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""Curricula" gor the same reaction as waiting for a hypodermic to be prepared. Curriculum is singular; curricula is plural. Curricular is an adjective, you ignorant shit!" thought Saul.
"Why, of all places in the university, are these words so misused? Why, of all places where such academic posturing and scholarly wit displayed, should the words be vio1ated?"
Saul listened as Clement continued his speech to the faculty acting as if it were extemporaneous but displaying more than his usual interest and concern about anything. He had been preparing for this moment for weeks.
"The curricula must be revised. "
"Not all of them Sir Ignorance; just ours, and it must be crucified and reborn. I" The thought-conversation of Saul was always more honest and lively than his spoken comments. They were usually so inhibited that his status among the faculty was lower than Clement's who most suspected fell in the 'ignorant shit' class, though they would have probably obfuscated saying he was of "limited intellect and doubtful creativity. " However, they never faulted his analytical power, great precision, and lockjaw persistence on some problems. "It must be revised to accommodate new knowledge, to prepare our students for the marketplace, and to adjust to new accreditation standards.
"We have not revised the curricula in 15 years. Surely much has changed and it is appropriate that we change too … in fact we should lead the way. This is an excellent school with a fine reputation and we need to keep it that way. I propose that we restore our curricula committee and that they report back in several weeks on a working agenda and plan of attack. I've collected several schools' curriculums (sic) and will be glad to turn these over to the committee.
The phrase 'curriculum committee' brought an intestinal reaction from the faculty like a call saying "your wife has just gone to the hospital. " Several lowered their heads, others smiled, a few stared to display the depths of their stoicism.
The committee was quickly formedand Clement was on it, naturally. He would probably be chairman, for any voiced idea was evidence of more-than-general interest.
"I hope I may encourage the committee to step back from their duty, quite far back, and address the larger issue of the total instructional program for our department," said Saul.
"What else is a curriculum other than a 'total instructional program? '" interrupted Burt Kark.
"There doesn't have to be any difference, but there usually is. A curriculum around here is a list of courses required for graduation. I'm encouraging the committee to look at the entire program -- the very nature of the 'courses,' testing out of taking classes, multiple path ways and combinations, other educational units, requirements, experiences, and even between-university exchanges to achieve the best personalized education for each student." Saul was rarely so verbal. "Aw…"could be heard above the room full of shifting chairs and mumbling that quickly matured to: "My dear colleague. You have suggested a lifework for us all, a task requiring released time, new priorities and policies, new rewards, and a set of massive problems …which I shall refrain from listing. Like many of your ideas, it is good, but well beyond Clements' meager suggestion for a curriculum revision. I admire your enthusiasm and the time you spend here at school. Both are very commendable, but your suggestion is so impractical that I cannot resist resisting it.1"
Dray Buffington, a friend of Clements, walrus-mustached, Harris tweed costumed, presided, graveside, over Saul's idea.
The next day Burt came to Saul's office. "Dray came down on you pretty hard yesterday. Seems you are on to something, but I admit I don't see what you're talking about really. A 'curriculum' sounds pretty much like a 'program' to me. 'You have time to talk about it?1"
"There's little more important to talk about. I'm angered by Dray. I'd hate him if he wasn't such a great guy. He's always banging away at students about new ideas, modern attitudes, venturing into the great unknown, taking risks, creating …but when it comes to the curriculum, all that venturesome stuff is for other people and times. He is very impressive; he closed out yesterday's meeting as skillfully as if he had been chairman. I admire his technique … but not his attitude.
"My idea is impractical, is it?! What's so practical about continuing an uneconomical system of instruction? What's so damned practical about students losing a year of their young lives because they get one course out of sequence in a tight curriculum? What's so practical about half of the teachers teaching things about which they only know marginal amounts when there's an expert on the topic down the hall? What's so practical about 'teaching' kids things they already know and then not having time to spend to gain competence with the unknowns?"
