The Question Concerning Curriculum

Abstract

Heidegger’s philosophy and direct contributions to educational thought do not make it easy to envisage a form of curriculum that can promote openness to Being. Much debate goes on about curriculum already. There are arguments that curriculum should be about appreciating the achievements of human culture, or about preparing for the demands of life in the modern world, or about the meaning that learners make of experience—or some combination of these. This chapter considers these three curriculum orientations from the perspective of Heidegger’s philosophy. His critiques of the Tradition and humanism undermine the idea that curriculum should be about appreciating culture. His critique of the instrumental mindset challenges the idea that curriculum should focus on the demands of modern living. That curriculum should be a matter of developing the learner and that the learner’s experience is itself a form of curriculum appears to be more consistent with Heidegger’s thinking. However, it is argued that although a curriculum oriented to awakening the sense of Being has a similar starting point to a curriculum oriented to the learner’s experience, it takes a different direction: into the disclosure of Being itself. The chapter goes on to describe a vision of an ontological curriculum that goes some way toward answering the question of what a curriculum could be like from the perspective of Heidegger’s philosophy.