Socio-cultural Foundation of Curriculum

The society and culture exercise massive powers on the formation of curriculum and the
reason behind that it was society who created schooling to safeguard the survival of their cultural
heritage, and survival of their species. (M. Print, 1993) Sociological factors have big impact in
making the curriculum, and so the content is mostly all about traditional norms, ethics,
philosophies, knowledge and attitudes in the objectives of the curriculum. Curriculum designers
were inspired by the social and cultural that affected them consciously and unconsciously. These
are apparent from the curriculum and so the students and teachers will have deep influence.

The society manifest through the curriculum and education, and the outcomes of
curriculum developers display the role of the above in curriculum development. The cultural
standards, attitudes and beliefs of the curriculum developers leave deep impact on the individuals
because they are the one who selects the teaching learning method, subject matter and objectives.

In this paper, it will further discuss how society and culture affected the curriculum
foundation. It will also explain why you need to know the socio-cultural foundation of
curriculum. All readings in the following pages are from the 7th edition book of Allan C.
Ornstein that was entitled “Curriculum: foundations, principles, and issues”.

Readings

Society, Education, and Schooling

Education can be used for constructive or destructive ends, to promote one type of
political institution, or ism or another. The kind of education our young receive determines the
extent of freedom and equality within our society. The transmission of culture is the primary task
of society's educational system. Society's values, beliefs, and norms are maintained and passed to
the next generation.

For Dewey, education perpetuates and improves society by properly organizing learner's
experiences. It is "a primary responsibility of educators to be aware of the general principle of
the shaping of actual experiences by environing conditions" and to understand "what
surroundings are conducive to having experiences that lead to growth." And also for Dewey,
experience must be channeled properly, "for it influences the formation of attitudes of desire and
purpose.” It is up to educators, particularly those in charge of subject matter, to judge which
content and activities (what Dewey calls experiences) enhance individual personal and social
growth and improve society, and which do not (those he calls miseducative).

Society without schools educates its young through the family or special ritual and
training. "Schooling plays a major role in education in modern industrial"; it becomes more
important as societies become "more complex and as the frontiers od knowledge expand.
Nontechnological societies are almost proficient over the whole range of knowledge necessary
for survival." In technological societies, "people acquire different proficiencies and abilities; no
individual can range over the entire body of complex knowledge or expect to be proficient in all
areas of learning."

In traditional and illiterate societies, education is processed through ceremonies, rituals,

stories, observation and emulation of older adults, and strictly enforced codes of conduct and
behavior. In modern and technological societies, the educational process starts at home, but
"school takes on greater importance as the child becomes older." The school is a vital institution
"for helping the young acquire systematic knowledge," inculcating them with the proper attitudes
and values, and "bonding the gap between generation." In contemporary society, the mass media
also play a major role in processing knowledge and "redefining values and ideas."

Society and Modal Personality

When Social scientists speak of modal personality, they do not mean that all members of
a particular society are exactly alike. Ruth Benedict wrote, "No culture yet observed has been
able to eradicate the differences in temperament of the persons who composed it." But the shared
experiences temper individual differences so that individuals behave in similar ways. And also
according to Benedict, society's norms govern interpersonal relations and produce a modal
personality-the attitudes, feelings, and behavior patterns most members of a society share.

Social and Developmental Theories

Developmental theories address the cumulative effects of change that occur as a

consequence of learning of failing to learn appropriate tasks during the critical stages of life.
Failure to learn a task at a given stage of development tends to have detrimental effects on the
developmental sequence that follows.

Developments proceed through a rather fixed sequence of relatively continuous stages,

and it is assumed that maturation and appropriate societal experiences are necessary to move the
individual from stage to stage. Shifts from one stage to the next stage are based not only on age
but also on variations in the amount and quality of social experiences an individual accumulates
over long periods.

Robert Havighurts identified six periods in human development: (1) early childhood, (2)
middle childhood, (3) adolescence, (4) early adulthood, (5) middle age, and (6) late maturity.
Developmental tasks are defined as "the tasks that individual must learn" for purposes of
"healthy and satisfactory growth in our society."

