Tried and true: The rural school curriculum in the age of accountability

Educational Forum, The, Fall 2003 by Howley, Aimee

Educators concerned about learning in rural schools recently have turned their attention to curriculum approaches that strive to complement the experiences of rural children and meet the needs of rural communities (Haas and Nachtigal 1998; Theobald 1997; Woodhouse and Knapp 2000). "Place-based pedagogy" is one approach that focuses on curricula that "prepare people to live and work to sustain the cultural and ecological integrity of the places they inhabit" (Woodhouse and Knapp 2000, 1). These curricula-grounded in local experience-are believed to offer greater "sense-making" opportunities than curricula narrowly construed to fit a business agenda for job preparation (Haas and Nachtigal 1998).

Despite efforts to shift curricula toward local needs, most rural schools-like the majority of others throughout the United States-still rely on traditional curricula driven primarily by textbook content and standardized testing. As Haas and Nachtigal (1998, 1; cf. Kliebard 2002) argued, "A national curriculum has existed since the introduction of McGuffey's Reader. Textbook publishing is big business. Textbooks are generically written to appeal to the largest possible market. They must be inoffensive and useable in all parts of the country, particularly in large states such as California and Texas, which adopt them statewide. Curriculum is bound by what is in these textbooks. Standardized tests form the third leg of the iron triangle of the national curriculum."

This essay explores the benefits and constraints of the traditional curriculum now used in most rural schools. Two important caveats must precede this analysis. First, literature pertaining to rural school curriculum is sparse, and efforts to construct fine-grained pictures of that curriculum, such as the historical treatment offered by Kliebard (2002), necessarily focus on the way the curriculum evolved in a specific context. Given the lack of available evidence, it is unwise to place too much trust in generalizations made about the rural curriculum of the past or present. Second, despite efforts to remain dispassionate, my perspective is constructed from an idiosyncratic set of beliefs. I have argued elsewhere in favor of a liberal arts approach, which some may view as traditional. However, I also support progressive educational strategies, including the use of thematic units and contextualized learning experiences (Howley, Howley, and Pendarvis 1995; Gibbs and Howley 2000). I do object to the deployment of a fact-based curriculum that trains low socioeconomic status children in habits of compliance (Anyon 1980) or sorts children into social categories based on background characteristics (Spring 1989). My rural school experience suggests that this latter curriculum-what some call essentialist-represents the more frequently adopted traditional approach.

Nevertheless, schools can choose an essentialist curriculum without advancing the reproduction of social class divisions. Approaching rural curriculum with an open mind permits a view of the complex ways schools might use bodies of knowledge to achieve a variety of educational aims-some liberating, some confining, and some relatively ineffectual.

ORIGINS OF THE RURAL SCHOOL CURRICULUM

Even before the United States became a nation, communities began to organize primary schools to provide instruction in basic skills such as reading and writing (Cremin 1970). Though the initial impetus was to give children access to moral lessons in the Bible, these basic skills later were valued for their role in developing mental faculties and, even later, for their practical benefits (Gulliford 1996; Kliebard 2002; see e.g. Woofter 1917). Rural school curricula by the early 1800s included reading, grammar, spelling, and penmanship (Gulliford 1996). Somewhat later in the century, other studies-typically arithmetic, civics, history, and health-were added, but tended to receive less attention.

By the mid-1800s, city school enrollment began increasing rapidly, and school structures began to change. According to Kliebard (2002), the move to graded schools, first in cities and later in rural communities, reflected a major shift in schooling. With the development of grade-level cohorts, school terms were lengthened and regularized, group recitation began to replace individual recitation, and curriculum content and objectives began to be developed. A curriculum written by professional educators at the county or state level came to replace textbooks so that lessons could be structured for individual students in accordance with their abilities and needs.

Though a basic skills curriculum prevailed in primary schools across the nation, schools in different locales varied in the practical skills that were included. For example, the study of agriculture was offered in some rural schools (Feldman 1999). According to Feldman (1999,12), "it is within this area of study [e.g., agriculture] that the rural curriculum undertook its most localized form, as varying conditions (both environmental and educational) in different areas served to alter the form that agricultural instruction assumed in a given community."