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 your views on the policy and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting yo

“Variety leads to upliftment”. It means if someone experiences variety in life, be it in any form, he exposes to enlightenment and upliftment as research has shown that variety makes him to understand the nuances and afford him the opportunity to choose from all available alternatives. However, when it comes to education at school level, it does not produce results as intended. The prompt here, asserts the implementation of same national curriculum for all students until they enter college. In my view, I strongly agree with this policy and would substantiate my view with a cliché: uniformity and consolidation make nation strong. The detail explanation supporting my view is mentioned in the following paragraphs.

First of all, for a nation like India where diversity is inherent in the form of language, culture, food and even education, it is prudent to implement same curriculum to bring in uniformity, since it offers better methods for evaluation and comparison among students. For instance, when students in India vie for few seats in top colleges such as IIT, the research has shown that it is cumbersome for the evaluators to judge the performance of students on a single scale since some schools follow curriculum in their regional language while others pursue in English and language is one of the components that is evaluated for a student’s ability to converse. Further, when some students choose to appear in a written test for not so higher level jobs such as security guard or a clerk due to their economic conditions, it becomes difficult to set a uniform eligibility criteria for a job because some students are graded with higher weightage given to mathematics while others are graded with higher weightage given to language. Therefore, if such a policy is implemented, it would make the comparison among students easier for the evaluators and it would bring all students at one uniform scale.

Secondly, again diversity has its cons with its pros, such as the research has shown that students from two States of India namely UP and Bihar are excellent in mathematics but have limited knowledge of English because of their school curriculum focussed on 6 core courses on mathematics but one course on English. While, in other States such as Delhi, schools make it mandatory for a student to choose 3 courses in English and 3 in Mathematics. Hence, diversity in terms of higher level of mathematics in UP and Bihar produce the excellent students in engineering and physics but due to this diversity they are not able to converse in world’s communication language, i.e., English and thus, outperformed by their Delhi counterparts. Therefore, when these students look for job in India or abroad, their chances of securing a good job is infinitesimal. Further, when the Government of India had implemented skill enhancement programme in 2015, it produced unintended results since the programme was not aligned with all different schools' curriculum but was focussed only on the skill enhancement at national level, i.e., give basic mathematics and English knowledge to all students in India. Therefore, implementing a policy of national curriculum can afford the opportunity to Government to align its national programmes with education and provides basic minimum education and awareness to all students of India.

Thirdly, diversity in education leads to procedural hurdles in reforms and undesirable spending in printing. It means when a nation like India, where education is a subject which comes under Union and State list and where federalism is practised, intends to bring in reform in education system of a State, it faces several challenges in the form of opposition by other elected members of the Government who represent different States since they argue that why the Government is concentrating reforms on only one State. Therefore, bringing in reform in education as per changing times makes the Government procedures unnecessary long and stalled. Further, due to this federal structure and diversity in education, Government spends enormous amount of borrowed money on printing books, periodicals and examination papers since these jobs are required to be completed by their respective State education board. Had it same across India, it would have given the opportunity to Government to print all related material in few locations and get them printed from few large printers and save huge amount of money since economies of scale would have come in. Therefore, national curriculum had advantage in costs saving and is conducive to reforms in education sector.

Of course some may argue that national curriculum distorts the federal structure since it forces legally all States to give in their rights to regulate education and its related subjects. However, the proponents of idea of having different curriculum must understand that nation which is divided in education, which is considered to be the basic right of a person, cannot realise the goal of nationalism and cannot bring in prosperity for its citizen. Therefore, national curriculum in school level education, which is considered the enlightenment and upliftment for all sections of the society, must be implemented.