Curriculum Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4000 words

Curriculum - Essay Example Raising economic equalities and decreasing discrimination due to gender, race or creed, and the receding of conventionality in most of the societies worldwide, have encouraged the recent generations of children to seek not only lower education, but also higher and University education. Education has become a multi-facetted unending journey today without any limits or boundaries. Recently, there had been a vigorous change in the society, and the recent trend of globalisation with the booming media has increased these opportunities. Changed political perspectives, changes in the society, technological changes, shrinking of the world into a global village, desire to know more about the world, its arts and sciences have led even older people into the portals of learning with great results. The content of education has always been a matter of interest to thinkers. "Over 2000 years ago Plato was interested in what the leaders of an ideal state should be taught, and many philosophers and st atesmen since have pondered the educational problems of society," (Taylor, 1985, p.2). Aims and objectives of the curriculum are the beliefs that they would serve the purpose of active education by planning for it much in advance, before the real education starts. It motivates students and gives a clear picture about what they are going to learn, so that they can plan their studies fully. It also provides a target to be completed for the teachers. It is the plan for the entire year and it is the list of skills the student is going to attain at the end of the studies. Curriculum is bound with the very concept of education. Curricula are anyway artificial as they are man made and could be changed any time, though some teachers feel a great awe towards it. They serve a variety of purposes, like making the children aware of the world in which they live, and about the social changes, sciences, political revolutions and economic transformations and space travels etc. The young are systematically introduced to various branches of knowledge through the curriculum, because the y embody the beliefs about education. There are multiplicities of conceptions that keep shaping the education over the years and still continue to do so. It is an ongoing process, as the discoveries and knowledge continues to grow, curriculum keeps changing. "Concepts of learning also change over time; not only the validity of content, the demise of a subject area, the development of a new one, not only in terms of the rapidity with which content may expand or alter in certain disciplines, but in terms of what we know of learning as a process," (Skilbeck, 1984, p.18). Curriculum provides accountability and a way of comparing one with other curriculum. It also creates coherence to the subjects that are going to be taught, along with a systematic nature for the jumbled teaching. At higher classes, students can get more knowledge by studying in advance the rest of the curriculum, having known its contents. Its presence brings the education into a definite bracket so that all concerned are comfortably aware of its contents, examinations etc.