In reading this week's article, I was a little shocked to see curriculum compared to marketing strategies and who are considered the "customers" or "consumers." The article compared teachers to mothers and students to babies...the whole analogy made me take a step back and think about the way curriculum really works. I mean it's true that the text book writers, material developers, and test writers are the main customers of curriculum, but I guess I have never really looked at it that way. It is interesting to look at education from the viewpoint of marketing or politics and see the way it mirrors the society around it. If enough parents want something and they have a particular importance in a community, it will most likely affect the schools. I am always questioning this - who makes education the way it is? All of us together, of course, but it is just interesting to see it portrayed in this fashion and think about who has the most "at stake" when it comes to education. As I continued to read about content-based, process-based, and product-based curriculums, I was confused as to why we are making a distinction at all. Why don't we take all of these aspects into consideration? She does go on to say that depending on the needs of the students or area, many of these may be combined to form the curriculum, and I wonder once again, who makes that decision?
I also found it interesting to take into consideration what the role of the target language is in the particular community where a curriculum is being developed. If we truly were to take this into consideration, wouldn't all American students be learning some target language at a younger age since so many languages are spoken widely in the U.S.?
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