Problem With Modern Curricular Philosophy

History Of Theory Behind Curriculum Development

The evolution of curriculum theory by and large reflects the current of thought found in the academic-political landscape. The essence of the ancient maxim cuius regio, eius religio applies here: who reigns, his religion. In this case, who reigns, his curriculum. This has been true throughout all the centuries where education was deemed important by a group of individuals or a State. For example, in the West, the ancient Greeks (most notably Plato and Aristotle) devised a curriculum with the purpose of attaining knowledge and/or achieving "soundness" in the mind. Curricula are ever-tied to an aim -- and the objective of a curriculum may be ascertained by a review of what it contains or what its teachers hope to achieve. Therefore, the evolution of curriculum theory is related to the evolution of individual and societal objectives. Historically speaking, these objectives are manifest in every era and civilization and so how curriculum theory has changed can be discussed with some certainty. While it may be said that the "academic" study of curriculum theory did not begin until the 19th century, such a viewpoint is unhistorical if one looks at the evolution of curriculum over the centuries. As the focus and aims of education changed with social and political shifts (most radically in the modern era), one sees a decisive shift in curricula (with today's schools focusing on democratic education). There is, of course, a reason for these shifts and so too can an underlying theoretical approach to these shifts be identified. This paper will discuss the history of theory behind curriculum development and make a contribution to the curriculum conversation by drawing attention to the relationship between worldview, philosophy, and/or religion and the development of curriculum theory.

How Curriculum Theorists Answer the Question, "What Knowledge is of Most Worth?"

As Rorty (1997) observes, "We are changed by what we read," (p. 85), and it is the propagation and institutionalization of literature over recent centuries that has led to changes and developments in modern curriculum theory. The answer to the question, "What knowledge is of most worth?" may be found in the texts used by schools around the world, for these are the texts that educators deem important. Similarly, one may study the curricula of foremost universities in order to see what prevails as worthy knowledge. That answers the "what" of course but not the "how." To answer the "how" one must examine the evolution of curriculum theory, which is itself linked to the evolution of societal development. Neither the establishment of curricula nor the use of theory in the process is new to education. Even Jacotot, who asserted the Rousseauian principal of naturalism when he stated that his pupils "had learned by themselves, without a master explicator" (Ranciere, 1991, p. 11), was drawing upon a philosophical movement particularly popular in France in the 18th century. Jacotot's "method of the will" (Ranciere, 1991, p. 12) was a theory that grew out of the 18th and 19th century Romantic-Enlightenment approach to education, itself modeled upon Rousseau's theories as articulated in Emile and The Social Contract. It was, above all, a decisive break with the past and the Old World, or classical, system of learning. How it had become popular and how that sort of knowledge was deemed most important (by Ranciere in the 1990s) could be told by understanding the cultural movement of Europe in the centuries prior to (and following) Jacotot's revelation. The answer to the question, in fact, could even begin much earlier. "What knowledge is of most worth?" is essentially the same question that Socrates asked in the marketplace, and one should have no problem identifying him as an early curriculum theorist.

Indeed, the Greeks offer a suitable place to start. The very first recorded rhetorical treatise was written by Corax of Syracuse in 460 BC. The purpose of the treatise was to persuade Sicilian landowners to fight for property under dispute, and it may be said that all education, from Socratic discourse to Orwellian newspeak, is aimed at persuasion of some sort. As Adrian (1999) observes, "although techniques of persuasion had no doubt existed for as long as humans had lived together, this [attempt by Corax] was the first known attempt to codify its practice" (p. 12). A century after Corax, Aristotle composed his own treatise on rhetoric, and in a sense set down the foundational aspects of the classical model of curriculum theory: According to Aristotle, a good rhetorician applies himself to the discernment of truth, and persuades his audience by demonstrating the truth of what he speaks: "There are, then, these three means of effecting persuasion…(1) to reason logically, (2) to understand human character and goodness in their various forms, and (3) to understand the emotions" (Aristotle, 1904). The philosophical aim of the Greeks was attainment of the unum, bonum, verum -- the one, the good, the true -- or, in other words, transcendence. Contrasted with the modern aim of "democratic education," it might be argued that classical curricula had a loftier purpose -- or one that was at least less Statist. Quinn's (2011) association of learning with a poetic focus on the "self" and the "new" -- or the act of "becoming" (p. 1230) -- carries with it the typical non-classical, "new age" sense of "theory" that ultimately arrives at no conclusion about anything other than an ethereal or abstract notion that education is being and being is essence -- or, in other words, insubstantial drivel. In this milieu, one need only quote Derrida or Arendt to be taken seriously, a point which speaks volumes to the standards of curriculum theory exercised today -- a world of difference between the codified theory of classical education.

