The Personal Side of Defining Curriculum

By the time Kieran Egan had come to publish his article “What is Curriculum?” in 1978, I was a 13 year-old working away my summer on my neighbours’ farms in rural Ontario. I didn’t have a clue what the west coast of Canada even looked like, let alone who Kieran Egan was. At that age I could have cared less about how we were learning and even lesser of what we were learning in school. I did my best because my parents wanted me to and because my teachers said things like, “You better learn this… you’ll probably need it some day.” Since then, I have seen quite a few shifts and swings in the “how-and-what” pendulum of curriculum. Please don’t misunderstand me, though–curriculum for me is in no way something outside of ourselves, like a pendulum swinging back and forth in rhythm with the distant churn of white ivory towers grinding out the latest “research” and “best practices”. Rather, curriculum comes from within each one of us. We choose, unconsciously or otherwise, to remember what we think is important to us at the time we are presented with it. What to learn and how to learn it is a living process as unique and dynamic as each one of us. Curriculum is the story of who we were, who we are, and who we hope to become.

The Privileged Pursuit of Curriculum

In 1978 Kiegan pushed against the establishment at the time, suggesting that “…the professional field of curriculum, at present, focuses on the basic question of what curriculum is, and this suggests severe disorientation.” (reprinted 2003. p. 9).  Almost twenty years later, Professor Emeritus Dr. David Blades, using a rack as a metaphor for curriculum, laments a similar refrain, “these racks have a habit of returning home.”(1997.  p.150). To be blunt, the disorientation around the meaning of curriculum and the constant attempts to reshape the “rack” of curriculum and strip it away rests mostly on shoulders of those with a very limited access to living and breathing students who learn in front of them. Scholars’ absorption into their research and subsequent fixation leave a dry and pallid taste in many a practitioner’s mouth and mind, especially when these “experts” lead professional development. Scholarship reveals to the careered teacher a cyclical pattern of debate and the tired ebb and flow of “everything old is new again”. For too long many educational researchers have been away from the true carriers and sculptors of curriculum–the young students themselves. It is either this or that the traditional industrialized university model of education and their keepers are simply too rigid and too protective to let go of their bias and privilege to see that sharing knowledge and practice and then giving ownership of the learning away is at the heart of making everyone’s story a successful and fulfilling one. Curriculum is something to be seeded and nurtured in the minds and hearts of students, not controlled and presented like a platter of charcuterie to be consumed or a “rack” to be hanged on the houses of people who take credit for its creation.

Abusing Historical Precedent

It is not enough that our scholars and the ones who shape and impose this false notion of curriculum hold tightly to the power and authority they wield, but they also use mainly Eurocentric traditions to justify their purpose and means. More recent thinkers like Egan are blind to the bastardization of even classical history, taking out of context the notion of curriculum to suit their argument. I studied Latin in a public high school in Ontario and learned about the flexibility of translation. Egan infers that Cicero’s idea of curriculum is the shape of the learning journey and not the learning that happens along the way. Egan’s second use of Cicero’s reference to curricula could be reinterpreted more directly as the idea that the journey of life is short, but that life offers an infinity of learning. I believe that Egan has bastardized the etymology of curriculum to suit his view of history. Of course, understanding Cicero in 1978 is quite a different enterprise than understanding him in 2020. However, the legacies of scholars past and present need not carry the weight of importance that they are given to them. New ideas and ways of learning and living change regardless. What is valuable is the light that scholars shed on these new ideas. Like Egan, Blades makes good use of first-person story to engage his reader in following the pedantic evolution of the science curriculum in Alberta, but he, too, has been unaware of the potential blinders that a narrow view of history can place even on philosophical ideas about curriculum.

The Core is the Human Story

If we strip away the intellectualized and research-laden notion of curriculum we are left with the student and the teacher. Unlike Egan’s chastisement of Pinel and Itard, what and how to teach are inextricably linked in the soul and mind of the student who stands ready in front of the teacher.  In my practice I use structure and discipline to incite interest and ignite the flame of learning. My specialized training has afforded me the luxury of teaching students, not bogged down by learning outcomes or prescriptive lessons created by someone else. In my experience, the best reward I receive from my students is not when they thank me for being their teacher, it is when they struggle and push through an idea or an action that is new to them and then make it their own, able to express in a new light who they are and where they want to go. What I teach are catalysts for positive change, the contents of which are different for each student. My students’ expressions of their curricula are unique to each of their own ongoing stories. Accepting that no one learns the same thing at the same time in the same way is the first step to shedding light on authentic, genuine, and respectful learning. The story, after all,  is everything.

References

Blades, D. (1997) Procedures of Power in a Curriculum Discourse: Conversations from Home. JCT, 11(4), 125-155.

Egan, K. (2003) What is Curriculum? JCACS, 1(1), 9-16.