Debate on the national curriculum

Statement: A nation should require all of its students to study the same national curriculum until they enter college. Argue for or against.

While ensuring all students to study the same national curriculum until they enter college a requirement may bring about several advantages, one must not remiss the disadvantages when asserting such a claim. In this case, the disadvantages outweigh the benefits if students are required to study the same national curriculum. Some may contend that by allowing all of its student to study the same national curriculum until they enter college may encourage unity and equality among the students. Such policy presumes that partiality will be imparted by providing all students that are vying for an admission to a college an equal standing. Notwithstanding the benefits students may gain in the short run if such a policy is implemented, its consequences in the long run may be dire and should not be overlooked. For instance, some financially capable families are not enticed with the policy as they yearn for one that impart knowledge beyond what is taught in the national curriculum. Therefore, those parents will most likely eschew sending their children to a national public school as its curriculum to satiate their expectations seems to founder. Instead, they enrolled their children into private courses that come with exorbitant price, affordable to families with high income. This will then create another social problem where only the privileged can afford a private education that is different and maybe even better, further exacerbating the existing problem of the widening gap between the rich and the poor. The one-for-all approach when it comes to designing a unified national curriculum is not viable, for not all students’ potential are identical. The ramifications of studying the same national curriculum may stymie the realization of the potential in individual students. Some students are more inclined to derive mathematical equations while others may have an innate ability to draw and paint. If a curriculum focuses only on physical sciences and not arts, students that have an affinity to arts may quickly lose interest in their studies and will most likely give up on an education that fails to value them.
By having students to study the given similar curriculum across the general populace will only inhibit the students’ ability to make important decision for their future. Since everyone was given a similar curriculum before they enter college, students are not given the chance or freedom to choose and decide. Colleges, on the other hand, expect their students to be self-motivated and they are given the freedom to choose courses pertaining to their interests. Most students are left to navigate in a convoluted labyrinth by themselves as no one is there to plan out a curriculum for them. In retrospect, restricting students to study a unified national curriculum will most likely neglect the needs of individual students, rip off students’ opportunities to premeditate their own curriculum and will most likely not fulfil the initial intention of having such a policy.