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A National Standardized Curriculum for all Public Schools
zidangus
Veteran
I was reading an article on the way in which America allows each state the freedom to create their own curriculum under limited federal regulation. This is opposite to what happens in the UK where the government has one national standardized curriculum for all public schools. I might be biased here, but isn't the UK's method , well better ? I mean just reading a brief overview of the way its done in America, it seems subjects which are taught such as creation theory differ dramitcally depending on the state you are in. Anyway seems strange that there is not a national standardized curriculum that public schools must follow.
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Education is actually run very much more at the local level than even at the state level. I graduated from a school district that had one high school, one middle school, and three elementary schools. Less than 2000 students in total. And it had its own authority to create its own curriculum. The Bush administration got something called "No Child Left Behind" passed, which, despite their avowed intention to reduce the size of government, butts the nose of the feds into every local school board in the country - just enough to cause chaos and cost local governments a lot of money to comply.
Interestingly, before the Civil War, the US was referred to as "these United States". After the war, it became "the United States". Subtle, but telling. The war was fought over states' rights, couched in terms of slavery. But the underlying issue was the rights of the states to do what they want to. Many people still adhere very strongly to that philosophy.
This is how the government take away control from people and communities. The creation-theory is bad but so is a Big Government London-based authoritarian Plutocracy where the population is practically powerless.
\When the US created a Dept. of Education on the federal level (was that under Carter?), the idea was to standardize a basic curriculum and have a national standard as far as achievement levels for each grade go. But it's gotten messy. And you need flexibility to some extent, so that counties with predominantly African-American students can have African American history taught to them in a meaningful way, for example. I now African -American parents who said that having their kids forced to go to White schools didn't work out. The kids got taught White history, and Black history was just a token "Black history month". I think everyone should be taught everyone's history. But a national standard would likely favor the dominant ethnicity in the country.
I can't for the life of my remember his name but there was a Politician on TV around the time the student fee protests were taking place and he said, to paraphrase, "It doesn't matter if everyone descends on London to protest the cuts, we've reached a decision and won't be swayed". Which is my main issue with big centralised government in general, it's much harder to effect change.
We have Democratic voting, but that's about it. Some direct involvement and authority on trivial issues, like what colour the local buses are painted.
As for the issue at hand specifically, I'm not sure you can blame the model. Plenty of fundamentalist Muslim nations have standardised curriculum and teach similar. The issue is probably more about what's being taught rather than the model it's being taught under. Just hypothetically, if America standardised education across the nation and removed creation-theory teachings from schools, how would the States, Cities and towns react where there's massive support for Creationism? You'd probably see protests and people outright withdrawing their Children from Schools and denying them an education.
I really don't think the localised government model can be blamed though. That's just my opinion, and I'm absolutely against creation theory quasi-science.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/145286/Four-Americans-Believe-Strict-Creationism.aspx
its a bit scary :hair:
The question do you believe God created humans in their present form about 10,000 years ago ?
had a response of 40% yes overall
and 22% postgraduates
and 37% college students
believed this as well
I'll be honest it sounds bad
:hair:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4648598.stm
Over 2,000 participants took part in the survey, and were asked what best described their view of the origin and development of life:
22% chose creationism
17% opted for intelligent design
48% selected evolution theory
and the rest did not know.
OK, so the results for the UK are very similar: if you add the creationism bunch to the intelligent design group, you get a total of 39%, one percentage point short of the US' 40%.
Plus add the American polls, Humans evolved with God guiding + God created humans as is 10,000 years ago and you get 78% who believe in that poll, whereas in the UK's poll it was 39% for intelligent design and creationism.
:rolleyes:
Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted Dec. 10-12, 2010, with a random sample of 1,019 adults, aged 18 and older, living in the continental U.S., selected using random-digit-dial sampling.
For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points.
Interviews are conducted with respondents on landline telephones (for respondents with a landline telephone) and cellular phones (for respondents who are cell phone-only). Each sample includes a minimum quota of 150 cell phone-only respondents and 850 landline respondents, with additional minimum quotas among landline respondents for gender within region. Landline respondents are chosen at random within each household on the basis of which member had the most recent birthday.
Samples are weighted by gender, age, race, education, region, and phone lines. Demographic weighting targets are based on the March 2009 Current Population Survey figures for the aged 18 and older non-institutionalized population living in continental U.S. telephone households. All reported margins of sampling error include the computed design effects for weighting and sample design.
In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.
It is difficult for to say which is the best route.
It seems logical to have a national policy. But, that constricts the development of different models which may improve education overall. For example -- and since I retired as a school principal in Virginia over 3 years ago, things may have changed -- but for quite a while one of the most respected testing programs in the nation was that of Maryland, where they designed standardized tests that were not as fact-based, but got into things such as concepts and critical thinking. That spurred Virginia to begin modifying some of its testing protocols.
And, having grown up in a liberal state (NYS), but having settled in a relatively conservative state (Virginia), it does seem as if there should be regional differences in educational programs. Yes, facts are facts, but all that needs to be learned is not mere facts.
Although a graduate of Liberty, we once fired a drama teacher who -- despite repeated warnings -- would lecture girls about going to hell because of their apparel.