Kliebard's four strands

Curriculum Trends Emerging from the Progessive Era (overview of Kliebard, 1986)

1. Humanistic

• Advocates & issues
  
  • Charles Eliot (pre-1900): curriculum should "give one the intellectual mastery needed to make independent and sound judgments under a variety of circumstances." (later changed his mind)
  • William T. Harris: anti-vocational ed. - "curriculum should take its cue from the great resources of civilization."
  • Power of reason
  • Passing on Western cultural heritage
    
• Philosophical Base
  
  • Idealism
    
• Associated with
  
  • Faculty psychology
  • Classics/math, as in Harris' "five windows of the soul" (grammar, literature/art, math, geography, & history)
  • Connecting to the Canon
    
• Criticisms
  
  • Impractical for the masses
    

2. Social Efficiency

• Advocates & issues
  
  • Herbert Spencer: science is of most worth
  • Frederick Taylor: "scientific" management
  • Edward Thorndike: standardized testing
  • Appeal "objective" standards, precise, measurable outcomes, control (predictability)
  • Standardized techniques
  • Greater specialization in content
• Philosophical Base
  
  • Realism
    
• Associated with
  
  • The practical subjects
  • Graded classes
  • Subject divisions
  • Curriculum "differentiation"
  • Training for Work and Survival
    
• Criticisms
  
  • Social predestination
    

3. Child-Centered

• Advocates & issues
  
  • G. Stanley Hall: "cultural epochs" - in their individual development from conception, children pass through all the evolutionary stages in the development of the human species (Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny - stage theory - "science" of child development*)
    
  • "differentiated" instruction
  • William H. Kilpatrick: Project method (the project, based on children's interests, should replace the subject as the basic building block of curriculum)
  • Natural order of child's development
  • In harmony w/ child's interests
    
• Philosophical Base
  
  • Pragmatism - the "scientific" emphasis aspect
    
• Associated with
  
  • Child's interest
  • Child-initiated activities
  • Constructing Understanding
  • Developing Self & Spirits
    
• Criticisms
  
  • Frivolous
  • Doesn't prepare for adulthood
    

*note: theory of G. Stanley Hall was based on the premise that growing children would recapitulate evolutionary stages of development as they grew up and that there was a one-to-one correspondence between childhood stages and evolutionary history, and that it was counterproductive to push a child ahead of its development stage. The whole notion fit nicely with other social Darwinist concepts, such as the idea that "primitive" societies needed guidance by more advanced societies, i.e. Europe and North America, which were considered by social Darwinists as the pinnacle of evolution.

4. Social Reconstructionist

• Advocates & issues
  
  • Lester Frank Ward: "civilization is achieved by intelligent intervention"
  • George Counts: "Dare the schools build a new social order?"
  • Harold Rugg: social studies textbooks
  • Concern for social justice
  • Social change and justice
  • Issues of race, gender, class
  • New social vision
    
• Philosophical Base
  
  • Pragmatism - the social emphasis aspect
    
• Associated with
  
  • social problems
  • Confronting the Dominant Order
  • Deliberating Democracy
    
• Criticisms
  
  • Too radical