A Liberating Curriculum: What it is and Why it Matters

2008-07-09T18:09:00.000-07:00

Introduction:

What is Curriculum and Why Does it Matter?

Wesley Null

Baylor University

July 2009

Everyone who discusses teachers, schools, or education uses the term curriculum. The word is unavoidable. Few people, however, stop to think about what curriculum means or what it takes to create a good curriculum. Even fewer people ask questions about what curriculum is for, what should serve as the proper foundation for curriculum-making, and how we should go about making curriculum decisions. These decisions should tie knowledge together, build community, and serve the common good. This book is about these questions and these goals. The best place to begin is with a much-needed distinction between curriculum and education.

Curriculum vs. Education

Curriculum is the heart of education. It is the essence of education because curriculum is about what should be taught. “Education” is an abstract, nebulous concept that takes place through families, churches, the media, and many other cultural influences that surround children.[1] Curriculum, however, is a more specific, tangible subject that is always tied to decision-making within institutions, whether they are schools, churches, non-profit agencies, or governmental programs. Unlike education, curriculum requires those who discuss it to address what subject matter should be taught. Education is frequently discussed without regard to subject matter, but every discussion of curriculum must address subject matter in one way or another. At the same time, however, subject matter is only one source of content for curriculum-making. Social scientific studies in education are often focused so exclusively on process that they seriously neglect, if not downright ignore, curriculum. This tendency to discuss “education” without addressing curriculum is a significant barrier that curriculum specialists, teachers, and indeed the general public must overcome if they expect to create good schools.

In addition to subject-matter, curriculum raises several additional questions about sources of content for curriculum-making. For example, any curriculum must address why subject-matter should be taught. Because of its history and etymology, curriculum is inevitably a teleological term. This why aspect of curriculum must take into account questions of purpose and ultimate goals. Unlike the way many people debate “education” today, curriculum cannot be discussed—let alone created—without addressing this question of purpose. Subject-matter is of course one of the sources of knowledge that must be included in a curriculum. At the same time, however, subject-matter—think of history, literature, or science—is only a tool that teachers and curriculum-makers use to achieve the goals embedded in a curriculum. The topic of curriculum raises these questions not only because of its history, but also because the term is tied to institutions, which must have reasons for their existence if they hope to flourish.[2]

Our modern, empirically-driven culture often de-institutionalizes “education,” stripping it of its teleological roots. Education is almost always discussed as if it were a modern social science disconnected from ultimate ends. The same task is much more difficult, however, with curriculum. Concentrating on curriculum can help us to rediscover the deeper ideals that were once foundational education.

Recognizing this distinction between education and curriculum also can help us to become more effective teachers, more thoughtful curriculum-makers, and more astute consumers of educational rhetoric. Focusing on curriculum also enables us to become better citizens because of the renewed sense of purpose that deliberation about curriculum can provide, whether these deliberations take place in schools, homes, churches, legislatures, or anywhere else. Distinguishing between education and curriculum can help us to realize that much of what passes for discussions about “education” today are shallow and devoid of meaning, if not downright deceptive.

Curriculum is distinct from education in other ways as well. Curriculum forces us to think about ethics, whereas education is frequently discussed as if it can be divorced from questions of right and wrong. Curriculum is about the substance of what should be taught (an ethical question), whereas “education” is often presented as if it can or should be a social science disconnected from the moral question of curriculum. “Education” is almost invariably analyzed in this way whether the conversation takes place in elementary schools, high schools, community colleges, universities, think tanks, the legislature, or the media. We often find people with backgrounds in economics, psychology, and political science making pronouncements about “what must be done” in education. Rarely, however, do these “experts” address the moral question of curriculum. The basis for their claims about “education” almost always derives from their standing as specialized researchers who explain social phenomena, not as citizens who contribute to curriculum deliberation.[3]

Explanations about social phenomena have real value. By themselves, however, they do not provide us with what we need to make good curriculum decisions. The source can be economics, psychology, sociology, history, or any other intellectual specialty, but the result is the same. Explanations can be useful in making curriculum decisions, but, by themselves, they are not sufficient for curriculum-making. The attempt to separate education as a social science from curriculum as a moral practice is not only impossible, but dangerous. Trying to create a science of education divorced from curriculum is equal to training someone how to fire a weapon, but forgetting to teach them when and why to do it.

Now is a momentous time, however, in intellectual history. Recent changes in social science and moral philosophy indicate that the twenty-first century will be a time of reintegrating the social sciences and moral philosophy.[4] Specialists in curriculum (or curriculists as I will refer to them) and others who make curriculum decisions need to pay attention to what is happening in other fields that integrate theory and practice, for example medicine.[5] There was a time when discussions of medicine attempted to be “objective” and value-free, but no longer. The same is true for education and curriculum. The language that surrounds so-called “scientific” debates about education does not do a good job integrating theory and practice, or social science and moral philosophy. I hope to demonstrate that the language of curriculum has a much better chance of succeeding at this task.

