Leads in Curriculum Building

There was a child went forth every day,

And the first object that he look'd upon, that object
he became,

And that object became part of him for the day or a

certain part of the day,

Or for many years or stretching cycles of years.1

HOW ARE CURRICULUMS built to fit children's ways of life in different places? Teacher and pupils work side by side. The teacher is the master builder. If her knowledge and training have prepared her as they should, she has three kinds of abilities. First, she can understand children. Second, she knows how to study and understand their environment. Third, she is familiar with many types of learning materials and knows how to select those which are of real use to the boys and girls.

The chief purpose of this chapter is to suggest leads that might give rise to desirable experiences for the children. Development of such experiences is for the most part left to the teacher.

Leads to Curriculum Are Found

in Children's Personal Needs

Children's personal needs are similar, but they are met in different ways. Modern curriculum experiences, functional or academic, take into account the physical and emotional differences of boys and girls along with the environment and its resources.

All children have certain physical and emotional requirements. They require freedom from sickness, wholesome growth, balanced functioning of the bodily organs. They must have emotional balance to keep them in good health. If the soil of a region is impoverished, the food plants it raises have less of the life-giving qualities needed for human development. If the drinking water has too little fluorine, the teeth of the children who drink it may be poor. If the water of a place lacks iodine, the people who live there may have an emotional imbalance to be compensated for.

1 Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass. Philadelphia, David McKay, 1900.

Every child wants recognition as a person. Inside himself he wishes to have what he does approved by the other children. He must feel that his playmates like him. He should understand that he is valued by his parents and by his brothers and sisters. More than that, he should be able to feel that his family has recognition in the neighborhood or community. Knowing that the culture into which he and his family were born is valuable in the world's group of cultures helps give him confidence. Isolation, wealth or poverty, home ownership, occupation, education, race, region, nationality, are all factors in his social and cultural status, and should be compensated for or recognized.

Every child should have a feeling of security. Feeling that he belongs to his group and will be loved no matter what happens helps him feel secure. There should be someone with whom he can discuss his problems. In solving them he should have the kind of guidance that takes into consideration the community and home as well as the child himself.

But although all boys and girls have such common requirements for well-balanced personalities, the requirements must be met in different ways. How can each child's learning experiences be so selected and organized that through them these personal requirements are met in the place where he lives? Suitable relationships among pupils, teachers, and parents in whatever experiences are selected are sometimes the answer. But there are personal requirements which can be handled by wise selection of activities in the curriculum.

Isabel is unhappy and sensitive because her family is one of the Spanish-speaking families in the community with many of the home ways of the Spanish-American culture. Isabel feels that she is rejected and her family rejected by the other children because their ways are "different." It is the problem of the school to help Isabel appreciate her parents' culture in order that she may not have her security in her home threatened. At the same time she needs to learn American ways in order that she may be accepted by the other children. In the curriculum activities connected with home improvement Isabel may find help in her difficulties.

In a junior high school where many of the children are of Italian parents, Italian children were given status through their contributions of Italian recipes and food to the school lunch. In the California school referred to on page 51 the contributions of the Mexican families' ancestors to California history was the appreciation point.

In helping children find solutions to their problems with respect to social recognition, a school in St. Petersburg, Fla., the past year provided practical instruction in good manners. In the primary and intermediate grades rules of etiquette were worked out by committees of teachers and children for the situations which were characteristic of the school and community. The rules were grouped into a series of 10 "lessons." Every 2 weeks one of the lessons was dramatized as part of a program for general assembly. The series included:

Manners in the homes

Correct ways of receiving guests
in school and home

Table manners

Good manners every day
Manners in public

Each lesson was mimeographed. The children were encouraged to take it home. Parents thus had opportunity to add emphasis or help the children to gain experience in good manners at home. Results were gratifying. Children had fun in learning and practicing everyday courtesies.

Sometimes it is hard to know what the individual problems of children are in the home and communities where they live. But until a teacher does know this, she cannot provide each child with the curriculum activities which help him. Often cooperative study helps.

The staff of the Moore Avenue Elementary School, Chatham County, Ga., for example, became especially concerned last year about their need for a wider understanding of the way their children develop. The staff, parents, and supervisors organized study groups for a 3-year study of the children in their charge.