1. Early Childhood

a. Forming concepts and learning language to describe social and physical reality

b. Getting ready to read

c. Learning to distinguish right from wrong and beginning to develop conscience

2. Middle childhood

a. Learning physical skills necessary for ordinary games

b. Building wholesome attitudes about self

c. Learning to get along with peers

d. Learning appropriate male and female roles

e. Developing fundamentals skills in reading, writing, and mathematics

f. Developing concepts for everyday living

g. Developing morality and a set of values

h. Achieving personal independence

 i. Developing (democratic) attitudes toward social groups and institutions

3. Adolescence

a. Achieving new and more mature relations with peers of both sexes

b. Achieving a masculine or feminine social role

c. Achieving one's physique and using the body effectively

d. Achieving emotional independence from parents and other adults

e. Preparing for a career

f. Acquiring a set of values and an ethical system to guide behavior

h. Achieving socially responsible behavior

This will recognized the need for a developmental approach to teaching, learning, planning, and
implementing the curriculum.

Moral conduct and Controversy

Schools should be sensitive to students of all racial, ethnic, and religious groups.
Similarly, people's genders, sexual preferences, or disabilities should not elicit discrimination.
According to Philip Phenix, the most important sources of moral knowledge are society's laws
and customs, which can be taught in courses dealing with law, ethics, and sociology. However,
moral conduct cannot be taught; rather, it is learned by "participating in everyday life of society
according to recognized standards of society" (10 Commandments or Golden Rule).
Existentialist educators such as Maxine Greene and Van Cleve Morris view morality as beyond
cognitive processes, akin to social-psychological process such as personal sensitivity, feelings,
openness to others, and aesthetic awareness. One is free, but freedom is essentially an inner
matter involving responsibility and choice. Freedom, responsibility, and choice involve mortal
judgments and are related to social standards and personal beliefs.

Moral Teaching
 Philip Phenix stated, the content of moral knowledge covers five main areas: (1) human
rights, involving conditions of life that ought to prevail; (2) ethics, concerning family relations
and sex; (3) social relationships, dealing with class, racial, ethnic, and religious groups; (4)
economic life, involving wealth and poverty; and (5) political life, involving justice, equity, and
power. In general, the courses' content deals with moral and social issues; ideas regarding how to
live; elegant, witty, and weighty thoughts; and dilemmas that help us understand ourselves, our
society, our universe, and our realities. By engaging in purposeful discussion, agreeing and
disagreeing with the ideas expressed, synthesizing and building on ideas through conversation
and consensus, questioning and testing arguments, and using evidence to bolster opinions,
students can gain insight into making personal choices. The readings and discussions should also
help students accept responsibility for their behavior and appreciate the religious and political
freedom and economic opportunities that exist. The idea is to respect and promote human rights
and social justice among all people and nations, as well as to attain a global perspective and
appreciation of different people, cultures, and nations.

Moral Character

Moral character involves attitudes and behavior that result from stages of growth,
distinctive qualities of personality, and experiences. This cannot be taught by one teacher; rather,
it involves the leadership of the principal and takes a concerted effort by the entire school,
cooperation among critical mass of supervisors and teachers within the school, and nurturing of
children and youths over many years. According to Ted and Nancy Sizer, teachers must address
things that threaten students' self-concept and self-esteem. They must deal with issues of inequity
and social injustice while promoting cooperative behaviors and intergroup relations among
children and youths.

The Sizers want teachers to "grapple" with ideas; "dig deep"' ask why things are so, what
evidence there is, what thoughts and actions mean. They hope that teachers will stop "bluffing,"
that is, taking shortcuts in their preparation, homework, testing, or other evaluation practices.
And they also hope that schools will reduce the "sorting" practice in ways that sometimes
correspond with social (class or caste) groupings. Although some sorting of students is
necessary, it should be flexible enough to respect students' and parents' wishes and to avoid
stereotyping.
Culture of the school

Each school reflects the culture of the larger society (namely, middle-class values,
beliefs, and norms), it also has its own culture-its own way of thinking and behaving that it
reinforces and rewards. Some schools emphasize highly traditional goals and "essential"
subjects, and other schools may be more progressive, emphasize student participation, and
encourage music and art. In many rural and suburban schools, sport dominate student activities,
in another school, however, the emphasis may be on community service and intramural sports,
and in creative and in creative and innovative areas of the country, the school may be organized
around the internet or wi-fi usage.

