The document summarizes the child-centered curriculum approach to education. It emerged in the 20th century based on the research of John Dewey and others who believed education should be centered around the child's interests, abilities, and needs. Key aspects included activity-based and project-based learning using various media. Strengths were engaging children as the focus of learning through experience rather than rote memorization. Weaknesses could include misinterpretations that fostered license rather than freedom, and criticisms that it ignored schools' role in perpetuating a society's values and traditions.
2. A new respect for the child, a new freedom of action, was incorporated into curriculum building in the child centered school. The philosophy underlying this curriculum design is that the child is the center of the educational process.The curriculum should be build upon his interest, abilities, purposes and needs. This type of curriculum emerged from the extensive research carried on in the 20th century carried by John Dewey and his followers.
3. Common characteristics of programs founded on the new philosophy were the “activity program”, the “unit of work” and the recognition of the needs for using and exploring many media for self-discovery and self direction.
12. 2.The child-centered philosophy is often conceded to be an inherent weakness. In this effort to free the child, many critics charged that the basic purposes in the establishment of schools were ignored. From the beginnings of formal education as a function of the society, conceived as a means of perpetuating the life of a people. Society supports school in order that its youth will be educated in its values, beliefs, traditions, customs, and mores. Society looked upon the child-centered curriculum and found it lacking. While the schools often became the scapegoat for ills were the correctly attributed to other social agencies, nevertheless they were frequently vulnerable to the charges leveled against them.
