A nation should require all of its students to study the same national curriculum until they enter college

Choosing a curriculum is a challenging and an important task for a nation. Since today's students would be tomorrow's society, they must be educated in a well thought out manner. The given prompt recommends that a country adopt a universal curriculum for all of it's students before college. I strongly agree with the recommendation and would argue that it's benefical for the nation because of the following reasons.

Firstly, if there is a unified national curriculum, every student gets an equal opportunity to learn the exact same things. In case of different curriculums, there may be a possibility that certain students get an edge in terms of what they are taught—advanced and quality topics—while others left behind in terms of the quality. This would leave parents wanting their children to learn the better curriculum and would lead to states and counties which adopt such topics to be overcrowded. To avoid such scenario and imbalance in the education system, students should be taught one curriculum. Secondly, it would be easier for colleges to screen the students and evaluate their potential in terms of academics, since every student is taught the same. If there are different curriculums a college might have it's own entrance exam to filter out students. In such cases, students who had better curriculums might overshadow the ones who weren't fortunate enough to get the same educational standards. Finally, a nation can spend it's resources on perfecting a universal curriculum rather than spending it on different ones. It can be analogus to quality vs quantity. It is true that a huge of portion of a nation's education budget goes into deciding curriculums and it's imperative that it's spent wisely. Therefore, spending it on one curriculum would not only save money but also time and effort of so many academic professionals who decide the curriculum.

Of course, some might argue that different students have different learning pace and one size does not fit all. While it is true that every student learns differently, it does not mean that the entire curriculum needs to be changed to accomdate that. Instead, teachers should spend extra time caring for students who find the curriculum challenging. Doing so ensures that those students get an equal opportunity at the subjects as well as the special care they need. Thus, a nation should focus on adopting and perfecting a universal national curriculum.