"Well, you know what he meant," said Burt, trying to calm Saul a little. "You'll have to admit there are some problems. I once heard someone say that changing a curriculum was like moving a cemetery. When I was working with a curriculum before I came here, all I remember were the less sedate expressions of war and bloodshed. Developing a curriculum is a rough business. There are scars (and an open wound or two) that will be exposed by this new committee. We've put it off long enough and I agree that it has to be done."
"Perhaps. l've never been through the whole process. I've only participated in approvals of a few course changes and new courses."
"You'll see, I'm sorry to say."
Later, at the first committee meeting, Russ said, "I'm intrigued with your comments yesterday and want to learn more about them. If they are as necessary as you seem to think, perhaps we had better devise a strategy for the next 15 years so there will not be a play-back of yesterday's department meeting. I'm afraid I don't really understand what you were saying and I confess I'm holding back a negative reaction because you may have attacked by insinuation, everything I've done for 25 years as inappropriate, unplanned, ill-advised, and maybe just plain wrong. I" l
"My God, you know that is not the case!" said Saul. "1'm just asking the questions. I just want a good overall evaluation and a test of the structural integrity of what we're doing. I just don't think we ought to have a paint job.
"I've learned last week from a friend of mine that the reason you never see a painted ladder is that the paint could hide a flaw. I just threw that in; its my new knowledge that seems very relevant.1"
Burt Rustock continued: "The idea of an loverall valuation sounds ominous; few of us have the interest or energy to step back or to start from scratch. If I checked every computer program I use I'd never do There is a three-way tension between going back and going ahead and anything new. We're geared for 'ahead' and you seemed to say 'go back.' I can't tell whether I'm bothered personally or whether we all are. I just need to understand better."
I'm flattered, I really am. I respect you mightily, and I'm glad you came. I'm concerned about students, as you are. I'm especially concerned about them as they leave our gates. That is the key place (though I want to renigh of that later.) After we have worked our magic, what is the product? The product is the difference in the world for our students and those around them.
"I really think a good metaphor is a corn research plot. We plant and we compare fertilizers. If there is no statistically significant difference between corn on a treated and a control plot, we conclude that the treatment had no effect. Education is treatment; I want to be sure there is a difference and that it's not due to chance or to other-than-university social forces. I want to be suret. (I think we all do) that our students upon leaving, graduates or not, have a positive, significant effect on the world.
"The other layer of this argument is that we must have an effect on the students. They must be significantly different when they leave these walls. If not, like some weak fertilizer to corn, we had no significant effect and should no longer be considered for use.
("We can discuss 'significant' later, but you know I mean much greater than would be expected due to chance and random events.")
"There's a lot of stuff we put out around here that is like fertilizer," joshed Clement.
"The program I was talking about yesterday is better called a comprehensive instructional program. The idea of 'curriculum' as a list of courses is depauperate.It is intolerable among thinking educators.It's antiquated; at least pre-computer.
"A faculty creates a curriculum; students take courses. That's a concept from a lesser-developed institution -- from a lesser-developed time. "Most curricula are the results of pragmatic machinations, resulting in a list that, when examined, can be summarized and generalized as doing several things. This summary of 'things,' made after inspection, is then said to be the goal or mission of the group. This is a trivial precis exercise, done better by some than others. The more lofty and erudite, the better appears the department. There can be (and need be) little relation between the list and the goals. They are read by different people for quite different purposes. Parents read goals to get help to their kids in a good school; kids read course lists to getout of any school."
Saul's sandy eyebrows were cave entrances to black eyes. "A curriculum! What sense does a curriculum make in this day and time?! We can personalize a lesson sequence for anyone in a day!"
"For God's sake, Saul. Practicality. The sense it makes is practicality. We ..."