A major goal of this book is to help anyone interested in educational improvement to recognize when rhetoric about education is masking the underlying curricular issues that are the essence of education. Many people—both in the media and elsewhere—make pronouncements using the word “education,” when in reality they are making assertions about curriculum. Often these assertions about “what must be done” in the name of education are incomplete, hollow, or doctrinaire. This book addresses this problem by providing a deeper vision for what curriculum is, can, and should be, which will help us to re-envision what can and should be done in the name of education. A significant first step is to think and speak more clearly about curriculum at all levels.

One of the main reasons schools struggle is because states have spent a great deal of time and money on the creation of efficient systems of education, but have ignored the most significant ingredient in any school—the curriculum. Spending money to create large systems of schooling while ignoring curriculum would be like dedicating billions of dollars to create a new space shuttle, but allocating little time or money to the path the ship will take, the purpose of the space program, or the characteristics of the people who will pilot the ship.

Perhaps we have ceased to engage in meaningful deliberations about curriculum because we have stopped asking deeper questions about the purpose of schooling. If that is the case, curriculum can help us to raise these questions again. We cannot, must not, and should not continue to evade discussions of curriculum by allowing social science researchers to make assertions about what must be done in education while at the same time dismissing the term, topic, and moral practice of curriculum-making. That is one of the central arguments of this book. Educators at all levels—and especially curriculum specialists—need to learn how and why to ask challenging curricular questions that are inevitably moral, social, and political. Asking curricular questions in the face of rhetoric from empirical specialists can be difficult, but asking them is essential if we are to provide a liberating curriculum to all young people. Not only curriculum specialists, but also members of the general public need to learn to ask curriculum questions.

Curriculum Questions

What should be taught, to whom, under what circumstances, how, and with what end in mind? Put more concretely, what should be taught to these students, in this school, at this time, how, and to what end? What process should we use to decide what our curriculum ought to be within a particular school, college, or university context? These are curriculum questions. They are not questions that can be answered only with economics, psychology, political science, history, biology, mathematics, or any other intellectual specialty. They also cannot be answered only by looking at the skills that employers want their workers to possess. Curriculum questions can only be answered with inquiry into curriculum.

Curriculum is at the center of every controversial issue within teaching and schooling today. Debates rage on with regard to moral education, sex education, religious education, state mandated testing, intelligent design, whole language vs. phonics in the teaching of reading, prayer in schools, and other hot-button topics. What is the common theme that unites these debates? At their foundation, all of them are curricular in nature. Partisan advocates for one view or another may discuss these issues as if they are about education, but in reality they are about curriculum. They are curricular because they are ethical and teleological, leading us inevitably to the subject of purpose.

What is curriculum? What is it for? Who is it for? Who should make curriculum decisions? How should these decisions be made? How should we structure the decision-making process? What should we do to make a good curriculum, and what should people who specialize in curriculum development (and curriculum deliberation) do in order to make curriculum better? What characteristics or virtues should these people possess? Dealing with these questions is essential if any educational institution expects to be effective—and indeed successful—in any long-term, substantive way.

Theoretic debates routinely take place in state legislatures or in the U.S. Senate, but at some point any abstract political battle must come into contact with real-world practical decision-making in classrooms and schools. This book is about this transition that always takes place between theoretic visions for what curriculum “must do” or “should do” and the practical, decision-making world that is found in classrooms and schools. Good curriculum-making takes into account both of these extremes as well as points in-between.

What should be the nature of this transition between vision and classroom decision-making? How should we take theoretic plans for what curriculum must or should do and turn these plans into an enacted curriculum within a particular classroom, school, or university? What should be the internal and external characteristics of the curriculists who have worked to understand this transition and who can help it to take place more smoothly?

In addressing these questions, my purpose is three-fold. First, I want to present readers with five curriculum traditions that have been powerful for many years. Second, I want to persuade readers that the deliberative tradition is the most powerful if our goal is to create a liberating curriculum. Third, and finally, I want to show how the deliberative tradition operates in practice.

Why Curriculum Matters

But why curriculum? Why focus on a term that many members of the general public consider to be mundane and lifeless, or perhaps even boring? I am convinced that, upon investigation, readers will discover that curriculum turns out to be an exciting subject. It is neither listless nor tedious, as many assume. Instead of being nothing but a lesson plan or a list of boring topics, curriculum turns out to matter in at least three significant ways: as a subject, as a field of study, and as a moral practice.

