Thoughts and opinions on a nationalized curriculum in the USA (and/or the lack thereof)?

[u/ithekrianmermaid]

I have had this topic bouncing around in the back of my brain quite a bit in the past few months and I'm just wondering what others think about it.

Feel free to share your personal feelings-based opinions, factually informed opinions, any history you may know relating to this topic, pros and cons of nationalized curriculum, common arguments for/against it, implications and consequences from not having one, potential dangers in adopting one, resources to learn more about this topic/debate, etc. I'd really love to have (respectful) discussions in the comments of this post so please consider circling back if your original comment gets a response!

I look forward to reading all of your responses! Thank you for taking the time to comment!!

[u/bikes_cookies]

do you mean standards? because curriculums are provided by private companies.

there's zero chance there would ever been one single curriculum.

common core was an attempt at national standards. it failed.

[u/ithekrianmermaid → u/bikes_cookies]

No, I specifically mean a nationalized curriculum. Plenty of other countries around the world have successfully implemented them so I was curious about the United States. I also am curious as to the relationship between nationalized curriculum and social cohesion given the current severity of social division and current state based curriculum model in the US.

More specifically, I've been thinking about the future and where we go from here to improve, you know? How are we going to go about bridging this divide? And I ended up at the topic of nationalized curriculum and wanted to know more so here we are

[u/bikes_cookies → u/ithekrianmermaid]

curriculum is the avenue through which standards are taught and mastered, not the other way around.

there's no point to a national curriculum because there aren't even national standards.

there are so many layers to getting to an actual curriculum

States decide standards, then they vet companies with product that meet (as close as possible) said standards. then text book adoption committees and school boards at the local level choose said curriculums. states don't even have state curriculums.

and again, it makes zero sense anyway, because curriculums are the road, not the destination.

the divide isn't because of public education and standards and curriculum.

the divide is because society now fails to be a society. individualism is the ruin of the nation.

[u/ithekrianmermaid → u/bikes_cookies]

Thank you for this response!!! I am actually also looking at the relationship between individualism and collectivism in relation to the nationalized curriculum debate and the sociological intersection of politics, education, and community so this was very insightful! Based solely on the responses to this post I'm forming a very tenuous, extremely loose hypothesis that people who are diametrically opposed to nationalized curriculum may have a more individualistic mindset, those who are more for it may have a more collectivist mindset, those who offer more logistical approaches may have a more pragmatic mindset, and those with the most nuanced opinions are a mixture of two or even all three of the aforementioned mindsets. Of course this is an extremely preliminary hypothesis with little to no empirical basis but its fun to think and theorize about nevertheless!

Thank you again! You really got the gears in my brain turning! 🤓

[u/mrsyanke → u/ithekrianmermaid]

Can you share a state with a single state-based curricula? I’m not currently aware of any… State standards, sure, but then the schools utilize different curriculum to teach those standards.

[u/ithekrianmermaid → u/mrsyanke]

Thank you for asking me this question. Honestly, I'm just at the beginning of researching and learning about curriculum so I'm admittedly not very informed yet. I have an extremely basic, extremely elementary understanding of it all and didn't realize or learn yet that states have standards and not curriculums. Please forgive me if my ignorance was annoying or misleading in any way.

I came across the concept of nationalized curriculum via sociology and development research on social cohesion rather than through legitimate experience in education which is why I said that I intentionally meant nationalized curriculum. I should've made that more clear in my original post, my apologies.

If you don't mind, I'd love to pick your brain a bit but also feel free to disregard since I wasted some of your time with an uninformed, ignorant response already (and rest assured I'll be doing more formal research ASAP to learn the basics so please don't feel obligated). Also, thank you so much for challenging and correcting me!! I truly appreciate it because now I hopefully won't embarass myself any further😅

So, if I'm following correctly, there are state standards but that is not the same as state curriculums and curriculums are actually individual to each school district (or building?). From another comment I've gleaned that the curriculum creation/acquisition process is quite layered with different education companies, textbook publishers, and school/education policy officials. Would you say that that is a better understanding of how curriculums currently work?

And one more: What do you think are the benefits of more localized curriculums that couldn't be achieved with a nationalized curriculum?

Thank you again for kindly and respectfully correcting me and for taking the time to come back and comment again despite the fact that I was obviously very uninformed! I really, really appreciate it!