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 the position

Whether all students in a nation should study the same national curriculum before they enter college may be a major debate concerning the effectiveness of a country’s education. People generally agree that students should strive for specification once they enter college, but some may argue that students may involve in speciallized training in an earlier age. People who believe that speciallization in education should happen before students enter college may ask for high schools or even middle schools to provide different curriculum for each different students. Although having different curriculums for students to choose to specialize before entering university may have some benefits, I believe that governments should require all students pursueing in their education to study the same national curriculum unitul they go to college.

Having all students study the same national curriculum, of course, may have some drawbacks. Students start to receive specific training at a later age, which may make them seem incompetent at first. This, however, does not have to be a major concern because students who receive a more generalized curriculum will have a more balanced development in different fields, they can analyze the same issue with a more comprehensive viewpoint than the students that recieve training in a single field at a younger age. Also, after a few years of undergradute study, and some more years of a more demanding graduate study, the difference in the proficiency in a particular field between students who start specializing in college and students who started the specialization ealier will not be evident.

Another reason for a country to implement the same curriculum for every students is that students may choose to decide to involve in a certain field when they are more matured and informed. In Taiwan, students get to choose from different curriculums based on their interest in literature, science, or technology. The students however often regret their decision when applying for college if they found out that they actually would like to study in a different field which is not permitted given their previous decision in the curriculum they study. These students would then either drop out of college or pursue a field of study which they have no interests in. By implementing the same curriculum for every high school students, the students are able to decide which field they like to major in when they are more informed and thus can make a better decision.

Last but not least, requiring students to study the same national curriculum can let teachers from both universities or high schools to prepare a course more efficiently. When several curriculums are used in high school, high school teachers would struggle to provide high quality courses, take Taiwan for example, a high school teacher must develop three courses based on the requirements of his or her subject in three different curriculums, the teacher’s effectiveness in teaching is then restricted by different limitations in each curriculum. College professors may struggle to, since they have a class of students with a variety of prior knowledge. In contrast, by implementing a single curriculum, a high school teacher knows what should be taught to the student and thus can focus on conveying the required knowledge, a college professor know exactly what to expect from each student and thus can develop a course that suits the majority of the students.

To sum up, although there may be some upsides for implementing different curriculums before college, requiring all students to take the same national curriculum until they reach college have some major benefits including enabling students to make a more informed decision about the field they wish to study and helping teachers to teach more efficiently. A nation thus should ask all of its students to take the same curriculum before entering undergraduate study.