What is meant by 'curriculum'? (Homework reading and blog response for Mon Sept 21)

My pause #1: Eisner argues that when schools rely on things like grades, prizes / rewards, students may start treating school like a RPG game: do quests (homework, tests, etc...) and get rewards for it. I now think that simple things like grades might have unintended affects on students. Us teachers might be just trying to encourage learning, but students will only care about bumping up their grades. (in my opinion, this is definitely true, even for me) This is a definitive example of implicit curriculum because nobody ever said school is about getting A's, it kind of just naturally develops based on how schools are structured. 

To continue on paragraph one, sadly, I personally do not really know how to solve this issue at the moment. Most school systems (that I am aware of) use a grading system of some kind, because how else can we evaluate students' performance in classes? If we remove grading system entirely, then isn't school just a glorified playground with no goals in mind? Would students just work on their own projects? How would be have enough teachers to facilitate that kind of learning? This is something I will think about during my time at BEd. 

My pause #2: Eisner discusses subjects & experiences that schools leave out. For instance, schools never teaches us financial literacy or how to do taxes. A valid argument could be that schools have limited time for teachers, so some things have to excluded. However, things like financial literacy are very important topics too, and students will be better prepared for their lives after high school if we teach these things. The importance of null curriculum is that they can shape students just as much as what schools teach students. 

(Edit: I just thought of this while eating food) I guess math does teach compound interest? But that is barely anything in the world of financial literacy.

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Eisner expands on the idea of curriculum beyond just the subjects and outcomes that we are required to teach. He argues that students can also learn values and behaviours through school. The BC Provincial Curriculum connects pretty directly to Eisner's explicit curriculum because it formally outlines that kids should "know, do, understand". (refer to picture) At the end, both implicit and null curriculum also shape students' understandings, do's, and knows.