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Article: Curriculum
- Article from:
- Dictionary of American History
- Author:
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CURRICULUM
CURRICULUM
in most countries emanates from the national government, but in the United States control of public school curriculum resides with the states, and in practice much of the responsibility for developing curriculum is delegated to local school districts. In an official sense, then, in the United States it is not possible to speak of a national curriculum. If diversity with respect to what is taught is an obvious fact of life in American schools, however, it is possible to discern an American curriculum.
Perhaps the greatest influence on curriculum is a sense of what is appropriate to teach, which in the United States has traditionally been drawn from the Western ...