96. A nation should require all of its students to study the same national curriculum until they enter college. Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the claim. In developing and supporting your position, be sure to address the most compelling reasons and/or examples that could be used to challenge your position.
Recently a great many nations have made it legalized to grant its students to attend the same national curriculum until they enter college. While this policy seems plausible for the sake of the progress of the students—which in turn could boost the progress of the nations—it has certainly aroused a world-wide issue about the effectiveness of the same national curriculum. Conceding that this policy might be beneficial to some extent, a host of different factors influencing the prospects of students could be precluded. For example, the national curriculum could guarantee that every single student can receive same level of education, undergirding basic construction of knowledge and then foster the ability of living, which is controllable under a same standard set by the nation. In this case, problems concerning the equity of education may be solved due to a lack of diversity of it, let alone different teaching skills of the teachers. Thus this contention could be valid in certain situations. However, given that the national curriculum has its beneficial aspect, it might result in more weaknesses of education. For instance, it would be ambiguous to define the national curriculum, caused by different understanding of this term. Someone may regard the national curriculum as science subjects such as mathematics, physics, chemistry, etc., while others conceive that the national curriculum should surely contain subjects like history, geography, and so forth. This dissention could result in various treatment of students, leading to inequity of education in the end. At the same time, the national curriculum could be useless in extreme situations—whose existence people cannot ignore—where educational resources are either too abundant or scarce that both of the situations are not suitable for students as well as teachers to set up the same national curriculum. This is because it might be impossible for the schools short of educational resources to set up the curriculum without harming its gross financial plan, such as maintaining its students’ meals. On the other hand, were relatively rich schools unable to avoid holding the same curriculum, it would be a disaster to behold the descending of them as a result of waiting for the less developed to catch on them. From this point, someone would argue that this situation not frequently observed in the U.S., as well as most western countries, but what they fail to grasp is that the economic developments all over the world vary according to different nations. What’s more, even in the U.S. the multitude can never be too confident to allege that there’s no difference studying in any schools within its internal frontiers, since the process of obviating difference caused by various regions, cultures, even personalities will be nothing but unapproachable with the vicissitude of times. Thus all of human beings should engage themselves in completing the equity of the education, and before its completion the requirement of the national curriculum is simply unrealistic and unpractical. In retrospect, this issue could not be solved in one way or another, nor could it be coped with in a short span of time. The Herculean task of guaranteeing all students to receive the same standard of education awaits us ahead, only by achieving this goal should we reconsider this issue and decide in a more scientific avenue.