Hi Harold!

I very much agree that most Educational context's Curricula are exactly as you state.

As a lead designer (redesigner mostly) of 74 Enterprise/Corporate Curriculum Architectures (82-07) and participant on 30 or so more I've seen many many "collections of courses" with no "rhyme or reason" for their content or sequence, I've seen Curricula of a course or two of enabling K/Ss with no real-world context or applications practice, and I've seen huge multi-week courses (typically topic and not task-based) that feed the Learners with their fire hose and pray that the gods of cognitive load are away for the duration.

I've also designed (going back to the early 1980s) many comprehensive curriculum architectures based on an analysis of performance requirements and enabling K/Ss, that utilized blended deployment means for both PUSH and PULL to increase learner and management flexibility, plus specific job-based planning (rational downselecting) and pre-tests/assessments to avoid training/learning that wasn't relevant or unnecessary due to the learners' prior knowledge/skills.

In the late 1980s my former business partners worked with a school system is the Baltimore area to revamp their curriculum to a results focused using very different PUSH and PULL approaches, and the technology at the time. Crushed by "the teachers."

Joe Harless had been working locally in the Atlanta area to change the curriculum at Charter Schools - at the behest of a former Governor - until he was thrown out by the voters after the teachers went after him due to his reforms.

Don Tosti talks often about his involvement with Head Start - and changing a school system in California way back in the 1960s.

So there have been many valiant attempts to change "the system" - but "the system" keeps fighting those changes. Even when successful. Especially when successful.

What bothers me is how every teacher needs to create a unique lesson plan for their grade - when that could be done once (and for a level and not a grade) and then shared. And then with technology - oh boy. That's really got to be a threat to the establishment.

Sadly, schools are too often daylight warehouses for children and young adults.

Sorry this was long! But it struck a nerve.

Guy