Curriculum - Mainly Used by Teachers as a Tool

Curriculum has been and still mainly used by teachers as a tool to provide experience, interests and needs to learners and youth towards the maximum growth of their personalities and experiences, it sustains culture in terms of literature and with the help of good teaching and learning process situation is further transferred from generation to generation. This essay will focus on the concept “curriculum” together with the three main forms of curriculum namely: Intended, implemented (taught) and attained curriculum, it will further argue on who should control the South African curriculum (curriculum assessment policy statement). This will be seen firstly by outlining the definition and description of the term “curriculum”, secondly by breaking down the concept (curriculum) into its three main forms namely: intended, implement and attained curriculum and futher look at their strengths and weaknesses. Lastly it will give my argument on who should control the South African curriculum (curriculum assessment policy statement). To conclude I will summarize the whole content of this essay.

There is no general agreed upon the definition of the term “curriculum”, it can be described and be defined according to one understanding of how it works in the field of education. Curriculum is the series of syllabuses which children must experience by the way of developing abilities to master those syllabuses well that make up the affairs of adult life and to be in respect what adults should be. The study of (Su, 2012) describes curriculum “as a plan or a sort of blueprint for systematically implementing educational activities. This sense of the term combines content with instructional methods and hence has a wider scope than a former two curricular paradigm because of the inclusion of methods”, (p.154). Furthermore, curriculum can be described as all the planned, written syllabi that are taught inside classrooms where the teacher act as an instructor to the learners.

There are various curriculum designs under the central curriculum, but for the sake of this content, only the main three of them namely intended, implemented and attained curriculum will be discussed. The first type of curriculum is the intended curriculum, this is the formally planned curriculum. According to the study of (Goodson 1996) the intended curriculum is referred as the planned, written by experts (governments) with the help of subject teachers. In other words, it is the formal, documented syllabi with aims that are intended to be implement to the youth and children by the assistance of those teachers who keep the intended curriculum in action. This curriculum type is advantageous since it acts as a signpost to learners and teachers.

The second form of curriculum is the implement curriculum. It is said that this type of curriculum is one that is in action, in other words this is whereby teachers use different teaching methods to provide instructions, activities, to learners during teaching and learning processes within classrooms. According to Grathon (as cited in Bibao, 2008) the implemented curriculum is all about what is taught inside the school or a study programme for educational purposes. This cuuriculum form creates atmosphere to learners to enhance the planned curriculum.

The third form of curriculum is referred as the attained curriculum. This can be described as what the learner have learned already (Grathon, 2000). Particularly, in this curriculum the teacher can identify and recover gabs if necessary, upon the taught syllabus included in the intended curriculum. (p.4)

The question about who should control curriculum may be heard as a difficult question to answer, but if one knows how curriculum works in the field of study, it becomes easy to answer. I believe that teachers should control the South African curriculum (CAPS). The state can only assist teachers by distributing the materials that contain the curriculum content that will be controlled by the teachers and parents can only choose best schools that suits their children values, this creates freedom for teachers since they are in best position to determine what is good for their learners. In the book `Teacher` Professional Lives` by Forrest (2014). to let the teachers take over the curriculum creates freedom for teachers. However , teachers nowadays do more than just to teach, even writing a curriculum is what they are familiar with,  teachers buy and combine teaching materials for a lesson about four hours a day as part of the curriculum, this can make it even easy to take over the curriculum its self. According to (Forrest, 2014), within every school, teachers should decide what to teach and it’s a responsibility for them to ensure that the content they teach will benefits and provide the learners needs and interests within the society, country and even in the world, moreover, every school should have its own private curriculum decided and controlled by teachers because this will ensure that even if the governments swipe there will be no swipping version in the curriculum, hence the two sides of governments do not usually agree upon an official version, and that can lead  to the curriculum being affected over time. I argue that no government should gain control to the rest of history of the country, freedom should be provided to the people to empower them. According to (Booth, 2016) it is said that what children ought to want is a matter of teachers and parents, moreover, catholic social education states that  education and school are different things, therefore, a child is not only depended on school to gain knowledge but even the society can play a vital role, especially the teachers  since they are the ones who mould the child with most important needs and interests.