Bog Standard, Part 2

I dare you to find someone, anyone, working in education today who can clearly define the words "standards" and "curriculum."  I double dog dare you to find anyone who can clearly differentiate between the two, present company included.  But let's give it the ol' college try shall we?  Success not guaranteed, and, no, you can't get your money back. 

Language
Standards are written in the vaguest language conceivable.  To say they are general is to say water is wet.  Bureaucratic vocabulary and sentence structure is the order of the day.  Standards are also heavy with jargon.  Education schools instruct prospective teachers on how to "unpack" standards.  I guess that means standards are like a suitcase full of ugly clothes you wished your sister had never given you in the first place.

Curriculum can use opaque language and jargon, but it is not a requirement.  The more mainstream the curriculum, the more likely it is to contain both.  Curriculum will contain definite, descriptive language.  Hopefully, you won't have to hunt for it.  Going back to the clothes metaphor, curriculum is having attractive well-fitting clothes hanging in your closet ready to wear.  (Yes, I thought up this metaphor in ed school; I was really that bored.)


Authorship
Standards are written by committees.  Typically, standards come from state boards of education or educational professional organizations.  Sometimes they come from a consortia of groups, as in the Common Core standards. 

Curriculum can be written by committee, as evidenced by the offerings by the major publishing houses.  Alternatively, and more frequently, it is written by one or two people. The best curricula are written by brilliant teachers, like Michael Clay Thompson (someone you should know if you teach English)


Content
Standards are general.  They deal almost entirely with skills in only the broadest of terms.  Although the language is so opaque that it is often quite difficult to determine what, if anything at all, is being described.  Any indications of what, or how, or quality, or quantity are conspicuously absent. 

Curriculum is specific.  Knowledge to be learned is included along with skills to be acquired.  Skills are described in detail.  Ideas to be discussed, books to be read, time periods to be studied, types of writing to be assigned can all be found in a curriculum.


Audience
Standards are the province of the public school system.  After all, most of them are written by state bureaucrats who try very hard to disavow all non-public forms of education.  Supposedly for everyone, the real audience for standards are educators, education policy wonks and politicians.  Debating the worth of standards gives them excuse to pull a paycheck.  Ed schools torture indoctrinate educate prospective teachers with never ending assignments about standards.

Curriculum is theoretically territory for all schools (home, private, charter, public).  In reality, home schools, private schools and charter schools are the ones who really spend a lot of time and effort on curriculum.  Public schools wish curriculum would vanish off the face of the earth, as it tends to generate a lot of complaints and letters to the editor because someone's pet cause is left out.  Ed schools succeed in making curriculum vanish by denying it exists in the first place.


Purpose
Standards are a political document.  Elected officials and bureaucrats can hold up a set of standards and claim, "This is what we are teaching your children."  (Whether that's true or not is the another post.)

Curriculum is a practical document.  Teachers use a curriculum to plan lessons and projects for their students.  When trying to figure out what to do next month, good teachers always reach for curriculum, not for standards. 


Usage
Standards are not used by good teachers.  They will never say this on the record, on campus, or within earshot of anyone remotely connected to education.  But if you corner a good teacher at the bar on Friday afternoon and ply her with margaritas, she'll readily fess up.  The only reason standards are put on lesson plans and posted on the board is to placate and/or brown nose administrators.

Curriculum is used by teachers.  Frequently.  Good teachers think about curriculum constantly.  Great ones have written their own (and, like Michael Clay Thompson, published it). They use it to write lesson plans, set up projects, and select books for their classes.  Curriculum is literally half of education. 


Okay, it's time to call it a day before my head explodes.  In Round 3, I'll either take on the tenuous relationship between standards and curriculum or blood will shoot out my ears.  Haven't decided which yet.