Politics Of Curriculum Essay

2) Subject Maintenance

Levin (2007) has described that the politics of curriculum actually involves two kinds of discussions, they are the overall shape of school curricula and the content of particular subjects. The first discussion, which includes what subjects should be taught and how much of each, has always been the subject of debate and public attention in many countries. This also can be easily found in Indonesia especially in private schools in which they have an authority to create their own curriculum.

In general, the subjects that should be taught are the same in all Indonesians schools (Yulia, 2014). The core subjects – Bahasa Indonesia, English, Mathematics and Science have been given more teaching hours because of the national

Curriculum does not only refer to a formal document designed by Ministry of Education which contains a set of subjects that should be taught, but also refers to anything relates to learning and teaching process including students, teachers and the school environment. Given these point, as a teacher I would argue that curriculum is essential for any learning process and we do need a curriculum as a guidance to direct our teaching (that is the intended curriculum), a shared understanding (that is the implemented curriculum), and a lived experience (that is the experienced

Generally, those purposes can be classified into two major areas, for individual and for society. For individual, so the argument goes, curriculum helps to develop individual benefits. This can be learnt from my own experience, my teacher often said that we learn Mathematics to promote logical thinking, Science to improve life quality, Computer to have basic skills that might be useful for our future, and so on. After graduating from school and now I become a teacher, I have just realized that knowledge and skills I am having now are the result of school curriculum and experience I gain from surrounding. However, some argue that if the fundamental goal of curriculum is truly for individual’s development, why it should be testing? This question has been raised for many years and became a public issue due to the fact that the school assessment is so dominant and determines student’s success which likely happens in Indonesia. This has been discussed in different types of curriculum