As a subject, curriculum shares many characteristics with philosophy, specifically moral philosophy. People write books, take courses, share views, and engage in disagreements about what curriculum is and should be. For these reasons, curriculum is a subject that will never go away, especially in our modern society, which relies on institutions, credentialing, and structure. Curriculum also parallels philosophy because both fields attempt to see knowledge, reality, and practice in their entirety. Both aim to see the relationships between the various fields by concentrating on the “big picture” while at the same time developing specialization in one area (e.g., continental philosophy in the field of philosophy or science curriculum in the field of curriculum). In addition, curriculum and philosophy both rely upon reason and logic, but both also can be tied closely to matters of faith and religion.

Curriculum matters as a field of specialized study as well. Universities, national and state departments of education, local school districts, and individual elementary or high schools rely upon curriculum specialists. If curriculum specialists are to be employed in these various roles, they need specialized preparation that will help them and the institutions they serve. In our world of competing interest groups and conflicting views on a host of social and political topics, curriculum specialists must be creative, thoughtful, and socially astute people who understand the various levels of curriculum planning and execution. During their preparation in graduate school or as undergraduates, the best curriculum specialists have studied state curriculum guidelines, but they also know how to take these documents and shape them appropriately within specific institutional contexts. Making this transition between curriculum as an abstract document and curriculum as a living classroom force requires that curriculists be taught that curriculum is as much a moral practice as it is an epistemological reality.

Curriculum is about taking a particular subject, preparing it for classroom use, and then following through so that this subject-matter makes a lasting impact on students. This shift from curriculum as an abstract body of knowledge to curriculum as a social force requires anyone who makes curriculum decisions to address questions of teleology, ethics, and decision-making within specific school contexts. Specialized knowledge of one area outside of curriculum—whether it be mathematics, history, or political philosophy—is essential, but not sufficient when the task is curriculum-making. The sooner we liberate curriculum from the idea that it is nothing other than subject-matter (or “content”) sequentially organized in an abstract way, the sooner we will be on our way to realizing the ideal of a liberating curriculum for all.

What is a Liberating Curriculum?

In many respects, this book as a whole is an answer to the question “what is a liberating curriculum?”, so only the foundation for an answer can be provided at this time. A liberating curriculum is one that draws upon all of the talents and abilities of each student to make him or her more fully human. A liberating curriculum connects students with the traditions that provide the foundation for our social and political world, while at the same time preparing them to deliberate wisely and make decisions that further these traditions. A liberating curriculum, moreover, is one that transforms the inner constitution of a person’s character so that she can lead a life full of reason, reflection, deliberation, and happiness.

At this point, describing what a liberating curriculum is not is somewhat easier than describing what it is. Curriculum needs to be liberated from numerous ways of thinking that have shackled the growth of high-quality curriculum for decades. These restrictive ways of thinking include the attempt to reduce curriculum to a mechanical script that all teachers are expected to parrot, without teachers thinking for themselves or taking into account the students they teach. Another example is the tendency to reduce curriculum to nothing but a syllabus on the one hand or an efficiency problem on the other. Others reduce curriculum to an impersonal list of topics divorced from meaning, purpose, and humanity. Beyond that, there are Utopian dreamers who focus so much on what could be that they forget that curriculum must start with the reality embedded in a current state of affairs. There are also makeshift practitioners who reject the need to connect curriculum to a broader vision for what schooling can or should do. There are revolutionaries who promote a curriculum that foments revolution but fails to discuss what specifically should be done once the revolution has taken place. There are existential theorizers who emphasize personal experience to such an extent they forget that curriculum also must address community, citizenship, institutions, and concern for the common good. Certain intellectual specialists also sometimes seek to control curriculum. They wrongly assume that the structure of their intellectual specialty doubles as a legitimate curriculum. Finally, there are economically driven executives who see curriculum as nothing but a tool to train the next generation of compliant workers. All of these views limit our ability to create a liberating curriculum. In chapters seven through nine, I show how each of these views can contribute to a liberating curriculum.

Curriculum can address some of the problems raised by these ways of thinking, each of which has something to offer. However, when curriculum is captured by any one of these perspectives, it loses its life and vitality. By “a liberating curriculum,” I mean a path, a way of life, that enhances the social, moral, political, intellectual, and spiritual faculties of every student. I mean something similar to what philosopher Pierre Hadot means when he speaks of philosophy: “For real wisdom does not merely cause us to know: it makes us ‘be’ in a different way.”[6] The best hope for offering this path, this way of life, to every student is to build upon what I call, following others, a deliberative approach to curriculum practice.

Thesis and Structure of the Book

My thesis has three parts. The first is that curriculum is currently in chains and must be liberated if we expect to have better schooling. The second is that, in order to create a truly liberating curriculum, we must begin by liberating the concept of curriculum before we can address specific curriculum problems. Third, in order for curriculum to be truly liberating for real students in real schools and universities, we must move from liberating the idea of curriculum within our minds to deliberating about specific curriculum problems that face contemporary educational institutions.

