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

I partially agree with the claim which has been made that a nation should require all of its students to study the same national curriculum until they enter college. The reasons for this are that ensuring the national curriculum will help the college authorities in assessing the potential candidates much more easily ,provide flexibility to the students to choose their careers, prevent some of the students from having an undue advantage on the basis of their courses and promote diversified learning in the formative years . One caveat would be that students might be forced to learn the subjects they are not interested . I shall try to expound on these points .

First , the positive result of the claim will be that there will be uniformity in learning across the country . This will help the colleges to assess the suitability of the candidates . For example , if many students applies to the college of engineering of a particular institute , then it becomes easier for the college to assess their candidature for their program . As , they have taken the same courses with the same amount of difficulty , the college will be aided in removing candidates it doesn't think are fit for the program. As the courses have been the same for all the students , there is much less scope for discrepancy.

The next point which will favor the claim is that this will promote diversity in learning .This will be possible if national curriculum designed is broad and is promoted to cater to as many students as possible. A student should not be exposed to just one stream or one kind of subject. This leads to a parochial view of the world .For example , if a student just takes courses in chemistry while completely ignoring physics, it will not expose him to the scientific advancements and the progress of science in this direction. A well made national curriculum ensures that all the subjects are included which will help the student get a wholesome view of the world .

Another point which will bolster the claim is that it will not promote undue advantage to students just on the basis of their GPA .This would be especially damaging if a student takes courses which are easy and have a high chance of good grades , then the whole purpose of learning is defeated . A well made national curriculum will ensure that this will not be allowed to happen and no undue advantage be made to students on the basis of these .

The above points do make a strong case for the adoption of national curriculum . But , there is also a room for caution. What if the committee which decides on the curriculum , both breadth and depth , is not up to this task ? This would make the entire process a colossal waste of resources and also be detrimental to the learning process of the students.

There is a quote by Albert Einstein , " If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree , then it will spend its whole life thinking that it's a fool " . This would be particularly apt in the scenario where curriculum is not focused on the diversity of the courses to be designed. This scenario , would then , cater to only a smaller section of the student population.

In conclusion , I would like to say that , the step although positive should be tread with caution . If the national curriculum ensures that the breadth of courses are good enough and will cater to the students' overall growth and also promote a more balanced world view and inculcate the process of scientific thinking , then it's a good move . However, these are too broad assumptions to be made for the implementation and hence the skepticism is justified.