World History Curriculum Guides and Educational Reform: The California Experience

Abstract

IT IS NO NEWS to history teachers, nor indeed to American teachers in general, that winds of educational reform have reached gale force. A battery of critical writers, including David P. Gardner (A Nation at Risk), Ernest L. Boyer (High School), Theodore R. Sizer (Horace's Compromise), John Goodlad (A Place Called School), and Chester E. Finn, Jr., Diane Ravitch, and Robert T. Fancher et al., (Against Mediocrity), undoubtedly had much to do with recent public alarm over schools. The widespread nature of this concern is reflected by fact that many states have enacted educational reform laws during past several years. Because of its size and high visibility, California offfers a case history of considerable importance. After years of neglect during which both sides of political spectrum in Golden State took pot shots at schools, an activist legislature and governor and a reform-minded Superintendent of Public Instruction, have taken advantage of renewed public interest in education to introduce widespread change. Much of this renewed interest and many of changes in California have to do with cousre of study. The restoration of high school graduation requirements and stiffening of university entrance requirements have made curriculum focus for discussion. Very important to that discussion is provision in Senate Bill 813 (enacted into law in 1983) which stipulates that the Superintendent of Public Instruction shall coordinate development, on a cyclical basis of model curriculum standards for course of study. .. .