Educational objectives help or hindrance?: A reflection against the position of Eisner

Abstract

Although educational objectives have played critical roles in facilitating instructional activities easily, Elliot W. Eisner argued against this by saying that the pre-intended objectives have hindered the practitioners' instructional initiatives. Not only Eisner but also other re-conceptualists and conceptual empiricists viewed the objectives negatively. In one way, they may be right in which the procedural approach may not seem to allow curriculum makers to exercise curricular issues holistically. On the other way, it is difficult to manage the broad curricular issues in a real environment since running the teaching-learning activities is problematic if the instruction is boundless. Though both the conceptual empiricists and re-conceptualists have criticized the traditional approaches of curriculum, they couldn't show their ways of exercising curriculum practically in the real world, i.e., their ideas simply remain on the paper. Still now, conceptions of the traditionalists are influential around the world early from kindergarten up to the higher education level than the opponents' impractical propaganda. Therefore, educational objectives remain helpful rather than impediment not only for this century but also for the coming centuries.