Committee on Curriculum Making," in G. M. Whipple, ed., The Foundations of Curriculum Making, Twenty-sixth Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education. Part II (Bloomington, Ill.: Public School Publishing Co., 1930), cover, pp. 9–10.