The problem chosen for study was: Is there wide enough range of choices of experiences here to meet the learning requirements of every child? Their goals were: (1) A growing understanding of the child as an individual, his interest, needs, desires, physical growth, mental ability, and emotional status; (2) cooperation of parents, teachers, and children in the school program-a friendly school; and (3) an environment in which children may grow and develop and are encouraged in the amount and nature of their progress.

Guideposts Are Found in Community Life

In the community outside the school as well as in the classroom the teacher will find leads for children's curriculum activities. There are resources and problems in the community's culture and environment. Parents can make contributions to the children's

experiences. Art, handicrafts, industries, public services, stores, and other resources of the people can be drawn into the curriculum. In the words of a recent article on the subject:

"The purpose of regional emphasis in education is not to erect regional barriers of any kind. The purpose is to deepen the children's understanding about the things close at hand."

Corresponding matters for the Nation or the world at large will result in the same order of learning when the situation demands them.

Resources and Problems in the Environment

Leads to real-life activities are often found in the culture, the mingling of cultures, and in the nature of the economic resources of the environment. A teacher must know her community in order to be aware of many forces that are helping to shape the lives of her children. Following are examples of studies that have a bearing on curriculum activities:

The basic culture.-Teachers study the community and its cultural background and ways of living before they begin working with the children to find practical bases for curriculum activities.

Lorene K. Fox, for example, studied the early settlement and later growth of a New York State community. In her report, she introduced the community as:

"A people as diverse as their histories . . . and as homogeneous as the experiences, problems and outlooks which have tended to hold them together."3

Dr. Fox describes beginnings of the community, the satisfaction with which the people got their titles to their land, their pride in farm ownership, the way the early schools met the children's needs for education in their day, the present need for a functional curriculum in elementary and high schools of the county.

"The ways of making a livelihood should provide the structural base for much of the school curriculum. Agricultural occupations, and the ways in which they are related to wider forces and events, tend still to set the conditions and possibilities for rural patterns of living in this area."

Dr. Fox suggests the development of curriculum activities to meet the needs of boys and girls in Chautauqua County. She describes the kind of program in which such activities will be developed.

2 Hunkins, R. V. The Need for Regional Instruction Materials, Elementary School Journal, 43: 398-403, March 1943.

3 Fox, Lorene K. The Rural Community and Its School. Kings Crown Press, 1948.

233 p.

Morningside Heights, N. Y.

In other instances, curriculum specialists write about the people of the Southwest-Arizona, western Colorado, Utah, and New Mexico. They look first at the local communities, their natural resources, their history, the national and cultural background of the people. Julia Tappan and Ann Raymond write:

The Southwest is a land where the delicate balance of water, soil, vegetation, and climate require understanding; a land where teamwork is necessary for survival, for no individual can control or develop his own resources alone; a land where severe pressure has been and is being placed on its resources-increasing population, lack of outside labor markets, depletion of natural resources.

All children of this land, in city or country, are aware of their surroundings. Towering peaks are not far from the cities; bridges cross great sandy river beds which ever so often become boiling, muddy rivers; irrigation ditches are familiar to all; torrential downpours are rare but too fierce to ignore.

The struggle for survival, the dependence on sun and rain, cold and heat, good grass or no grass, and water, is not far from the consciousness of everyone. Conservation of human life, conservation of our resources for livelihood is a natural part of education."

And so when country children (and certain city groups as well) in the region referred to study ways of making their communities better places to live in, it is with the problems of living in such an environment that the work of improvement has to begin.

The mingling of cultures.-In a California community a public school was recently faced with a problem of absorbing for the first time some 50 to 60 children of Spanish language and culture from a school that had previously been segregated. Here the teachers had a twofold problem. First, each teacher tried to have every newcomer feel that he had something of value to give to the school. Second, she helped the English-speaking children to appreciate the contribution made by the Spanish-speaking boy or girl.

One of the things which helped to unify the two groups was a study of the way California grew up. It was planned to begin with the home-community. The original El Camino Real Trail was the site of the village. This concrete connection with the early history of California provided the opportunity which the incoming pupils needed for making a unique contribution. The children all sensed the important relationship of these Spanishspeaking boys and girls to their ancestors in early California and Mexico. A cooperative study was carried on with enthusiasm for

In

Tappan, Julia B., and Raymond, Anne. Young Southwestern Conservationists. Conservation Education in Rural Schools. Yearbook 1943, The Department of Rural Education, National Education Association of the United States. Washington, D. C. The Association, 1943.

p. 54.