The Tyler Rationale

One of the disturbing characteristics of the curriculum field is its lack of historical perspective. New breakthroughs are solemnly proclaimed when in fact they represent minor modifications of early proposals, and, conversely, anachronistic dogmas and doctrines maintain a currency and uncritical acceptance far beyond their present merit. The most persistent theoretical formulation in the field of curriculum has been Ralph Tyler's syllabus for Education 360 at the University of Chicago, Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction, or, as it is widely known, the Tyler rationale.1 Tyler's claims for his rationale are modest, but over time his proposal for rationally developing a curriculum has been raised almost to the status of revealed doctrine. In an issue of the Review of Educational Research devoted to curriculum, John Goodlad, commenting on the state of the field, reports that "as far as the major questions to be answered in developing a curriculum are concerned, most of the authors in the 1960 and 1969 curriculum issues of the Review assume those set forth in 1950 by Ralph Tyler." Later, he concludes with obvious disappointment, "General theory and conceptualization in curriculum appear to have advanced very little during the last decade."2 Perhaps the twentieth anniversary of the publication of the Tyler rationale is an appropriate time to reexamine and reevaluate some of its central features.