Coverage in the Curriculum

I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth pass away, not one iota, not one serif will pass from the [curriculum] until everything [is covered].

Pardon my ironic paraphrase of Matthew 5:18 but I trust you will see my purpose as I discuss Shulman’s (2004) comments on the principle of coverage. He states, “A particularly glaring problem is the eternal universal question of curriculum, namely, “How can we possible teach everything we know when we have so little time?” (p. 494). One solution, he says, is coverage – for if we cover everything, we no longer feel guilty, even though coverage fails to explore the depth, variation, and richness of “the essential questions and central ideas of the disciplines and interdisciplines” (p. 442).

But there are also political reasons to opt for coverage. The stakeholders and constituency of a given school have perceptions of knowledge they value. Therefore, coverage of those values tends to convey “more is better” or perhaps “nothing succeeds like excess.” Coverage was the principle adopted by many Bible Institutes during the 1950s – 1980s. In other words, the curriculum was “better” the more it was filled with studying books of the Bible. Such a solution looked great to their constituencies, who equated Bible coverage with faithful, trustworthy education. However, other voices began to ask for something broader, more practical, and more integrated. With reluctance, many of these Bible schools began to offer courses in practical skill training (like typing or other administrative skills) along with a realization that teaching disciplines like philosophy had a lot to do with forming a faithful Christian worldview, understanding the world around us, developing confidence about our beliefs, and defending them in the face of opposition.

In doing so, students and faculty began to experience something Shulman points out. Rather than taking a shorter list of ideas and merely addressing them more deeply, the ideas themselves change character (p. 442). Suddenly certain doctrines were no longer irrefutable and some ideas became more “elusive and multidimensional in their complexity (p. 442). As Shulman points out, “The great challenge of teaching these less-is-more essential ideas is that they do not permit clear, clean, direct propositional expositions” (p. 444).

As Bible Institutes morphed into Bible colleges the curriculum did become more complex, troubling those who preferred direct propositional education, but nonetheless it did allow students to explore the depth, variation, and richness of essential questions. One college president I knew defended the eschewing of coverage by actually pointing to the Bible: “Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written” (John 21:25 TNIV). In citing this verse he explained, “The Bible is our measuring rule for exploring the wisdom of God not recorded in Scripture.”

Works Cited

Shulman, L. S. (2004). The wisdom of practice: Essays on teaching, learning, and learning to teach. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.