Why "Backward" is best?

Though consideration about what to teach and how to teach, it may dominate our thinking as a matter of habit, the challenge is to focus first on the desired learning from which appropriate teaching will logically follow. Curriculum should lay out the most effective ways of achieving specific results, to meet cultural goals rather than a purposeless tour of all the major sites in a foreign country. In short, the best design derives back word from the desired results.

Only by having specified the results, we can focus on the content, method, and activities most likely to achieve those results.

But many teachers begin with and remain focus on text books, favored lessons, and activities (the input) rather than those means that can be implied to in the desired results, the output. They focus on teaching rather than on learning, and spend most of their time thinking what they will do, what materials they will use, rather than thinking of what learners need to accomplish the learning goals.

I think that the goals should be specified, so that they can be achieved by design and not by hope.