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

The United States and Canada have thousands of school districts. Many of these operate semi-autonomously and have the right to devise their own curricula. This implies that students across the country have widely different levels of education and, consequently, unequal economic opportunities later in life. These issues could be remedied with a national curriculum which could ensure a uniform and homogenous level of education across the country.

Allowing different school boards to have different curricula may result in strong educational disparities across the nation. Thus, a religious community valuing bible studies over mathematics may decide not to teach the topic all together. While surely we must take into account the views of a variety of communities when constructing a national curriculum, we must also ensure that the curriculum is balanced. It would therefore be potentially harmful to delegate the determination of educational content solely to various communities themselves, which may result in students with wildly differing levels of knowledge.

Furthermore, a national curriculum ensures equality of opportunity across the nation. Students who live in a school board that doesn’t teach basic mathematics cannot be expected to succeed in the work force as much as those who have had highly technical education. A national curriculum allows a national to provide its students with a homogenous quality of education which then results in equal workplace opportunities.

Additionally, education is a vital tool for socialization. Often times young students just entering grade school have little knowledge about the culture and history of their nation. A vital role of schools is to teach these important subjects to young pupils and thus to create a sense of solidarity among them and a sense of attachment and loyalty to the nation. It is for this reason that many schools require students to recite the pledge of allegiance and sing the national anthem every morning. However, in nations with complex ethnic identities relegating authority over education to school boards may cause schools to teach different version of history and thus serve to sew disunity in the country. In Israel, for example, Jewish schools teach pupils exclusively about the history of Jews in Israel, while Arab schools teach exclusively about the history of Palestinians. It is thus not surprising that the two communities have not managed to live in peace with one another.

Nevertheless, some may reasonably argue that by decentralizing the authority to determine school curricula one is in fact empowering individual community. It gives them greater freedom of expression and allows them to socialize their own youth in accordance to their own traditions and culture. This, many would argue, is vital component of a free nation.

While there is strong truth in this argument, it neglects the fact that in a democracy that nation must reign supreme over its individual communities. This is not to say that individual communities are not without their rights, yet these are expressed through the act of voting for national representatives. Thus even under a national curriculum, individual communities would still have their sway over it by electing representatives which would be involved in crafting it.

There are many benefits to having a national curriculum. It serves to unify the nation and ensures freedom of opportunity across the nation. By providing a uniform level of education to all citizens we can ensure that no student is left behind and that all students can feel like they are part of the nation. As such it is imperative that in countries like the US or Canada, which today do not have a single national curriculum, one is implemented.