Russ wouldn't let Burt continue. "Here we go again on practicality. How damn practical is it to make everyone average? How practical is it to move everyone to some common debated-ground that doesn't really exist and while there wage the educational war for some jobs that don't exist, for lifestyles, out of an 18th century novel, and for preparation for villagel life in an urbanized society that is consuming its rural surround?" He was nearing his peak of excitement, about as expressive as he ever allowed himself outside of the classroom. "How practical is that?!"
"That's all very fine, and I agree, Russ." (Of course he didn't, or hadn't figured out why he did.) "But you have to face it. We only have so much money, and space, and teachers, and we have some professional societies out there that set standards and do accreditation."
"I know a lot of those; truly problems. I keep having a feeling that there are many good reasons for not taking an alternative approach but not sufficient reasons. I truly believe that questions like we are beginning to ask in this committee are liberating. I see this in very philosophical but also very physical terms. Those reasons are like ropes around us, and we struggle, but there are several ways to escape. I'm not sure whether we need a knife, or whether we need to slip out, or whether we can untie each other with our teeth … but that's the fun that lies ahead. Solutions to hard problems are rarely simple …
"Or Clement, or Spring, or someone else would have found them," thought Saul.
Almost a week passed. Russ walked over to Saul's table. "Mind if I join you?"
"Slide right in. Good to see you.There's a place for your tray over there. "
"I've been busy. Sorry I didn't get back to you. An extra thesis to read at budget-time really put me under. "
It's a rough time," Saul said, around a bite from a manners-compromising yeast roll.
"I haven't stopped thinking about your anti-curriculum idea. I wish you'd tell me more about it."
It's not ant1-curriculum. Where did you get that notion? All I've asked is that a not-quite-so-narrow view be taken of the total instruction we give to our students. If a list of courses falls out as one thing we do, so be it. It will then live among us for the right reasons, not as some carryover we cannot or will not discard."
"You're saying the curriculum may be OK?"
"Yes, but my hypothesis is that it is not likely to survive …at least not in a recognizable way. "
"That's very hard to believe. So hard it makes comprehending it seem like it won't be worth the effort. It is as if you wanted me to understand some revealed religion. I"
"Wait," said Saul, extending the word to recover from the mild attack and to decide where to start next.
"Start with the word itself. You'd agree that 'curriculum' now connotes and denotes a list of required courses for graduation. It didn't and it doesn't in some educational texts, but that's what it is and that's what its going to be."
"That notion is just too narrow, too limited, too unidimensional for a group as thoughtful as our faculty. We can analyze and discuss the layers right off of an onion down to its last electron. Around the curriculum topic we're like subdued children in the presence of a malevolent uncle."
"You just haven't experienced the pain, Saul," said Russ. "Developing or changing a curriculum isn't done often and there is no way to communicate the pain experinced in doing so. You have to have been there … at least once. The quiet, the reluctance, is in part due to the pain remembered by us old timers. "
"I've heard, but …forgive me …you survived, uncrippled. I am still concerned about our students. I fear we are crippling them and they are my major concern … if you can believe that."
…Of course I can," said Russ, filling the silence as Saul ate the last of his cherry cobbler and ignoring the poke implying he was no longer as concerned about students.
"So what shall we teach them; what behavioral change shall be wrought? I see prospects," said Saul, "for a student arriving and taking tests. Those tests are part of the learning process for they create the 'I do not know' condition. They motivate, they begin to teach the language and topics of the program, and they become the basic for designing an educational set of pathways, a network with nodal checkpoints.
"I personally think that a program should begin before students arrive through contacts such as taped instructions, introductory materials, reading lists. There is no reason why a student should read some set of great books while here if there is clear indication given that having read books A to Q is a prerequisite for reasonable success while studying with us here. The readings do not have to be overlain on our work. It just means that all entrants will have a common resource -- like ability to spell, write, and read at a reasonable speed and with comprehension.
