Beyond Standardization: Powerful New Principles for Improvement

Introduction

The paper is a critical review of the article “Beyond Standardization: Powerful New Principles for Improvement” which shows growing concern for making improvements in the educational curriculum of the United States. The paper presents critique on the author's writing “Beyond Standardization: Powerful New Principles for Improvement” in which the discussion about the educational curriculum of the United States has been compared with its neighbouring countries that are the Finland, Canada and the United Kingdom. In this paper, the writing of the author has been critiqued in various manners by identifying the author's thesis in terms of the writing patterns, writing techniques, strategies, strengths and weaknesses of the paper, and arguments made by the author.

Identification of Author's Thesis

The identification of the thesis points presented by the author The principles that have been explained in the paper have made great contributions in the educational curriculum of the respective countries. The paper has been focused on the introduction of new educational curriculum strategies in the neighbouring countries of the United States like Finland, Canada and the United Kingdom. The transformation of the Finland from rural remote place into the strong economic powerhouse that possess high tech system is mainly regarded with the successful incorporation of the educational strategies that has been achieved with the time period of half century and less than that. The people of Finland possess a common goal and express the mutual visions that provide prosperous and creative future to their younger generation in terms of social identity and the creative history (Hargreaves & Shirley, 2008, 135).

Analysis of Author's Argument

A sufficient number of arguments have been made by the writer with regard to the educational curriculum of various countries. The arguments given by the author with regard to the national curriculum of various countries is based on the comparison. For example he argued that the educational sector of the Finland has paid attention to the technology and science that are considered to be the important priorities of the concerned authorities. A particular amount that is around 3% of the GDP has been given for the development of the technology and science in Finland. The educational and economic strategy are steered, integrated and chaired by the Prime Ministers while also including the executives working in the leading corporations and presidents of the university in the whole world (Hargreaves & Shirley, 2008, 135).

The writer also argued that the year 1990 has made Canada an epitome for standardizing its national curriculum. Higher costs have been incurred in the national curriculum of Canada that includes low levels of time required by the teachers for preparing, tests for high stake that is linked with graduation, accelerating requirements for the reformation. All these steps have made the reformation program costly that required higher costs to be spent on learning and teaching. However research on six secondary schools shows the harmful effects of its educational policies being followed within the school (Hargreaves & Shirley, 2008, 135).

Interpretation of Writer ...