"A nation should require all its students to study the same national curriculum until they enter college rather than allow schools in different parts of the nation to determine which academic courses to offer."

The speaker prefers a national curriculum up until the school level, to different schools being allowed to decide on their own academic curricula. I would agree with this notion, since a national curriculum would serve many useful purposes to the nation. But on a long run, a national curriculum would undermine the fundamental need of the educational system in the country. A child is the important part of the tomorrow's society. A child's education must be given the most importance, because this is the basic step to the development of the tomorrow's society. Thence, careful importance must be devoted to the selection of the educational curriculum of the tomorrow's citizen if this nation.

Admittedly, a national curriculum would serve several benefits to the nation. A national curriculum would ensure that every child is provided with the fundamental knowledge and skills in diverse fields. Also, every student of different region would be equipped with the same amount of knowledge, thus facilitating the college administrators to create the coursework that would be in similar lines to all the students who are neither above nor below the level of their educational experience. Students , who are children of certain parents with extremely instable professions, will be requiring to join different schools in their entire school life. A national curriculum would ensure an advantage to such students without raising the need to get used to the new environment and new curriculum whenever they change a school. A national curriculum would also help to inculcate several values to the students upon which a democratic system depends to thrive and even survive--tolerance to different people of different regions.

However, on the other hand, a national curriculum would give birth to certain problems which may outweigh all the benefits discussed above. Firstly, who is the deciding person and on what basis is the national curriculum created? In all the likelihood, a federal authority would be given the highest power to decide on the national curriculum, which may not be unbiased and may not reflect the views and needs of schools, parents and children of different regions. Also, such federal authorities are notoriously susceptible to intervening lobbyists who are not concerned about the best to the children.

Secondly, the national curriculum would result in the ban of different textbooks and websites which provide different perspectives and ideologies about certain things, which are taken as an active threat to the power of the government. This would result in obliteration of the basic requirement of the education- enlightenment.

Thirdly, the national curriculum mayn't take into account the diverse interest of different regions, and different kinds of students that are going to study under it. This may result in complete disinterest to the students who are the ones to follow this curriculum, resulting in nothing but, nostalgia among the students.

To sum up, a national curriculum would produce several benefits to the nation, if it remains unbiased. However, the schools of different regions must be provided with certain discretion to select the most suitable and appropriate course materail that would satisfy the requirements and interests of that particualr region/community students.