An examination of the reasons for having a curriculum and what it can provide.

The reasons for having a curriculum are many. Some of these are examined briefly below:

i) To define what should be taught and provide a clear justification for it. This allows us to avoid being haphazard and give us some confidence in the rightness of what we are teaching.

ii) To help us understand each element we are to teach, in relation to the other elements and to the whole. If we have no overall grasp of what we are doing, how can we expect the children to appreciate the significance of anything we teach them?

iii) To allow us to respond fully and sensitively to the unique conditions of our own situation, and not simply adopt uncritically the methods, contents and emphases of educational programmes developed for another place and / or time.

iv) To help us toward a standardisation of educational provision over the whole country, so that, no matter where a child or youth is or how or by whom they are taught, they may receive the same entitlement to a quality Bahá’í educational experience.

v) To help us provide continuity, consistency and progression in educational provision from a child’s earliest learning experiences up to its maturity as a self-sustaining learner and teacher of others. Thereby a child’s education is not left to chance or whim, nor subjected to eccentricities of teachers’ understanding or preoccupations. No matter where a child is, no matter what age, they will receive an education relevant to their needs, one which builds on what has gone before and which prepares for what is to come.

vi) To provide the community with direction and purpose in its educational activities, without which our motivation flags, our patience wanes and our perseverance falters. A curriculum gives us goals, and a compass by which to reach them in steadily advancing and manageable stages.

vii) To enable us to decide what is important and what is not, what is relevant and what is not, and what is necessary and what is not. This avoids the dangers of wrangling over choice of subject-matter or falling prey to the conflicting and ever-changing educational theorisings of the outside world, no matter how attractive or effective they may seem at the time. Current ideas and practices in education must always be filtered through the sieve of the divine standard, and not seized upon because enthusiasm has dulled our critical faculties.

viii) To assist us in maintaining a balance of educational content, thus avoiding the very real danger of concentrating so much on some elements that we ignore others and so deprive our children of development in certain vital aspects. To act as a safety net, a constant reminder to all educators, whether parents, teachers, leaders or facilitators, that all elements must be addressed in any given year’s learning and none neglected.

ix) To enable us to avoid having to reinvent the wheel every time we come to prepare an educational programme for children or young people; to avoid the endless duplication of certain materials while others are never developed because it never occurred to anyone to produce them; to ensure economy of time and effort and maximise our collective input. A curriculum is a mapping exercise; it shows up overlaps and exposes gaps in educational provision.

x) To provide us with an overall framework into which we can fit all the loose, separate and previously unconnected materials that so many dedicated souls have laboured so much and so long to produce.

xi) To allow us to ease the burden, once and for all, of all the parents, teachers and educators who, when faced with the prospect of producing an educational programme for their children and youth, ask the questions: What do I do? Where do I start? To allay the anxieties of those who, in the past, have been asked to sail across the ocean of knowledge with an eager crew but no charts or compass, no sextant, no provisions and no training in navigation or seafaring.

xii) To provide us with a focus for teacher training. For, if we do not know what we want our children and youth to learn, how can we adequately prepare those who are to teach them?

In short, without a curriculum, as opposed to a syllabus or series of lesson plans, it is very difficult to run an education system that extends over an entire nation and that is meant to last for longer than a decade.

It is a tribute to the dedication of the believers, who have taught children and youth over the last eight decades in this country, that they have done so without a United Kingdom National Bahá’í Curriculum, and have had, each in their own way, to work from scratch or adapt something produced for other purposes than their own.