Some Remarks Concerning A Content Curriculum: Interest or Foundation?

 By content curriculum I always mean: information about the world. In school this information is generally referred to as “subjects.” Using the word “foundation” refers to the reality that it is not necessary to learn everything about a subject in order to gain an understanding of what that topic is. “Foundation” refers to the further reality that it is necessary to know something about a topic before knowing whether or not that topic could be of interest. Finding a topic interesting does not necessarily mean an eventual professional interest. It means that the topic is part of the world in which we all live and that the world is interesting in and of itself.

The teacher is not a kind of god living on a different plane enabling him or her to discern each child’s talents and potential thus determine what is of interest for each student. The teacher, and here I speak specifically of the elementary level, is there to provide a common curriculum, information that the children have not yet discovered, and to do it in such a way that as children advance in their schooling they develop enough self-knowledge to discern for themselves their potential and specific talents. The teacher teaches, that is, provides the information; the children are responsible for their own education. (Two comments: Teaching is not as simple as that statement makes it sound. Children do need to learn how to be responsible; it is part of the information teachers—and parents—need to provide.)

The “information about the world” that makes up the foundation covers every traditional “subject,” in both the math/science and the humanist realms. They are all part of the world and all people who live in society (as well as society itself) benefit from acquiring the basic information that can be provided to students from age five or six to age eleven or twelve.  This basic schooling is not meant to create specialists or future professionals, but instead generalists who recognize what they know and what they do not know.

There is a point beyond the elementary level at which schooling begins to broaden and deepen the information provided. At this point the curriculum starts to be differentiated; individualization begins once students know enough about all that there is to learn! Only then can individual interests become clearer. (Of course, a few children do have talents that dominate from an early age. They still need to learn about other things that exist in the world. Most, however, benefit from that broad foundation to better discern their leanings.)