"Similarly, they should be of a reasonable state of physical fitness and if not, they cannot enter. It is no more reasonable to allow a slow learner in than a slow breather. We need to acknowledge the studies conclusively tying physical health to educational success. We'll enhance it while here, but they should enter having met at least some minimal set of physical criteria. Otherwise they are impaired … and so are we. You don't have to teach pushups; you require them; at least two or three. The same is realistic for other indices of body performance as context for mental performance. (You know I'm not talking about the severely handicapped.)
"0nce they are here they take units, not courses. Some sets of units can be readily packaged as conventional courses, but I truly find few. There are abundant texts in most fields and the Internet resources grow. Copying notes and research materials is now readily done and retrieval from a computer terminal is clearly preferred. Most students throwaway their notes anyway. The ephemeral nature of the screen text is consistent with this and even more realistic since future retrievals will probably show a slightly changed text.
"There are needs for prolonged discussions … at least as long as those among students in dorms; for labs and field work; for creative expression by the student; for creative expression by the faculty; for reviews and synthesis; for case studies; for personally supervised work; for team efforts. All of this activity is not readily done in conventiona1 courses. Some subjects would be deal with in their entirety in one weekend; others should take a year.
"Even more importantly, some students should not take some courses; others need extra attention in the ones they take. My God, what is the meaning for a person who knows 70 percent of a course content? She passes to the next course. Hell, my stock broker must have gotten a 70 in probability; I've had a few doctors who must have nearly flunked physiology along with pharmacology. My patio is cracked right down the middle because someone only got an 80 in a construction course. They are out there … certified … and they are making my life miserable! What's worse … they are doing it at an increasing rate because everything is all connected. A screw-up in one area is no longer a simple problem. It's cancerous."
Russ had finished his dessert and was sipping a third cup of coffee. "What you're saying makes sense but somehow you have to deal with the realities. Some groups didn't just sit around brainstorming courses years ago and then calling it a curriculum. And we've not been sitting around picking at it like some kid over a bad meal.The realities are ..… here let me show you. " He laid it out on a paper napkin between them.
| Presentation (e.g., lecture) Teacher to student | Experience Self-achievement and discovery |
| Content centered | Student centered |
| Simplicity and aesthetic life |
Upward mobility, wealth, and prosperity |
| Self awareness | Service to others |
| Historical | Futuristic |
| Controlling and civilizing |
Liberating and radicalizing |
| General followership |
Elite leadership |
| The compleat human | The competent professional |
| Generalists | Specialists |
| The user | The inventor |
| Mastery of knowledge |
Research and discovery |
| Inductive skills | Deductive skills |
| Highly personalized | Highly technological |
"Among other things, you see there are some conflicts, not only in topics, but about the essence, that is both the means and the ends. Take this last one.", pointing to the bottom of the second napkin. "This ranges from the image of Hopkins -- the intimate teacher and pupil sitting on a log -- to the high technology crap in which Dave Sabinoff has been involved.
"I'11 have to admit I've never seen all of these little wars that were going on, though they clearly are, now that you point them out. I'm a little surprised because I thought you were going to launch into the standard arguments: accreditation and all that. "
I like to see 'all that' as the fences or walls within which the above wars are fought out. I once made a list.Its not too difficult to get a long one. " He abbreviated on an envelope:
"They're not in any special order but you can see how many there are and they change. It is a large, dynamic set of constraints. When you look at it carefully, there's not much space in which to play the educational games or fight the wars you're suggesting. If each one in this list limited full expression of your ideas by only two percent, you'd only be able to achieve about 36 percent of your expectations. That's damned depressing to me, and a lot of us who've fought these battles before. I'll guarantee you its more than two percent. The situation is like the national budget -- hell no, my family budget. There's precious little of it that can be spent on what I want to. There are no discretionary funds. We can spend a hell of a lot of time and energy, make life-long enemies, and change the damned curriculum or whatever in hell you want to call it one or two percent. It is tough to get excited about it.
"I admire your excitement though. Don't give up. I didn't realize it was so late. I have a class. We need to do this again soon. I" Russ grabbed his hat, a folder of papers, and rushed off.
