On Curriculum Construction

At the present time the problem of curriculum construction is very much in the foreground. There is a widespread feeling that curriculum construction in the past was left almost wholly to tradition, guesswork, and individual bias. It was customary to announce certain lofty aims and then to lay down a curriculum that bore no discoverable relations to these aims. We now recognize this as bad form. As Bobbitt puts it: Objectives that are only vague, high-sounding hopes and aspirations are to be avoided. Examples are: 'character building,' the 'harmonious development of the individual,' 'social efficiency,' 'general discipline,' 'self-realization,' 'culture,' and the like. All of these are valid enough; but too cloud-like for guiding practical procedure. They belong to the visionary adolescence of our profession-not to its sober and somewhat disillusioned maturity (1924b, P-32). Adolescence, as we know, tends to take its responsibilities lightly. The objectives that used to be set up certainly have the appearance of being a kind of New Year resolutions, formulated in conformity with the spirit of the occasion but with no thought of taking them seriously. Our forefathers talked much of character formation and discipline, but did not consider it necessary to keep these high purposes in mind when they were occupied in drilling defenseless childhood in the forms of Latin syntax. In their actual teaching they were less concerned with general aims than with specific results. From the standpoint of certain modem educators their practice was wiser than their theory. A teacher of chemistry, as Thorndike says, thought vaguely of the general end of the teaching of science might well be doing far less to attain it than one who thought of the