I have a clear bias about education. I do not think of education has anything remotely resembling a science and decry the attempt to use terms like “scientifically based” in relation to educational programs. I believe that the Federal programs to control education have all been misguided except of those that have forced desegregation and support for learners with special needs on reluctant local, state, and federal agencies. I support the use of data-driven decision-making and standards in classrooms, but not the testing mania. This all ties in with my conceptualization of education as a practice which skilled, well-trained practitioners should conduct. Good teachers, the skilled, well-trained practitioners education have as their central focus learners and learning, along with a repertoire of strategies for organizing, motivating, and engaging those learners. Good teachers are actively engages in developing their own repertoire of performances related to learners, language, content disciplines, institutions, and culture, precisely so that they can perform in various cultural settings, inside and outside the schools.
I find that the current uses of testing and inappropriate data decisions are narrowing the curriculum and dumbing-down the performances of students in schools because accountability programs are based on punishing schools rather than providing suitable support structures for learners and their teachers. We need schools and teachers and administrators where the question asked is not, “Which students scored a passing level on the standardized test?” but where they ask, “With this profile of scores and behaviors, what hypotheses do we have about the child and how do we provide the best instruction, programs, and curriculum to help that child and others learn?” Furthermore, I am worried about a new creeping resegregation that is occurring through the use of various alternatives to public schools: private schools, parochial schools, religious schools, charter schools, and, the newest type of schools in our country, failing schools.
My bias has come from a background that includes study of mathematics, science, music, linguistics, and philosophy, particularly the philosophy of science, as well as education. But there are other factors as well: for example, I reject religious, mystical, quasi-mystical, spiritual, quasi-spiritual, patriarchal, literary, and simple explanations. Of course, such a statement of rejection implies a need to include these very things as part of the discussion and makes them important for the writer and the reader because they present important cultural archetypes of thought, language, and hermeneutics. I see complexity where others want simplicity. Most policy decisions based on simple rules, I also reject. Differences of context, situation, and personalities are important in application of any rule and within any system, and classrooms are complex social systems despite the tradition of lecture as the sole means of transmission in traditional schooling. Even fairness, justice, and evenhandedness cannot be constructed without historical and autobiographical understanding because perceptions of these qualities are laced with hegemonic complacencies, assumptions (often racist), parochialism, colonial condescension and various autobiographical blindnesses – for we often do not know that we do not know something crucial for a fuller understanding. Furthermore, all systems have holes that cannot be foreseen, and attempts to build a complete system usual lead to more holes that cannot be explained or solved through the rules of the system. Thus, for me, all policies are ad hoc, meant to be modified, and petitioned for waivers of exemption. Even scholasticism cannot evade the incompleteness of systems and their rules, but learning and knowing are the only ways that lead to understanding, even when the conclusions echo Socrates in stating: “I know that I don’t know”.
Some texts deserve close reading and exegesis, but most only receive and merit a light reading to stimulate the mind of the reader to develop thoughts related to the topic and then to push for more thought and interpretation. For the good teacher, the learners contextualized in the classroom become a text that requires close reading and exegesis. The words from the text are internalized and modified from the patterns of the author’s intentions and meaning into the meanings of the reader/thinker going beyond and forward through time. The words of the teacher’s classroom-as-text becomes that data the motivates the teacher’s agency.
My construction of teacher and student engaged in curriculum implies a progressivist and functionalist bias on my part and both reconstructionist and deconstructionist stances. This fits with a stance that holds important the Dephic Oracle’s statement: “Know thyself,” supposedly given to Sokrates in ancient times, but also with a stance that is constantly exploring, inquiring, revisiting, revising, and looking at alternative interpretation while reserving the rights to reject some stances on various grounds including ethical and moral ones. In this, I acknowledge a great indebtedness to Pinar (1994, 1998, 2004) and his colleagues (e.g., Pinar, Reynolds, Slattery, & Taubman, 1997; Reynolds, & Webber, 2004) for their work on curriculum theory and the intellectual stimulation that it exacts. The practice of curriculum must start with the autobiographical and biographical work of the learners and the teacher, not with arbitrary rules and policies from an outside system. Indeed, learners and teachers are the very essence of curriculum; they form the system where learning occurs.
References
Pinar W. (1994). Autobiography, politics and sexuality: Essays in curriculum theory, 1972-1992. New York: Peter Lang.
Pinar W. F. (Ed.). ( 1997). Curriculum: New Identities in/for the field. New York: Garland.
Pinar, W. F. (2004). What Is Curriculum Theory? (Studies in Curriculum Theory) Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum Associates.
Pinar, W, Reynolds, W. M., Slattery, P, & Taubman, P. M. (1997) Understanding Curriculum: An Introduction to the Study of Historical and Contemporary Curriculum Discourses. New York: Peter Lang.
Pinar W., Reynolds W., Slattery P., & Taubman P. (1995). Understanding curriculum. New York: Peter Lang.
Reynolds, W. M., & Webber, J. A. (Eds.). (2004). Expanding Curriculum Theory: Des/positions and Lines of Flight. Mahwah, NJ: Earlbaum.
Pinar W. F. (1988). "Whole, bright, deep with understanding": Issues in qualitative research and autobiographical method. In W. F. Pinar (Ed.), Contemporary curriculum discourses (pp. 134 - 153 ). Scottsdale, AZ: Gorsuch Scarisbrick Publishers.
Pinar W. F., & Grumet M. R. ( 1976). Toward a poor curriculum. Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt.
Pinar W. F., Reynolds W. M., Slattery P., & Taubman P. M. ( 1995). Understanding curriculum: An introduction to the study of historical and contemporary curriculum discourses. New York: Peter Lang.
Pinar, W. F. ( 1994). Autobiography, politics, and sexuality: Essays in curriculum theory, 1972-1992. New York: Peter Lang.
Pinar, W. F. (1998). Understanding Curriculum as Gender Text: Notes on Reproduction, Resistance, and Male-Male Relations (pp. 221-243). In Pinar, W. F. (Ed.) (1998). Queer Theory in Education. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum Associates. Available: Questia Media America, Inc. www.questia.com
Pinar, William F. (2004) What Is Curriculum Theory?. Lawrence Erlbaum: Mahwah, NJ. Available: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=104633555.
Pinar, William F., & Irwin, Rita L. (Eds.) (2005). Curriculum in a New Key: The Collected Works of Ted T. Aoki. Lawrence Erlbaum: Mahwah, NJ.
Pinar, W. F. (Ed.) (1998). Queer Theory in Education. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum Associates. Available: Questia Media America, Inc. www.questia.com
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