The structure of A Liberating Curriculum has two parts. Section I—Curriculum Traditions—addresses the first two parts of the thesis, having to do primarily with the idea of curriculum. Section II—Curriculum in Practice—shows the practice of curriculum deliberation at work within particular educational institutions. This structure is designed to: 1) show what curriculum theory is, 2) describe how deliberative curriculum theory relates to four other curriculum traditions, and 3) provide specific examples of how deliberative curriculum theory operates in practice.

Brief Book Overview

Before expanding on what good curriculum deliberation is and should be, Section I examines four other well-known traditions within the curriculum field. Drawing in part upon curriculum philosopher William A. Reid’s The Pursuit of Curriculum, I provide a description of five curriculum philosophies that are commonly found today.[7] I have incorporated Reid’s language by using the terms systematic, existentialist, radical, pragmatic, and deliberative. In The Pursuit of Curriculum, Reid discusses four, not five, curriculum traditions. I have retained Reid’s terms, but have added a fifth that I label pragmatic. Each tradition provides a vision for curriculum that has strengths and weaknesses, which I address toward the end of each chapter.

Chapter one describes how I came to organize the book in this way. I begin with some background on the idea of liberal education before touching briefly on the impact of Joseph Schwab on the field of curriculum.[8] I also describe how I see this book building on the work of both Schwab and Reid.

I identify major figures who have shaped—and continue to shape—each of the five traditions. I also address why each of these traditions has been powerful at different times in American history. A Liberating Curriculum, however, is not a work of history. It is a work of curriculum philosophy and practice. My goal is to provide curriculum workers at the classroom, district, university, and legislative levels with what I hope is clear thinking about how to create a curriculum that is rich in knowledge, successful at educating diverse groups of students, liberating for all involved, and rooted in the ideal of serving the common good.

The subject of chapter six is the deliberative tradition, which I contend provides the best foundation for curriculum theory and practice. I aim to make this point by demonstrating how deliberative curriculum-making differs from the other four traditions while at the same time showing how deliberation helps curriculum workers to maximize the strengths and minimize the weaknesses of the other traditions. To highlight strengths and weaknesses, I use the five “curriculum commonplaces” outlined by Schwab in his third “practical” paper.[9] I discuss the notion of “commonplaces” in chapter one to explain what the term means and show why I think it is useful.

Chapters seven, eight, and nine address specific practical questions that curriculum workers face each day. I describe representative examples of common curriculum problems within schools and universities. I show what a deliberative curriculum worker likely would do in order to resolve the problems that I present. These chapters take the form of a narrative in which I describe the scene, the characters involved, and the nature of the problems that need to be addressed. The scenarios are intended for anyone interested in curriculum, but especially for college and university instructors who teach courses in curriculum theory, development, and practice. In order to broaden the scope of the audience for A Liberating Curriculum, chapters seven, eight, and nine include examples from K-12 schools and universities.

In chapter ten, the concluding chapter, I address the characteristics—or virtues—that I contend must and should be upheld by curriculists who wish to extend the deliberative tradition. In this final chapter, I also argue why the deliberative tradition provides the most realistic path to a liberating curriculum for all.

[1]Lawrence A. Cremin, Traditions of American Education (New York: Basic Books, 1977).

[2]William A. Reid, Curriculum as Institution and Practice: Essays in the Deliberative Tradition (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1999).

[3]At the university level, this assertion holds whether the social science researchers I am referring to are found in colleges of arts and sciences or in schools of education. Either way, the goal of social science research (when practiced in this way) is to explain social phenomena and simultaneously disconnect from curriculum (and ethics). I am arguing that this disconnect is both impossible and problematic.

[4]See, for example, Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 3^rd ed. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007); William M. Sullivan, Work and Integrity: The Crisis and Promise of Professionalism in America, 2^nd ed. (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2005); and William F. May, Beleaguered Rulers: The Public Obligation of the Professional (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2001).

[5]Steven H. Miles, The Hippocratic Oath and the Ethics of Medicine (Oxford, Eng: Oxford University Press, 2004).

[6]Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life, ed. Arnold I. Davidson (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1995), p. 265.

[7]William A. Reid, The Pursuit of Curriculum: Schooling and the Public Interest, ed. J. Wesley Null (Greenwich, CT: IAP, 2006).

[8]Donald N. Levine, Powers of the Mind: The Reinvention of Liberal Learning in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), pp. 114–145.

[9]Joseph J. Schwab, “The Practical 3: Translation into Curriculum,” School Review 81 (August 1973): 501–522.