Abstract
I point to the two intellectually “repressed” traditions in the field, specifically Jewish and international studies, whose articulation now can structure the reconceptualization of curriculum studies in the United States. From the former I take the model of Torah study that John Willinsky and Alan A. Block summarize, in which centuries of commentary comprise complicated conversation concerning the formation of ethical communities. From the latter I take the Brazilian concept of “enunciation,” the Mexican sense of “polysemic,” and the notion of “translation” in curriculum studies in South Africa to specify the significance of “place”—and its study in dialogical encounter with colleagues worldwide—as structuring efforts to formulate new concepts in the United States. In the field that is now unfolding, ethics may replace politics as the central concept in the field, restoring agency while reconstructing the concepts American scholars have been bequeathed. To illustrate, I conclude with Hongyu Wang’s juxtaposition of “East” and “West” in her reconsideration of the concept of reconceptualization, emphasizing its recursive and regenerative elements.
Let’s be a queer family with a different relation to generations.
Patti Lather (2010, 75)
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Notes
As will Hongyu Wang (whose chapter I will discuss momentarily), Erik Malewski (2010, xiii) contests “the notion of generations of curriculum scholars [as] either wholly rebelling against the previous generation or wholly writing in their shadows.” Focused upon conversation, Malewski (2010, xiii) disputes any “claim to post-reconceptualization as the terrain of a younger generation.”
Block (2004, 10) points out that “[t]he field of curriculum has been forever dominated by the discourses derived from Greek, Roman, and Christian principles and by practices and methods that derive from those principles” (see also Block 2004, 20, 21, 27.) Schwab is Block’s searing example, arguing persuasively that “Schwab’s work in curriculum, and particularly his exploration of curriculum in the four seminal essays that appeared between 1969 and 1984, have been interpreted within the framework of these Greek, Roman, and Christian discourse systems and have been, therefore, either misinterpreted or misunderstood—perhaps even as a result of Schwab’s own reticence to name the ‘J’ word in his published work” (Block 2004, 15). Understood in Jewish terms, Schwab’s conception of “deliberation” becomes incalculably more rich than deciphered through Christian or secularized terms. “Schwab’s deliberation,” Block (2004, 17) writes, “seems to me to mirror Talmudic practice.” Evidently Ralph Tyler, in 1973 at least, thought Jewish intellectuality was best confined to Jewish schools (see Block 2004, 49). And “the preparation of objectives” (Tyler’s [1949] first “principle”), Block (2004, 54) notes, “was not what Schwab had in mind.” Does the emphasis of the US field upon teaching rather than study disclose its Christian rather than Jewish bias?
Block (2009, 89) writes, “the Rabbis have placed education as the central determinant of holiness.” He adds, significantly: “Education is our means out of the desert. While we study, there is no desert. And this study built upon faith is the substance of curriculum” (Block 2009, 111).
“Not a Socratic monologue,” Block (2004, 61) explains, “Talmudic discourse is critical inquiry often digressing far from the original topic.” Such digression has spiritual significance. Block quotes Halbertal and Halbertal (1998, 459): “The unique conversational structure of education in the Yeshiva and its attempt at maximizing cross-generational exchange aims at shaping the study of the text of Torah as a communal experience. Moreover, study is institutionalized in the Beit Midrash as a performative act carried out by the students’ participations. In such a discursive model, students are not passive spectators in a reality shaped by teachers. A Beit Midrash is a learning space shaped by the intensity and quality of the ongoing exchange of its students.” “Literally,” Block (2004, 61) explains in footnote 2, “this Hebrew phrase means ‘house of study’.”
If the contemporary US field is, as Malewski (2010, xv, n. 2) depicts it, “chaotic, layered, and discontinuous,... more of a mosaic than a linear line of progression,” then the discipline disappears. As Willinsky’s summary of midrash shows, “mosaic” and “layered” are laudable precisely because they correct for the “chaotic” and “discontinuous,” underscoring the temporal continuity of past and present.
In her response to Wang’s chapter, Xin Li (2010, 387) references the legendary Canadian scholar Northrop Frye who underlined “the figurative use of the term resonance and emphasized its capacity for stretching images over time and bridging temporal distance in a manner metaphorically, of flying away from the original as well as maintaining some elements.” This states succinctly the concept of allegory (Pinar 2012, 54–62).
Recall that internationalism and Judaism were linked in the minds of anti-Semites who condemned as “rootless cosmopolitans” (Appiah 2006, xvi). One is reminded of Paraskeva’s conception of an “itinerant curriculum theory,” but one that “disrespects” the canon by reconstructing it in intimate (e.g. knowing and dialogic) revolt.
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© 2013 William F. Pinar
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Pinar, W.F. (2013). Epilogue. In: Curriculum Studies in the United States: Present Circumstances, Intellectual Histories. Palgrave Pivot, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137303424_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137303424_5
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