Saul felt like he had been dropped on his back from the roof. Days later Saul tried writing about the instructional program. The encounter at the lunch table had been helpful. It made him more cautious. There had to be a way to resolve this. The total result can be seen as the total creatitity, he thought and he could not blame others for failing if he had not even made the effort to remove some of them.
Some limitations from Ross' list were unfair or irrelevant, much like listing gravity as a problem. The others were of concern. He wrote:
No matter how articulate, philosophical, or idealistic a professor; no matter how far from the real-world; no matter how disinclined he may be to deal with non-abstractions or to make decisions; these are all irrelevant in the process of developing an instructional program. He must propose and decide upon a specific program. Developing a program is a difficult process; changing one just as difficult. The process continues almost annually in every major university department. Within the process converges academic politics, room space, professional society demands, employer comments, numbers of students, hours available, talents of the staff, faculty experience, and the reality that decisions will be made that will be of considerable import to thousands of students over many years. Educational programs are shaped by employers, societies, administrators, and students operating on decision-making faculty. The process is very responsive to students, but also to new faculty, and the coming-of-awareness of resident faculty of changes in their disciplines and in society to which the university must respond.
Although in the light of curriculum information it is easy to believe the instructional program is the educational system itself, it is not. It is only one part of that system. There are two reasons for attempting to make this role explicit. can take the edge off the passion of the participants. First, it can take the edge off the passion of participants. For example, in a five-factor system, each achieved, say, 0.90 effectively, then the probability that the system is 'right' or is as effective as possible is only 0.59. If the program, as one of those factors, is converted from 0.90 to 1.0 perfection, the system will yet be only 0.66 effective against any large complex educational system like that of a department being perfect are very low.
Second, realizing the many dynamic factors operating on a curriculum may reduce the frustrations experienced by those engaged in the continual revisions during interminable committee meetings.
Architects operate on the premise that 'form follows function.' Builders of instructional programs might logically operate on such a premise. The evidence is sparce that such is the case. Long, long conversations occur on the 'function' of the graduate.The questions are constantly raised: What is our product? Who is or what should be the characteristics of every holder of a degree? With the diversity of employment is there a commonness, a unifying core, a sine qua non of our highly diversely employed graduates? The function of the graduate, the output of the university should prescribe some form for the instructional program.
Few conclusions have been reached on the question of 'who is our graduate?' but as surely as a tray at the end of a cafeteria line reflects the appetite and pocketbook of its bearer, the curriculum of a department articulates that faculty's summary answer. The definition of the graduate may never be resolve verbally; its temporary can be observed in the required-courses list in a college catalog.
An instructional program should be one manifestation of the goals and objectives of a department. More specifically a cur riculum should be a statement of the standard minimum amount of teaching to which a student should be subjected in order for him or her to behave or act in some very specific ways. Usually such teaching will result in learning, that is, desired changed behavior. Of course other behaviors will change too, but these are ' extras.'
Many behaviors will be acceptable, some unacceptable, but these are not the outcomes for which the educational system is designed. Where this change does not occur, the appropriate teaching has not occurred; there has been educational waste. That the instructional program for a degree, say a bachelor's degree, is a statement of such a standard minimum is rarely true. It is obvious that the idea has not been achieved.
* * *
There were many reasons why the ideal has not been achieved. Saul was distressed that it had not been, as were his students. He spent several evenings outlining the major difficulties so he would know them and could discuss them. They may be known (answers to "why" sometimes a course is needed that can ease some student pain even if they do not cure the malady), and so they may be overcome as rapidly and purposefully as possible.
