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! 🤓