Curriculum

In the first published textbook on “Curriculum” in 1918, John Franklin Bobbitt noted that the idea of curriculum has its roots in the Latin word for a race-course, and explained curriculum as the course of deeds and experiences in which children become the adults that they should be, for success in adult society. He explained, further, that curriculum must be understood as encompassing not only those experiences that take place within schools, but the entire scope of formative experience both within and outside of schools. Further, this includes experiences that are not planned or directed, as well as experiences that are intentionally directed (in or out of school) for the purposeful formation of adult members of society. (See image at right.)

Bobbitt saw curriculum as an arena for social engineering. His formulation suffers from at least two serious problems: 1) He assumed that "scientific" experts would be qualified and justified in designing curricula based on expert knowledge of what qualities are desirable in adult members of society, and what experiences would produce those qualities; and (2) in his definition of curriculum as the experiences that someone ought to have in order to become the kind of adult that they ought to become, he was defining curriculum as an ideal, rather than as the reality of whatever course of experience in actuality forms people as they do actually take form.

Contemporary views of curriculum would reject these features of Bobbitt's material, but they retain the basic notion of curriculum as the course of experience in which human being takes form. Moreover, the formation of human being through curriculum is studied not only at the level of the individual person, but also at the level of groups, cultures, and societies (as, for example, in the formation of a profession or an academic discipline through the course of its historical experience). The formation of a group is seen as taking place reciprocally with the formation of its individual participants.

Although it appeared formally in Bobbitt's definition, the notion of curriculum as the course of formative experience is also pervasive in the work of John Dewey (who seriously disagreed with Bobbitt on important issues), in Dewey's work on education spanning decades before and after Bobbitt's work. Although this understanding of "curriculum" may be different from some common uses of the word, it continues to be shared as a common understanding among curriculum professionals and researchers who take conflicting positions on a variety of other issues.