Conformity in Class

Students are told when and where to sit, when to stand, how to walk through hallways,
when they can have in the cafeteria, and when and how to line up and exit the school at the end
of the day. Willard Waller described it as a contest between adult and youth cultures in which the
teacher, in order to protect his or her own authority, had to win. Charles Silberman also
described it as a useful learning experience for students-"a necessary aspect of learning to live in
society." But he warned that teachers and schools sometimes translate this "virtue into a fault by
excluding the child's interest altogether." One way students cope is they live in two worlds-one
with peers and the other with adults. Teachers learn to cope with and control their students;
students learn similar strategies for dealing with their teachers.

Coping and Caring

Negative stimuli have a much greater impact than positive stimuli on all people. A
teacher can turn a student into a vegetable in a few days, but it takes many years to make a
doctor, lawyer, or CEO. Hostile teachers can change a child's behavior in a matter of weeks
through comments, gestures, and other body language, turning a young motivated student into an
unmotivated and self-doubting student who exhibits frustration, bites his or her nails, has temper
tantrums at home, and no longer likes going to school. The younger the child, the easier it is for a
teacher's negativism to influence his or her behavior.
 Schools are not doing a good job developing students' motivation or giving them
autonomy to direct their own learning. Reformers are more focused on what of learning, rather
than why, as stated by motivation expert Daniel Pink. This expert argued for schools to bring the
sense of purpose to learning and create conditions in which students can tap into their own
motivation.

Culture of the classroom

John Goodlad and his colleagues describe the following widespread patterns: The classroom is
generally organized as a group that the teacher treats as a whole. The teacher is the dominant
figure in the classroom and makes virtually all the decisions regarding instructional activities.
“Enthusiasm and joy and anger are kept under control." As a result, the general emotional tone is
"flat" or "neutral." Most student work involves "listening to teachers, answering the teacher, or
writing answers to questions and taking tests and quizzes."

Peer group

Peers are equals in a way that parents and their children (or teachers and their students) are not.
A parent or teacher can pressure and sometimes force young children conform to rules they
neither understand nor like, but peers do not have formal authority to do this; thus, the true
meaning of fairness, cooperation, and equality can be learned more easily in a peer setting.

David Johnson and Roger Johnson, the major authorities on the subject, envision cooperative
learning as a means of increasing cooperation and socialization and reducing competition and
individualization. Some researchers believe that peer groups are more important now than in
earlier periods, partly because many children have little close contact with their parents and other
adults and few strong linkages with the larger society.

Peer and Racial group

The dominant norm and behaviors of the peer group put pressure on others to reject White
behavior and act Black-even if it is self-destructive. This preference is called cultural inversion-a
tendency for minorities who feel at odds with the large society to regard certain attitudes, norms,
and events as inappropriate for them because these are representative of the dominant culture of
White Americans.
Social Class and Academic Achievement

Researchers contend the bigger issue is actually the growing gap between the affluent and the
rest. Poor students, for one, typically lack exposure to early literacy skills and rich experiences in
the home and in their community, undermining their ability to develop what some scholars
referred to as "information capital. “Coupled with the limited resources and support found in
low-income school districts, it is no wonder these students have difficulty performing alongside
their income-peers. Researchers believe the key is to focus on enhancing opportunities rather
than merely closing achievement gaps. This means improving the quality and consistency of
instruction and other learning experiences provided to students.

General Insight

Socio-cultural foundations of curriculum is essential to understand because it

enables educators to determine what aspects of society and culture to transmit to
current and future students and what dimensions of society and culture require
reinvention. Educators must possess competence regarding to the various societies,
cultures, and behavior because they are the one who will implement, evaluate, create,
and manage the curriculum. And they also must keep up to date on the culture trends,
norms, or anything that is recently happening in the place where they apply the
curriculum.

Educators must analyze the social and cultural foundations because it will allow
them to know the major roles of educational system in the real world. It gives them what
to teach and what is not, how to teach, where to start, and when to stop. This will help
them improve the curriculum for the students easily acquire information. And also it will
make the curriculum responsive to the needs of time.
References:

(N.A., 2014) 'Foundations of Curriculum' Retrieved from https://research-education

edu.blogspot.com/2014/08/normal-0-false-false-false-en-us-x
none.html?m=1&fbclid=IwAR3uiFk3WRfbCLp5NOhitJDM1oQhq7Kl4p0inmF7kzr
94PoBLvzV_CCIM

Ornstein. (2017). Curriculum: foundations, principles and issues with enhanced

Pearsonne-text-access Pearson(D)