Which brings us to the notion of emphasizing outcomes versusexperiences. This shift to the notion of outcomes is very much in keeping with the current movement toward accountability in the public schools, that is, the perspective that there are indeed specific things that the schools are supposed to accomplish with children. District personnel, school administrators, and you as one of many teachers are to be held accountable by the public/taxpayers for ensuring that those objectives are met.
Curriculum, it turns out, is indeed much more than the idea of specific subjects as represented by the trivium or the quadrivium. And, as we will see in the next section, it can be characterized not only by what it does include but also by what it intentionally excludes.