SOCIOCULTURAL FOUNDATION OF CURRICULUM
Introduction:
Education from sociological
perspective, is a process of transmission of culture. Culture refers to the
total way of life of a society, its knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, values,
skills and behaviour patterns . Culture, to the sociologist, includes
everything that is learned and manmade.
Curriculum-planning is a very
complicated task. It is the hard fact that no society in the modern world, with
the exception of simple, pre-industrial societies, can lay claim to an
all-pervading homogeneous culture.
The story of sociological
foundations of curriculum, in brief, may be delineated with the following
headings –
1. Society and education – curriculum
while reflecting contemporary social forces should also be able to respond to
the dynamics of changes – local, national and global – and put emphasis on
local and global knowledge praxis of the day.
2. Social change and the curriculum –
must take cues from growth of technology and its impact on the learners in all
corners of their lives, changing order of structure of family and other basic
institutions, cultural diversity and cultural pluralism, etc.
3. Changing order of meaning of
learning and its relationship with the community living – learning to live
together, lifelong, learning, building social capital, empowerment, etc.
Two Examples of Social Linage to
Curriculum Development :
1. Curriculum as praxis
Curriculum as praxis is, in many
respects, a development of the process model. Critical pedagogy goes beyond
situating the learning experience within the experience of the learner : it is
a process which takes the experiences of both the learner and the teacher and,
through dialogue and negotiations, recognizes them both as problematic… [It]
allows, indeed encourages, students and teachers together to confront the real
problems of their existence and relationships… When students confront the real
problems of their existence they will soon also be faced with their own
oppression
Curriculum in context
One criticism of the above model is
that it does not place a strong enough emphasis upon context. This is a
criticism that can also be laid at the door of the other approaches. Curriculum
is contextually shaped. The emphasis on regimentation, on bells and time
management, and on streaming are sometimes seen as preparing young people for
the world of capitalist production. If we need to stay in touch with milieu as
we build curriculum then it is not hidden but becomes a central part of our
processes.
Some Main Sociological Issues in
Shaping Curriculum
For understanding this theme more
elaborately we shall learn about some other sociological issues in the next
sub-section.
The Case for a Common Curriculum
This is a prime concern in India.
Situation demands that national education and its curriculum be built on a
common Indian culture. At the same time, it should also take account of the
distinct cultural needs and demands of the different sections of the Indian
society.
Criticism of the Common Curriculum
The idea of deriving a common
curriculum from culture has come under severe criticism by some sociologists of
education in recent times. Prof. G. H.
Bantock, deriving
inspiration from T. S. Eliot sees culture as falling into
two categories – high and low. The high culture has an essentially academic,
literary tradition and the low culture has an essentially folk or non-literary
tradition
These criticism draw our attention to the fact the –
question in actual fact is not whether we should have a common curriculum but
how to conceive of a curriculum that suits different individual needs and
abilities, that will preserve the identities of different cultural groups, and
at the same time promote a sense of unity among them. .
Equality of Cultures :
A different kind of criticism on the
common curriculum takes the form that one subculture or culture is as good (or
as bad) as any other. As Shukla points out, it is problematic to provide
school-college culture supportive of the hitherto underprivileged, or to
promote in college the knowledge and skills at which they can be more adept.
Even more problematic is the relation of such skills and knowledge to the
economy or to the knowledge system as it obtains in society.
Social Class and Curriculum
That school curriculum represents
class-free, non-controversial fund of knowledge that is good for all children
that have come under the fold of the school has till recently been taken for
granted. Early sociological research on educational opportunity certainly treated
as unproblematic the concept of “what it is to be educated” . Of late, however,
school curriculum has become the target of severe criticism in the context of
the ideals of social justice and equalization of opportunity, the charge
against it being that it is invariably conceived in narrow middle class terms
and therefore acts against the interests of the children coming from
impoverished lower socio-economic classes.
Social Learning
How the social factors affect the
school achievement unfavorably of children, especially of the unskilled working
classes – have been brought out by many studies. The most well known of these
is Basil Bernstein‟s work in social learning. Bernstein‟s main finding was that
since a child learns his social structure through its language, spoken language
powerfully conditions what is learned and how it is learned and so influences
his future learning.
Naturally, middle class child,
Bernstein points out, is capable of responding to, manipulating, and
understanding a public language that is structured to mediate relatively
explicitly individualized qualifications, as a result of his socio-cultural
environment.
The Sociology of Knowledge
Education is essentially concerned
with the transmission of knowledge. Hitherto it was taken for granted that
knowledge which the school sought to transmit through its curriculum
– the sciences, arts, history, mathematics and such other
disciplines – derived their validity form purely epistemological considerations
and had nothing to do with social factors
Knowledge can be viewed as “socially
constructed as sets of shared meanings” representative of the dominant power
structure of society.There is a dialectical relationship between the overt and
covert knowledge” taught in schools, the principles of selection and
organization of that knowledge and the criteria and modes of evaluation used to
„measure success‟ in teaching
Sociology of knowledge alone cannot
decide curriculum issues. It simply cannot be that the only reasons for
labeling knowledge as high status or low status are social; for there might be
other good reasons for the division of knowledge. It cannot also be that
subject disciplines ate merely social constructs. If it is true that school
subjects at present hinder the learning of some pupils, the solution may lie in
the recognization of the teaching of those subjects.
PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDATION OF CURRICULUM
TECHNOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS OF CURRICULUM
PSYCHOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS OF CURRICULUM
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