Social and Cultural Foundation of Curriculum

Social and Cultural foundation is an important element of curriculum development. Read the article to get the fully solved notes.

According to Murray, the society and culture exercise massive power on the formation of curriculum and the reason behind that it was society who created schooling to safeguard the survival of their cultural heritage, and survival of their species.

The purpose of curriculum planners and developers to translate traditional norms, philosophies, ethics, knowledge and attitude in the objectives of curriculum, the content, learning processes and the evaluation of elements of the curriculum. Sociological factors have highest impact on the content of curriculum and that is the reason that curriculum developers and planners both reflect and transfer their own culture in curriculum. Therefore, a curriculum without the reflection of culture is not possible for that reason one should consider what characteristics of the culture should be the part of curriculum and what not.

The social and cultural inspiration that effect curriculum designers consciously and unconsciously are apparent from the curriculum and their influence in deep. For example, in Pakistan, the curriculum is more reflective of the society and curriculum is design in a way that leads society to change. The society manifest through the curriculum and education, and the outcomes of the curriculum developers display the role of both of the above in curriculum development.

Because curriculum developers are the part of society, therefore they indirectly effected by the society and culture. Their cultural standards, attitude and beliefs leave deep impact on its individual because the curriculum designers influence the selection of objectives, subject matter, teaching-learning methods and the process of evaluation. For example, a group of teacher formulated a new course for teaching in schools to enhance the quality of the subject in curriculum. After the completion of subject matter, when analyse again one could not determine some lesson were eliminated and some were included in the course. How the old content was evaluated even the teacher who constructed the curriculum for the subject was unable to clearly say what was the basis of their decisions. If story reading was a component of the revised curriculum, what proportion would be real reading? Why? And what would be the method?

And when a societal goal become an educational objective, then the school, teacher and students must make their efforts to achieve it and for that purpose, appropriate educational facilities and methods must be planned. If there is a conflict between the objectives and aims of majority and minority groups, the aims of larger group is accepted.

Educational aims are based on the study of sociological and political condition of the society and the main purpose of the curriculum is preservation and developments of that society.