Aristotle essentially systematized the art of rhetoric by composing a five-step model of argumentation, which consisted of studying the art of invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery. Aside from this study, Aristotle also emphasized the artistic proofs of ethos (a consideration of the speaker), pathos (the audience), and logos (the subject) using the approaches of "cause and effect, possible or impossible, and greater or lesser" (Adrian, 1999). Thus theory for the Greek concept of curriculum was rooted in rhetoric and (for Aristotle) truth.

Contrasted with the theories of curriculum of the modern era, the classical conception may appear simplistic -- but it was this simplicity of the theory (so the Medieval world judged) that allowed for development of the mind via the usage of tools of rhetoric; and it was not until the denial of universals by William of Occam in the 14th century that these tools began to be discarded for a more subjectivist approach to learning (Weaver, 1984, p. 8). In essence, nothing changed -- only the aim. From the objective standard maintained by Socrates through to Aquinas, the Western world's achievements stemmed not from a focus on "self" but rather on a focus on the "other." The break from the Old World, effected by the moderns, turned the focus to the self -- so that in essence every modern (with a primary focus on self) became like Euthyphro -- Plato's representative of subjectivism, more recently represented by Quinn (2011). Subjectivism is essentially where modern theory begins, building on the doubt fostered by Occam centuries earlier and solidified by the fracturing and loss of philosophical and religious objectivity in the West following the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Revolution. This subjectivism, moreover, has spread.

For instance, in 20th century China, Mao developed a theory of curriculum that was based on eradicating the schools of "foreign" ideologies for the purpose of turning all attention to his "self." His intent was to purge the realm of a mindset counter to his own will -- and in theory it was similar to the American "prison-school pipeline" curriculum, a system "reflective of networks of white privilege, which flow between institutions, such as education, the economy, and the law, and involve capitalizing on the misery of Blacks while simultaneously protecting white supremacy" (Martin, Fasching-Varner, Quinn, Jackson, 2014, p. 67). Mao aimed to preserve his supremacy at the expense of the Chinese citizen. His educational system aimed to inculcate in the youth a sense that he was the source of all good -- just as in America the aim of the "prison-school pipeline" is to inculcate in the youth a racist (and Puritanical) mentality that views Black misery as perpetual and of their own doing rather than as the outcome of an elitist system of governance. Were Aristotle to have a school today, he would likely assert that truth has been sacrificed on the altar of liberty in America -- a point which must be discussed more fully to appreciate "how" knowledge is deemed of most worth in modern curriculum theory.

Returning to the example of Mao's theory of curriculum, one sees how the modern dissociation from things "past" is connected to the modern enshrinement of "liberty" (a Revolutionary concept) and the focus on "self." Fitzgerald observes (1967), it was the "purpose of the Cultural Revolution as a whole to eliminate the principal features of the old society, and in particular all that [had] the taint of foreign origin" (p. 124) so that Mao could usurp the "past." Mao stated in 1964 that he had new plans for the youth of China: he knew that to secure his and China's ideological future, he had to secure the youth -- and that meant controlling their minds with the doctrine he devised. For that reason, he observed that "the present method of education ruins talent and ruins youth. I do not approve of reading so many books. The method of examination is a method of dealing with the enemy. It is most harmful and should be stopped" (Johnson, 1992, p. 552). Mao wanted total control of China's destiny -- and he wanted that destiny out of the hands of the religionists, whose doctrine was not formulated by him but by an outside body -- by the "other." Thus, places like Sacred Heart convent in Peking were closed, the sisters expelled, the school children sent home. Not limited to Christianity, Mao's Cultural Revolution targeted "Moslem institutions and Buddhist sanctuaries" as well (Fitzgerald 124) -- essentially anything that was not of his own design.

