The missing ingredient in education is the curriculum component of problem-solving skills. Students need a learning environment that provides opportunities for students to understand an integrated curriculum,to think for themselves, and to connect that learning to real-life applications.

This problem-solving component is difficult to promote in today's standards-based curricula. This is compounded by the fact that problem solving skills cannot be assessed with a standardized test. In the current climate of nationwide standardized testing, it is unlikely that improving problem-solving skills will be a priority any time soon.

Some history of curriculum will be useful to understand where we are today:

Far more young people attended school in the 20th century than had in the previous century. By the 1920s and 1930s curriculum was considered to be all of the experiences students had at school, whether the activities were planned or unplanned. School served a socializing function and curriculum was a process rather than a product.

By the 1950s, curriculum was considered a learning plan. Curriculum focused on activities that were planned by and directed by the school to meet its educational goals.
Beginning in the 1960s, there was a shift to performance in the schools. Educational outcomes and accountability were emphasized during the period of the 1960s through the 1990s. Curriculum was concerned with results.

Then, technology became a very important component of curriculum and it continues to be a rapidly growing influence into the twenty-first century.

How are curricula developed? What is the connection to the need for problem-solving skills?

Currently there is no national curriculum, but big states drive publishers to write textbooks whose contents are designed to their state's needs. Sometimes, remaining states use textbooks written for the large market states. This means that smaller market states have to modify or add information to the publishers' texts to address their own standard course of study. Therefore, it is up to the states, maybe even to the larger states to make large-scale changes to include problem-solving skills. This, in turn, will drive the publishers to incorporate this view of each subject in the schools.

Educational Organizations such as the National Council for Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) and the National Council for Teachers of English(NCTE)also influence curriculum. These organizations will need to continue

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