Curriculum as a product

Curriculum as a product
The dominant modes of describing and managing education are today couched in the productive form. Education is most often seen as a technical exercise. Objectives are set, a plan drawn up, then applied, and the outcomes (products) measured. It is way of thinking about education that has grown in influence in the United Kingdom since the late 1970's with the rise of vocationalism and the concern with competencies.
The central theory (of curriculum) is simple. Human life, however varied, consist in the performance of specific activities. Education that prepares for life is one that prepares definitely and adequately for these specific activities. However numerous and diverse they may be for any social class they can be discovered. This requires only that one go out into the world of affairs and discover the particulars of which their affairs consist. These will show the abilities, attitudes, habits, appreciations and forms of knowledge that men need. These will be the objectives of the curriculum. They will be numerous, definite, and particularized. The curriculum will then be that series of experiences which children and youth must have by way of obtaining those objectives.
We can see how these concerns translate into a nicely-ordered procedure; one that is very similar to the technical or productive thinking set out below.