Damicka Bates
Educ 301
1/15/09
As I was reading through the Ohio Academic Content Standards K-12 Science booklet, one thing stood out to me and that was how neatly structured everything was. Now, I don’t want to be mistaken with acknowledging that most books are not written in that format. However, what I am referring to is how carefully worded the entire booklet was. It was very “professionally” presented to the reader. The first thing I wanted to do was see the people who were involved in completing this curriculum. Just as I was told, the people who helped create the curriculum and standards were a team of teachers, professors, or businessmen. As I read further along I noticed that each grade level was carefully broken down to the exact things that each student should know by the end of that particular year. When I saw this it reminded me of something that I read in McKernan’s book. McKernan states that “Curriculum cannot be systematically broken down into objectives because this is destructive to the epistemology of the subject knowledge” (p. 74). It wasn’t until I actually begin reading the standards that I actually understood what McKernan was really talking about. How can one justify what particular objectives to teach within a specific content area that has the potential of being taught way beyond its true intent? How can the people who create this curriculum pick and choose what is important and what is not important? Are they limiting the learning possibilities of students? McKernan said it best when he states “The filtering of knowledge through the use of objectives sets up artificial parameters and limits the speculation of student and teacher by defining boundaries of fields of knowledge”(p. 75). My perspective of this is that setting standards that require teachers to stay on a pacing guide completely take away the chance to provide students with the opportunity to engage in a higher order of thinking. I have a daughter that is in the second grade at Stewart Elementary. She has been labeled gifted in Math, Social Studies and Reading. Although she has been labeled she continues to stay in the same classroom setting as her other classmates learning material that does not challenge her. After several meetings with her teacher, principal and gifted & talented (g&t) teacher the only answer they have is based on the curriculum set up for the second grade, there is no way they can provide her with anything differently but for extra work to supplement her work. The g&t teacher says she doesn’t have time to work with her because of the demands to meet the students who are labeled in reading. So, where does my daughter fall in line with the standards? Teachers are so busy teaching to the test that they miss those little opportunities to provide higher order thinking in those students who need it.
In furthering my discussion on the standards, I like when McKernan makes a point that “education is really an initiation of students into worthwhile activities" (p 82). Teachers must recognize that just throwing all kinds of things at students doesn’t really give them a true understanding of the content. It’s learning to apply those teachings to worthwhile experiences that really help a student love to learn. I think that more curriculum should be centered around the students needs more than just meeting the grade.
