My Boarding School Blog

What is a public school curriculum?

The curriculum is an authoritative prescription for the course of study of a school or system of schools. In their traditional form, such prescriptions set out the content to be covered at a grade level or in a course or sequences of courses, along with recommended or prescribed methods of teaching. In their contemporary form such prescriptions have been re-presented as national and state standards, outlining outcomes to be achieved by schools without prescribing the specific bodies of content to be covered or methods of teaching to be used.

However, most scholars who evaluate these curricula do not believe that direct the work of schools in significant ways. Curricula-as-documents are more often than not developed after the fact, and are based on existing practices of teachers or a simple listing of the content of textbooks being used. Further, many teachers are not familiar with the curriculum their district has mandated.