The Cultural Revolution was, of course, fueled by Mao's own Romantic tendencies -- just as the development of curriculum theory in the West has been led by Romantic-Enlightenment doctrine (Jones, 2000). But Huebner (1995) asks the correct question when he states, "How can one talk about the education, specifically, curriculum, and also talk about the spiritual?" (p. 13). It is indicative of the depth of dissociation from the "past" when Huebner goes on to assert that the "spiritual" concepts of the past, such as those used by Hopkins in his poetry, are not in and of themselves important but that what is important is that one appreciates the "moreness" -- that sense of something more beyond the tangible and sensible (p. 16). In this sense, Huebner identifies with Eliot's "peace that passeth understanding" from "The Waste Land," which is at least an affirmation of the need for "otherness" -- but at the same time he ascribes to the subjectivism of the Occam school which provided the break between Old and modern. Curriculum theorists of Huebner's mold thus gauge the worthiness of knowledge by the same "poetic" sophistry that Quinn (2011) or Hendry (2011) -- who also quotes Arendt -- uses in order to assert both "self" and "other" without fear of contradiction. It is essentially the democratic ruse that one can have his cake and eat it too, but this is what modern curriculum theory boils down to. In fact, any rigorous assertion of "other" over "self" meets with a wholly authoritarian voice that is distinctly illiberal. Hendry (2011) for example insists that curriculum theorists must continue to "become" by verbalizing "gender" and insisting that the history of curriculum be viewed from a gender-centric position -- one which involves "memory work," an Orwellian phrase to be sure (p. 15). The authoritarian tone of the modern curriculum theorist is certainly Maoist as it attempts to define eschatology not by any classical mode but rather by subjectivism and a focus on "self." It is to the point today where curriculum theorists ask, rather like Hamlet, whether curriculum evens matter -- as Heyer (2009) does. Heyer has read Dewey, Ranciere and all the approved theorists of the modern milieu -- and, as subjectivists must, he arrives at the point where he must define "truth" anew -- not as identity between the mind and reality -- but as another "process" of becoming -- an action that is not fixed but free. The associations are clear. Biesta (2010) likewise dwells upon the "logic of emancipation," a logic which, of course, leads one right to the slavery of "democratic" freedom and the "prison-pipeline" which is as literal as it is figurative for generations of students in the West today.

Making a Contribution to the Curriculum Conversation

The problem that this poses to the development of curriculum theory is that it deliberately blocks out or negates "spiritual" or transcendental nodes of learning. This has happened in America. For instance, Engel v. Vitale changed the character of public schools by compelling the courts to judge that government sponsored prayer had no place in public school. The issue was brought up by families who saw voluntary prayer (at the beginning of the school day) as a violation of their First Amendment rights. The issue was a contentious one. As Schwarz (1968) observed, "the establishment clause of the first amendment has been interpreted to prohibit any aid to religion. The free exercise clause has been interpreted to require that religious exercise be preferentially aided" (p. 692). Thus, the political-religious relationship between curriculum theory and governance came to the fore in this case. But in 1962, the establishment clause won the day -- and the families that opposed government sponsored voluntary prayer changed the face of public schools across America. Curriculum changes soon followed, as the landscape became more oriented towards political correctness, with a focus on democratic "self" rather than transcendence to the "other." Soon all religious material (from the Ten Commandments to Creationism as a science) would be removed as a result of the outcome of Engel v. Vitale, and this period of history (in which more than one revolution was taking place across the nation and the world) would be remembered as the one that dealt a death blow to any serious respect for religion as part of a legitimate State-sponsored curriculum by working to abolish school prayer. With the expression of transcendence abolished, there was less need to associate with this aim of Old World education. Instead, curriculum theorists have chosen to emphasize "science" -- defined, of course, by Rationalism -- the product of Enlightenment ideology.

According to Judge Overton in Laudan's (1982) review of the Arkansas Creationism trial, science has "five essential properties," (p. 16) which are essential in determining whether Creationism can be considered a real science. Science, as defined by Overton, is characterized thus: "(1) It is guided by natural law; (2) it has to be explanatory by reference to natural law; (3) it is testable against the empirical world; (4) its conclusions are tentative, i.e., are not necessarily the final word; and (5) it is falsifiable" (Laudan, 1982, p. 16). That the Courts must rule on the legitimacy of curricula approaches suggests that the "prison-pipeline" mentality runs deep in the West (just as Blacks must be oppressed and exploited so too must religion and transcendence be delegitimized and undermined).

