ABSTRACT
The notion of systematically planning the curriculum is relatively recent when considered in relation to the full duration of the history of education. Charles A. McMurry and his brother Frank recognized in Herbartian pedagogy a systematic method for selecting, arranging and organizing the curriculum. They saw geography as the subject with the greatest potential to unify all other subjects on the curriculum. In their later years they saw the worth of such 'new' subjects as nature study, science, industrial arts, health, agriculture, civics and modern languages as also being valuable on the curriculum. Franklin Bobbitt was given the task of developing a curriculum for the Philippines following the Spanish-American War at the end of the nineteenth century. He was forced to abandon his initial effort on realizing he was imposing a curriculum that would have been ideal for many parts of the USA but not necessarily for another country.
