Scripted Curriculum Is Evil

October 13

At one point, I could not think past classroom management problems and learning student names. As I reflect now, I can appreciate how, early in my teaching career, I was reminded that I am at the bottom of a very extensive hierarchy. In Education class, the readings and discussions illuminate just how entrenched school policy-making is, starting from the state government and filtering down to school boards and superintendents, finally, to me. In my case, I am expected to teach a curriculum that someone above me in the hierarchy decided was best for high school English students.

I know very little about the school board that affects my district. I do not know who wrote the scripted curriculum for my 9^th and 12^th graders. But according to one of my readings
(Provenzo 2002), school boards tend to be relatively conservative, “reflecting the status quo and the power blocks in their communities.” Then I am inherently skeptical about the curriculum I received. The 9^th grade expository unit is based on the book A Night To Remember – a non-fiction account of the final hours before the Titanic sank. The author Walter Lord interviewed hundreds of people to get multiple perspectives. Of the over two hundred people that Lord names in excruciating detail, not one character is a minority. Not one character is someone my students can remotely relate to. My students do not reflect the “status quo.”

I agree that the fast pace of technology growth and the racial diversity of our students make dealing with difference and change imperative for teachers. Nevertheless, scripted curriculum seems to say that teachers need not worry about difference or change. Here, marginalized to a 2-inch binder with unit tabs, is a curriculum that will satisfy all the needs of every student. Teach this exactly and watch their scores rise, they seem to say.

A month into teaching I went back to Beaudry St. to update my university intern credential. I was waiting in a conference room on the 15^th floor, looking out over downtown Los Angeles. I can see my high school two blocks away. It was built two years ago to relieve Belmont High, what used to be the biggest high school in the nation in student population. I am again reminded of all the people who welcomed me to the big bureaucracy – the red tape and inefficiency. The view from the 15^th floor confirms this negative connotation. Scanning a few blocks south from my high school, I see the “new” Belmont High School. This building was supposed to open in 1999 – the first wave of new schools to relieve the overcrowding “old” Belmont High. The building is still not done. A few blocks west, Belmont High still suffers from a lack of teachers, facilities, and resources. Rumors say that the “new” Belmont will open in 2008, almost ten years after is should have been finished. I only hope that the construction fences soon disappear along with the red tape that surrounds the school.