How Curriculums Vary

Almost no child can escape his community. He may
not like his parents, or the neighbors, or the ways of
the world. He may groan under the processes of liv-
ing, and wish he were dead. But he goes on living,
and he goes on living in the community. The life of
the community flows about him, foul or pure; he
swims in it, drinks it, goes to sleep in it, and wakes to
the new day to find it still about him. He belongs to
it; it nourishes him, or starves him, or poisons him;
it gives him the substance of his life. And in the
long run it takes its toll of him, and all he is.1

MOST AMERICANS think that children of a democracy such as ours should have equal educational opportunities. From this belief may have come a practice which for a time defeated its own purpose. That was the practice of attempting to provide for all children the same or similar experiences in the curriculum. As research has helped people to understand children better as individuals, new ideas about curriculums are taking hold. Many teachers now try to provide the kind of learning experiences that are adapted to the varying needs of boys and girls in the community, neighborhood, or region where they live. The reports in this bulletin are grouped around areas or aspects of living including: Use and improvement of environment, health and nutrition, social and civic service and human understanding, and home and family living.

The four aspects of living do not cover the total curriculum. They are examples only, suggested by recent studies. Following are illustrations of ways in which curriculums vary within the four areas of living.

In Use and Improvement of the Environment

In some schools children early learn to take responsibility for making their environment a good place to live and work. Improvement of school and community are important curriculum tasks. 1 Hart, Joseph K. Adult Education. New York. Thomas Y. Crowell Co., p. 19.

School Surroundings

For 6 hours of the day the school is the children's home. The school is also the pupils' laboratory, recreation center, and civic service headquarters. For these purposes boys and girls learn to help improve their school environment and keep house and grounds attractive, appropriate to the community, and in order.

Helping to arrange a classroom is a child's experience.-Children should not be called upon to do the work of a janitor. Yet there are things about a school which can only be handled by those who use its facilities; that is, by the teacher and the pupils. A child learns to arrange the things he works with to best advantage through his own critical planning. A group of children learn cooperation through planning working arrangements together.

In the classroom are materials and equipment to be kept in order-bulletins, books, and magazines; materials, such as paper, paints, chalk, pencils; tools, such as hammer, nails, scissors, pliers; study equipment, such as microscopes, magnets, magnifying glass, jars, tubes, labels; aprons and smocks. Easels, extra chairs, boxes, shelves, and filing cases have to be put somewhere for convenient use. Collections of rocks, flowers, mosses, weeds, beetles, and other study materials of the environment are part of the school's equipment. Where should all these be placed in order to be of greatest benefit to all? Which are needed every day? Which should be stored when not in use? How long will this particular display be needed? The group will need a great deal of practice in answering such questions if they are to make the classroom an orderly place in which to live, work, and learn to the best advantage.

Boys and girls can have a part in arranging seating. What are the items they should consider first, such as safety, lighting, and other health precautions? How can they make the room most convenient for the things they need to do? Which groups need the quiet corner for special practice or help from the teacher on things that have been hard for them, such as reading skills, number facts, map work? Which groups or pupils today will need a long period in the library? How can it be arranged and what time is best? If parents or other patrons are coming to help today, what plans need be made for their comfort and convenience? These are some of the questions they should have opportunities to consider.

Screwed-down seats are offenders in too many classrooms. Children have to sit still too long in them. They cause the lighting to be poor for certain kinds of work. They prevent children from

seeing the other children during class discussion. Some schools find ways to get movable seats and desks when once they face the difficulty. These schools have made one of the first steps toward a better school program.

Even kindergartens vary.-Schools do not all have the same kind of kindergartens. Take one country school, an ungraded school, where one teacher has the opportunity of working with a group of children of many ages. In a city all the children might have to be separated into isolated grades. But in this country school the kindergarten was just a corner of the single big room. The teacher describes it thus:2

Our corner is a seven-by-nine activity space with adjustable seats forming one boundary, the walls making two, and the homemade sandtable the fourth.

This space, accommodating nine this year, is furnished with bookshelves, small table, and easel. A long table with nine small chairs is arranged just outside the corner.

A small blackboard hangs from two nails. Toys and some materials are brought from home. Jigsaw puzzles and pictures or rhymes that are within the experience of country children are provided.

Older pupils help initiate little ones into their school environment, tell them stories, see that each is constructively occupied. In turn, the older boys and girls have the learning experience which comes from working with the little ones. They feel the responsibility of starting the younger children correctly and so are motivated to be better and to do better work themselves. They gain in leadership ability as they try to help the little children.

Many people help. In a certain two-room school where the grounds were badly eroded, 4-H Club boys became interested in a better schoolyard. They wanted a ballground. Using their publications on science and conservation, the children studied the causes of erosion and ways of preventing it. They discussed some of the techniques of grading and leveling the slopes on the grounds. They invited the assistant county agent to talk with them about the use of kudzu in preventing erosion on their schoolground and to help in planting it. Several boys planted kudzu on the eroded spots near their homes and in their home yards.

A one-room school in the same State had a badly eroded ground. Ugly gullies and rain-washed banks made the yard useless and

2 Farrington, Catherine R. Rural Kindergarten. National Education Association Journal, 38: 506-507, October 1949.

Courtesy, Keene Teachers College, Keene, N. H.

unattractive. Here is what the teacher wrote:

The children and I discussed the unattractiveness of the rain-washed ground. We tried to think of ways of improving it. We asked the road commissioner to chart the schoolground for planting grass and shrubs. We asked the 4-H Club agent how to plan improvements we wanted to make. Eventually the boys, girls, 4-H Club agent, and I agreed on a plan and together we set out kudzu on the rolling part of the ground and planned for shrubs.

In a consolidated school in another State, one of the important curriculum activities one year was the transplanting of more than 125 native dogwood and redbud trees to the schoolground. For this job, science and nature study materials were useful. The teachers and pupils made a cooperative card catalog of the books and pamphlets available to them on the subject and a list of people in the community who might be willing to help them either with information or labor.

In a certain city schools the members of the Boys' Sixth Grade Civic Club worked hard to extend the usefulness of their museums. They chose their own school museum as a starting point. With the help of their teacher a committee of five boys was appointed to collect information related to certain exhibits and their usefulness, and to prepare speeches and reports to aid other grades in their use of the displays. They helped to keep the entire school informed about available material. They helped to spread information about museums in the city. They offered aid to other schools in the use of their own exhibits and in obtaining additional exhibits from other museums.

Schools that carried on the activities just described had different kinds of working situations. Through early establishing the habit of making their situation the best possible place in which to work, the boys and girls were gaining a skill that would add to their pleasures and efficiency in everyday tasks.

"Our Community”

How much "our community" can mean to the children! The boys and girls draw upon it for information and for materials of learning. They study the community's problems and try to do their part as citizens in making it a better place to live. And how different are communities, the uses children make of them in different places, the resources they have for education, the things children learn.

A day at the beach with second grade.-To learn more about that delicate little clam called the coquina, the second grade in a Florida city planned a trip to the beach.

"What is the best time to go?" was the first question that the children had to decide in planning.

The children noted that waters in the Gulf of Mexico are changing all the time. They advance higher and higher on the beach until high tide and then recede until the low tide point hours later, about 10 o'clock in the morning. Accordingly the children ar

3 Better Schools. 13, 1950. p. 3.

Cincinnati, Ohio, Cincinnati Public Schools. Weekly News Bulletin, Jan.