A student may contact 60 to 80 professors in his or her four-year university experience. Few of these comprehend learning as changed behavior, can describe behavioral objectives for their classes, know how to evaluate these changes if they occurred, or know how to remedy a situation if they were not occurring. The planner of instructional programs assumes that the same changes will occur in students that occurred when 'he took the course' or that the changes will occur as if dealt with in his mind's eye as he would teach the course. Yet he has no access (or very limited access) to course content, objectives, grading, or instructional competence. He assumes, first, that the new student does not have the behavioral characteristics which the course is designed to achieve. Second, it is assumed that the teacher is 'good' in teaching methodology, well-informed, and just (and that the percentages of all of these are well established as incredibly low); third, that the objectives he has in mind are at least achieved by the course; fourth, that he could evaluate whether these objectives are achieved by inspecting the grades given by the professor; and fifth, that the student will retain the behavioral change until employed or until it is needed. There is a low chance that these five assumptions will be met simultaneously, frequently. Any structure built with so little measurement, so few tests of strength or design capability, or on so obscure an idea of what it must do can hardly be judged successful. That it is judged as good as it is attests to it being a once in a life-time experience for most people. Like a wife, an instructional program cannot be compared to another. Only a few can be experienced in a life-time. The sample size makes statistical inference infeasible. Most students have no criteria for what they expect a curriculum to do for them, thus they are rarely disappointed. (Of course they are frustrated by a course or two but not an entire instructional program). They do what is expected of them, they take the courses. They satisfy the requirements; rarely are they asked whether the courses satisfied their requirements. If the question was ever raised by them, it was raised late after graduation, and by a person probably struggling with and contaminated by the requirements of the moment, not a reasoned life.
Changes in instructional programs do not occur spontaneously. They are so dynamic and responsive to inexplicably complex phenomena they seem to be a life form. From such forms it is natural to expect self-change, adaptation, even growth. Such is not the case. These programs are dynamic in the sense they wriggle or writhe -- first these additions, then those subtractions; first these requirements, then those electives. They rarely change. Only knowledge of the process can allow students public, faculty, and the professional societies to participate effectively in the process of change.Change can occur.
Instructional programs are designed for masses of people, for populations of students. No student is served maximally; the superior student suffers, the weaker or inactivated student suffers. As newer educational methodology comes in to greater use and more self-learning is facilitated, these disparities will be damped, but they will remain because resources for enhancing the superior students will be unavailable, and the inactive students will continue among us. Nevertheless, most universities now have potentials (e.g., by petitions, In Honors programs) for a student to develop a personal program-of-study. Most of these differences can be handled with computer aids.
There are many philosophies of education. That some of these are reflected in each department is both their strength as a department as well as their weakness. Departments may arrive at a single philosophy through debate or, more likely, and perhaps more fruitful over the long run, may arrive at a temporary consensus, a tentative compromise that, while not satisfactory for anyone, will be satisfying, perhaps satisficing, to all.
The instructional program should begin before physical entrance to the department and last long after it in continually available instructional opportunities accessible through computer terminals, an array of media, and on-campus presentations and experiences. The time required is irrelevant; that is a function of the student's involvement and abilities.
Not the process, but the objectives are foremost. The objectives of any system are difficult to define. Without such definitions however, systems can be designed but can never be evaluated. By analogy, without a destination, any road will do. It can be satisfying. Designing a system for education requires a new concept of objectives. An educational system will have a complex set of objectives, each objective being given a different weight of important by different people. The probability of exact agreement is thus very low. Much of the writing on educational objectives is very general, and under critical scrutiny (the type of a posteriori questioning like "did we achieve that objective?") is found wanting. There are five types of objectives. That there are so many has resulted in much confusion and great debate. More time has been spent defining the singular word 'goal' or 'objective' than in articulating the items to be so named after the debate is resolved. Once stated they can be seen to fall into the types that are not hierachical:
Type 1 Objectives (basic)are the singular,general, vague, lofty statements made for the public and politicians and allow general agency or departmental philosophy to be discussed and general direction provided. It is a statement of what a department (or curriculum) should be (where to be is an on-going process). It establishes the "turf." of academic warfare, the grounds for allocating staff, funds, spaces, and scholarships.
