Suggestions to Update Curriculum
As mentioned in various readings this week, it is imperative that our educational system prepares our students to thrive in the 21st century. If they are to become contributing members of society who innovate and collaborate with others on a global scale, our curriculum must adjust to the changing demands of the world. We will fail students if we choose to ignore this truth and our nation will reap the consequences of lacking the human capital to compete globally.
This is an urgent matter which some researchers have begun to explore. For example, Jacobs (2010) suggests that states should consider creating schools with international themes, modeling practices of other high-performing countries, preparing teachers to become more global, using technology to collaborate, and making “world languages a core part of the curriculum from grades 3-12” (p. 122). Although these steps are comprehensive and provide realistic solutions, such huge transformations take time before they are normalized. Therefore, before expecting a massive curriculum shift to occur overnight, we must remember that there are stages to this process.
Much of the curriculum in schools are Euro and male centric with an occasional acknowledgement of minority holidays and heroes. Gorski (n.d.) outlines that we must eventually get to a point where we integrate cultures, enact structural reform, and become more socially active. Specifically, we should first tackle real cultural issues in our classrooms and transcend limiting a group of people to just a celebration (ex. Cinco de Mayo, St. Patrick’s Day, etc.). We could do this by tying diverse instructional material into the mainstream curriculum.
