GRE ISSUE: 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 recommendation and explain your reasoning for th

Whether a nation should enforce upon its students to follow a single national curriculum at all the schools within the country is a contentious issue. While both the sides have their strengths and weaknesses, I believe that the students should not be compelled strictly only to follow the same curriculum, as it will curb the creative freedom of the students to decide which subjects they want to pursue.

Firstly, when a single national curriculum is taken into consideration. It is cogently evident that all the subjects cannot be covered in the syllabus. Thus, a possibility of exclusion of a few subjects that are of interest to students could cause them to loose motivation to learn. Generally, people learn what interests them, a student interested in music would be more inclined to sit in the music class than in the history class. After attending the music class and upon satisfying the musical interests, the student with renowned zeal will pursue other subjects with the same interest. However, if due to the single national curriculum, the subject music is removed, this would cause the student to lose interest in other subjects.

Secondly, when a student is given the choice to select a subject to learn. Initially, he/she will find it difficult to ascertain which classes to take and will take multiple classes and thereby clearly understand which subjects he/she is interested. This is a learning process, wherein the student will at the end of the process understand oneself better. On the contrary, when the same syllabus is enforced, the student will have to reluctantly take the classes decided by others rather than himself thereby curbing the creativity and freedom of the school students.

Thirdly, since all the students will have the same curriculum education will end up becoming exam oriented, rather than learning oriented. This is because, when the whole grade takes the same classes, all of them will take the same exams, thereby it will result in inadvertant comparisons between the scores that the student achieves. Thus the focus will shift on the exam perspective, and the students will cease to learn for knowledge and instead learn for scores.

It can also be said that since the students have no initial idea of the classes to take, it would be an appropriate idea to clear their confusion by keeping the same national curriculum. However, this is not the best possible solution for this problem. It would be irresponsible on the side of the teachers and parents to force some subjets upon the students due to their inability to decide on which classes to take. A more appropriate solution would be to guide these students by conducting a skill and interest assessment of the students, which will help decide where the interest of the student lies.

Considering all the above points pertaining to reduced freedom, limitation in interests and focus solely on the exam perspective rather than the learning perspective, a single national curriculum will cause more harm than good. Therefore, students should be allowed to select and decide what they want to learn based on their interests and talent.