¶ … Curriculum and Consciousness

The educational theorist Maxine Greene's essay upon "Curriculum and Consciousness" pairs two seemingly unlike notions. She discusses the need for a collective aim in the structure of a syllabus or formal curriculum design along with the individual nature of the student's consciousness that must be raised by the structure of a curriculum. Discipline and democracy must always be paired with a mixture of what the author calls "tension and a kind of ardor." This tension comes from the fact that the development of curricula must be individually-based enough so that it helps each child realize his or her own unique needs, yet the structure of learning must also have a collective aim to help students to realize their deep connection to and responsibility for not only their own individual learning experience but also for other human beings who share their educational world.

Thus a curriculum must be organized around group work, to make learning collective, and yet personalized enough to allow for individual learning paces and needs, according to Greene. But unfortunately, in the real world of many teacher's personal experiences, group work amongst students of varying abilities and needs is less perfectly realized in fact than it is in the ideal -- more competent students often take control of even the most democratic groups, and teachers have difficulty adequately supervising all children, to make sure that all children actively participate in the learning process of a group. Also, Greene's stress upon art as critical method of release for students, although inspiring in her passion, neglects to consider the fact that for some students, science and math rather than the humanities may be their ultimate modality of release and achieving a sense of competence. The presence of students who do not speak English as a first language, or who experience cognitive reading difficulties further temper one's idealism for Greene's stress upon a humanities and arts-based curriculum. True, being able to articulate oneself in a number of different languages, including imagery and creative forms of expression are important, but a school must also instill basic skills within a student's cognitive framework, before such subjects can be apprehended with full understanding in the classroom, much less be deployed creatively by students.