Issues and Trends in Curriculum – From Technology to Global Awareness

Many immediate and complex issues overwhelm educators today. With positive and negative global influences, educators must look beyond the surface of education. Students are not just products of their schools but will become shaping forces in society, determining the success and failure of their nation’s future. Curricularists, educators, and everyone in leadership need to work together to develop a well-rounded curriculum, which includes the learning of different cultures. Our next generation will need to cope with cross-cultural matters and grow into sensible adults who are fair and just to the global society.

Technology plays an essential role in our education today and will even more so in the future. Especially in countries where economic and political situations are stable, the accessibility of the Internet and computers to maximize curriculum and to act as a means of communication among educators, even to the extent of intranets, must become available. This technology should be available in every school funded by taxes and donation from private industry.

Technology can also close the gaps between the educational levels around the world. Because of the political and socio-economic differences among countries, it would be impossible for this degree of technology to reach all parts of the world, yet effort should be made to see that education is fairy distributed to all children everywhere. This will require volunteers, donations, and assistance from the capable countries internationally. Even if there was just one computer in every town for those countries for school children, it would make a difference.

Another reason technology is significant to our curriculum development is for cultural knowledge expansion. The need to understand different cultures is an emergent issue in today’s education and societies as relationships among countries become more intertwined. The United States has always been a country of diversity; however, for the longest time, the contents of its curriculum were selectively western-focused.

For example, high school world history courses emphasized primarily European and western history. We now can make use of technology to design a world history curriculum that includes not only that part of world history but extends farther. San Diego University, in cooperation with the National Center for History in the Schools at the University of Los Angeles, offers Internet information on world history and assists teachers in delivering a whole curriculum without excluding a major part of the world’s people, events, or times (San Diego State University, 2007).

We should also take advantage of technology to form a curriculum for creating international awareness, understanding various cultures, and learning different opinions and values. Curriculums

need to focus on melting down barriers against others who are different and to encourage mutual respect and understanding for other cultures and beliefs. One way to promote cultural exchange is through technological communication. Thanks to the advancement of technology today, students all over the world can actually use computers to see and to talk to each other. More effort on promoting such communication should be encouraged and assisted by the government, various organizations, and individuals with the means to do so. One day, through the help of technology in education, people will learn that we are all part of the world community.