Community, Culture and Curriculum

At its broadest, a curriculum is the accumulation of learning experiences of an individual. The individual is the traditional target of educational products, but what about the group? What about community?

In our class this semester we opted to be graded socially (at least in part) which prompted me to consider the role of community in curricular design. What if the individual is not the target? This could have a profound impact on the design and orientation of a curriculum. This is not the same thing as thinking like a policy maker whose job it is to provide direction, usually through law or funding, for an education system. What I am thinking of here is the institutional level rather than the legislative level. There is some semblance of this idea embedded in the common core of general education courses - every undergraduate must take English, math, language, etc. I call this the minimalist approach. It has been a long time since the general education requirements were discussed at UH-Manoa. It is governed by faculty who are deeply embedded in their departmental bunkers where all action happens. There is no communal approach to the curriculum. The general education curriculum is, in practice, delivery oriented.

The most disappointing college curriculum is one characterized by the separation of people and programs. It is in such de-contextualized and atomistic curricula where we find knowledge is isolated from the experience of learners. If a curriculum is the accumulation of learning experiences, some thought must go into linking up the curriculum across disciplinary boundaries and, in particular, accounting for culture and society.