The only way, therefore, in which Old World aims could be viewed as a real science would have to be in the same way in which the medieval age understood science: that is, as a hierarchical study conducted in the light of divine revelation. While Aquinas attempted to prove the existence of God through the use of natural reason alone, the purpose of Aquinas' scholasticism was, ultimately, to convey the truths of the Old and New Testament: "Since Holy Scripture can be explained in a multiplicity of senses, one should not adhere to a particular explanation, only in such measure as to be ready to abandon it if it be proved with certainty to be false; lest Holy Scripture be exposed to the ridicule of unbelievers, and obstacles be placed to their believing" (Aquinas, 1947).

By viewing Creationism as a real science Laudan attempted to show that, according to modern scientific theory, Creationism was untenable. This conflict between faith and reason (resolved by Aquinas centuries ago) is further evidence of the modern theorist's dissociation with the past -- as well as the theorist's inability to even discuss the legitimacy of Aquinas in an academic-political context. Curriculum theory today is guided too rigorously by authoritarian principals.

Henderson's (1995) work on "teaching" is, for example, dedicated to the Enlightenment philosopher John Dewey, and his sense of "good teaching" stems from the Zeichner-Liston theory of ideology tradition -- which, ironically, begins with the advent of Enlightenment ideology and contains no elements of theory prior to this point in history. Why is this so? The reason is that the authoritarian principals (and principles) of modern scholasticism do not permit serious inquiry into or contact with the ideology of the Old World -- for it is one that inculcates a spirit of transcendence, which is at odds with the aims of the authoritarian principal/principle (as Orwell deftly observes in his major works). Henderson (1995) categorizes curriculum theorists (or educators) according to one of the following four schools: the "academic tradition," the "social efficiency tradition," the "developmentalist tradition," and the "social reconstructionist" tradition -- in which it is viewed that "education is the practice of freedom" (more Rousseauian ideology, essentially). In these "traditions" is nothing new and nothing particularly oriented towards the objectives of the ancient Greeks. Curriculum theory has, in other words, not developed since the Middle Ages so much as attempted to reinvent itself through a series of rehashed ideologies that all stem from the same period in Western history -- the Romantic-Enlightenment era.

It is Woods (2008) who makes the claim that modernity's curriculum shift was the result of the shattering of Western civilization under the pretence of religious liberty, as codified by the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. In one sense, Woods' work is anachronistic to the majority of modern historical scholarship -- for it asserts a position that is otherwise pejoratively regarded as rose-colored or old-fashioned. What Woods labors to show, however, is the inconsistency between modern consensus and historical perspective. What he regards as meaningful fact, his contemporaries shirk as irrelevant evidence. Woods cites, for instance, a handful of passages from modern textbooks that relegate the influence of the Church on medieval affairs to that of incidental nuisance -- if not outright menace: "Everything that was good and proper was despised and all branches of human achievement were ignored in the name of Jesus Christ" (Woods, 2008, p. 3). Such is one example of Romantic-Enlightenment doctrine as espoused in the modern textbook that Woods assesses.

Woods' objective is to erase what he suggests is the myth of modern philosophy -- that all learning and scientific inquiry began with the Renaissance and blossomed and flowered with the Enlightenment. The very first error that Woods attempts to dispel is that the entirety of the medieval era was a Dark Age, as, he laments, it has been popularly believed to be. Rather, he points to the centuries of growth, unity, and achievements of a continent following the fall of the Roman Empire and the usurpation of the barbarian tribes (of the Franks and Vandals, for example). The growth, unity, and achievement he lists as having a single source of inspiration -- the teaching and leadership of the religious organization of the day -- the Roman Catholic Church. According to Woods, what looked like the end of an Empire (and was rightfully termed the Dark Ages) actually grew into something much greater -- and in fact into something that flourished under the protecting/guiding watch of what the Old World identified as Christendom (through a number of men whose identities he reveals). As Woods (2008) states, "The Church made an indelible imprint on the very heart of European civilization and was a profoundly significant force for good" (p. 7). The Church did this by developing the medieval curriculum in various ways, but which was essentially based on the classical structure of the Greeks.

The "force for good" that Woods speaks of had many manifestations, ranging from the time of Constantine to the time of Gregory the Great, Clovis, Charlemagne, Francis of Assisi, and on (and that is not to leave out a few of the many names that had a hand in transforming the pagan Empire into a Christianized continent). Woods' emphasis, however, is on the degree to which the Old World fostered philosophical growth, scientific achievement, international law, and economic structure -- none of which could have occurred without a synthetic curriculum. (One can contrast these achievements, incidentally, with the geopolitical achievements of the modern era).