Talking heads regularly attack the curriculum, seemingly without understanding what a vestigial remnant of a prescriptivist curriculum it actually is - I remember a year or two ago a columnist complaining that the periodic table hadn't been included in that year's science curriculum as part of a piece decrying the fall of educational achievements. No-one actually involved with the curriculum would have been surprised by this as the science curriculum is such an abstracted document that even the word "Chemistry" probably hasn't appeared anywhere in it since the 1990s, let alone any more lesson-specific requirements.
I've always thought the modern curriculum is a bit of a strange beast, in that despite the fact that it doesn't actually exist, it is stil taught in classrooms throughout New Zealand. It's effectively an object that can only be viewed by the shadow it casts - the high-level official curriculum gives an abstract overview of this non-existent detailed curriculum; schools throughout the country teach it; and, probably most importantly, the end-of-year exams test everyone's knowledge of it, but no actual physical copy of this curriculum exists.
It's almost as if this detailed curriculum is folk wisdom handed from teacher to teacher and examiner to examiner. But while it is great that students are taught, for instance, various aspects of mathematical integration and are then examined on it, it is slightly bizarre that no official curriculum specifically requires this.
Talking heads regularly attack the curriculum, seemingly without understanding what a vestigial remnant of a prescriptivist curriculum it actually is - I remember a year or two ago a columnist complaining that the periodic table hadn't been included in that year's science curriculum as part of a piece decrying the fall of educational achievements. No-one actually involved with the curriculum would have been surprised by this as the science curriculum is such an abstracted document that even the word "Chemistry" probably hasn't appeared anywhere in it since the 1990s, let alone any more lesson-specific requirements.
I've always thought the modern curriculum is a bit of a strange beast, in that despite the fact that it doesn't actually exist, it is stil taught in classrooms throughout New Zealand. It's effectively an object that can only be viewed by the shadow it casts - the high-level official curriculum gives an abstract overview of this non-existent detailed curriculum; schools throughout the country teach it; and, probably most importantly, the end-of-year exams test everyone's knowledge of it, but no actual physical copy of this curriculum exists.
It's almost as if this detailed curriculum is folk wisdom handed from teacher to teacher and examiner to examiner. But while it is great that students are taught, for instance, various aspects of mathematical integration and are then examined on it, it is slightly bizarre that no official curriculum specifically requires this.