A nation should require all of its students to study the same national curriculum until they enter college.

Education equality on a national and global scale is a significant consideration in today's culture. The development of global and national curriculum standards has been in discussion, especially in western nations such as the United States and United Kingdom. However, standardized national curriculum undermines a student's decisions regarding their education and career paths while not fully addressing the education equality issue at hand.

The implementation of national standized curriculums has been on the rise since 1995 due to concerns about student disadvantage due to location or background. Some schools, both in comparing private to public schools and public schools to each other, do not provide equivilent educations. This puts the students at a disadvantage when applying to colleges or entering their future careers. The implementation of a national curriculum would not only make college admissions easier for the acceptance commitee due to a easy-to-apply standard, but also allow all students to enter on the same level.

However, considering curriculum as the only factor in education equality ignores the inequalities regarding the quality of teaching and access to resources. While providing the same curriculum may allow the same education on paper, students in a particular school or class will inevitably have access to a more informed or higher caliber teacher. Additionally, providing the same curriculum to an entire nation may ignore different areas level of existing knowledge due to conditions such as social or economic class. Attempting to perscribe the same curriculum to all regions would not, in fact, level the playing field as much as people assume. A better solution would be to assess and repair the existing educational faculty in various schools.

Furthermore, the common curriculum approach also fails to take into account student interests, as well as varying student career plans. Some students do not plan to attend higher education such as college, but rather get the trade training they need before entering the workforce directly. Teaching the same curriculum to these students with the assumption of them pursuing higher education ignores their needs, which may include a machine shop class or more applicable work training. By assuming end goals, there is ignorance to needs. Additionally, some students desire particular courses in a subject and a more focused school work if they already have an interest or a career chosen out. As a student who attended a school in the United States focused in international relations, I specifically chose to take multiple foreign language classes as well as classes focusing in the histories of foreign countries, alongside the more common courses. This focus allowed me to not only score higher in my classes, as they were of particular interest to me, but also show my passions and abilities to colleges upon my application. Allowing students to shape their curriculum allows them to entertain the ideas of different careers, thereby easing the transition into choosing a college major or trade after high school. The installment of a common national curriculum would undermine these interests and reduce primary education to a list of classes, rather than a time for exploration.

While the use of a common national curriculum would allow some concerns about education equality to be addressed, it would ultimately not benefit the students or allow for a quality education for all. While the same curriculum across a nation would allow for easier assessment upon application to college and transfer between regional schools, it would not allow for the same quality of instruction for all students. The institution of a common curriculum would undermine student choices regarding their careers, exploration of various topics of interest, and attempt to reduce a group of varied individuals with equally unique career plans into one lumped group. Students who do not plan to enter college, or have a particular interest beyond the national curriculum, would be restricted to a pre-defined system for a generic education. Ultimately, the requirement of students to study the same national curriculum until entry to college would not be a reasonable approach to reworking the educational system.