Type 2 Objectives (fundamental) are expressions of what a department (or curriculum) should do. These are general, brief, and often specify desirable attitudinal and behavioral traits of graduates and their influenced society.
Type 3 Objectives (solution algorithm) usually singular or few, specify the approximate decision algorithm that the group intends to use. Are we trying to maximize a benefit-to-cost ratio, to minimize threats from named parts of society, to maximize students graduated, or to stabilize some index of quality of teacher performance? It answers the question about the fundamental decision process that will be used if an optimization would ever be performed on the educational subsystem being designed.
Type Four Objectives (policy/constraints) are the reasonable and constraints or limits placed on the educational system (small or large). There are real limits such as set for government funds, benefactor provisions, legislators that may not be offended, professional society requirements that must be met, leaders that must be assuaged. Achievement of objectives of other types is very much a function of the limitations set on students that are admitted. The objectives appear as the "subject to …" list (written or not) in "Our objectives are … subject to…. They are usually phased with "to maximize," "to minimize," or "to stabilize.". Debates are likely to continue about types of objectives such as what "type" is a statement about the level of subject mastery that should be required by what proportion of all classes (e.g., greater than 80% by more than 80%?).
This type expresses how other objectives will be achieved (e.g. safely). They are the major criterion such as 'maximize change or minimize risks.' An objective may be to conduct a safe program. This is a commendable desire, but is best cast as a constraint on the means by which type-2 objectives are achieved.
Type Five Objectives (primary) list the specific behaviors sought, the units to be taught, the classes offered. They relate to sequence, convenience, and diversity.
Type Six Objectives (action) list planned actions, such as 'to buy a tape recorder', 'to hire a faculty member.' They are the proposed means by which the higher order objectives are achieved.
Most current difficulties in formulating objectives lie in not identifying type-2 objectives. Objectives are not discovered by science. The questions of 'ought' or 'should' are reserved for people and are decisions based on values rooted in their religious, ethical and temporal viewed of people and nature. Objectives must be decided. (Of course what others have decided can be sampled and studied scientifically, but making the statement per se is a human act). First-order objectives are relatively easy to write (relative to those for reforming national welfare programs). So are fourth order objectives. How to solve problems or to decide on what actions to take are about as easy as the creative mind is fertile, although the action plan may be difficult to write. They are so difficult that there are few examples available. They are fundamental to rationally building an instructional program. Typically, they are assumed to be manifest in the course lists, in a way parallel to 'my philosophy is expressed in my actions, not my words' (an anachronism in a community prone to articulating precisely human thought).
It seems sophomoric, but necessary, to say that objectives need not be achieved. They are to be sought.There will be many reasons for failure, but unless stated, then there can be no valid justifications for programs and requests, no valid feedback mechanisms, no basis for restructuring, no measures of distance from perfection, no measures of effectiveness.
Instructional programs are designed to achieve objectives. They are arrangements of knowledge, teachers, and resources with students of varying interests and capabilities to produce people who can, upon graduation, meet the needs of a profession and society and better achieve their human potentials in life.
The 'stuff' to be arranged in the standard curriculum is knowledge and students. The typical units of knowledge are 'courses', but that has (or can be changed). In general it is conceivable, once type-2 objectives are written, to make a list of educational units that will optimally (not perfectly) achieve those objectives, given the type-4 objectives in effect. All objectives do not have to be specified and all courses do not have to be designed to achieve only those objectives. There are positive secondary products of education, like there are negative secondary products of industry. They are both very difficult to account. The instructional program is developed to increase the probability of maximizing the former, minimizing the latter.
Saul thought to himself, "I suspect 'courses' may persist as a pragmatic solution to developing an instructional program. We need to consider forming many one-hour courses or units so we can divide subjects, better specify course intent, reduce duplications for some students, and encourage faculty to teach those topics with which they are most competent. In the process of our discussions we shall all learn a great deal from each other and thereby enhance our personal lives, the quality of our teaching, and the well being of graduates.The effort seems worthy."
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