Waiting for Superman: A cultural studies analysis in the nightmare of the present (original) (raw)
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Subterranean Echoes: Curriculum Theory as Cultural Studies
1998
Cultural studies has emerged in recent decades as a popular realm of academic inquiry (During, 1993). Giroux (1994), while noting the field's increased acceptance, ponders why cultural studies has yet to permeate critical analyses of education and simultaneously questions cultural studies' reticence in considering schools as an important site of cultural production. Edgerton (1996) concurs with Giroux and notes that cultural studies' use in colleges of education is extremely rare. The realm of popular culture, one of the central foci of cultural studies, has especially been marginalized in academic discourses. My project is to explore the implications of curriculum theory as cultural studies, devoting special attention to the realm of popular culture. I use post-modern notions of recombinant texts (Miller, 1996) to interrogate the possibilities of alternative sites/metaphors for curriculum theory which might be generated from popular cultural forms and practices. I pay p...
Journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Curriculum Studies, 2010
During the late 1960s, a group of American curricularists and documentary filmmakers, notably Dwayne Huebner and Frederick Wiseman, worked to provoke the educational and political issues of their time. In turn, these public intellectuals sought to disrupt, among other things, the institutional borders and everyday realities of racialized segregation, infringements against individual rights, economic exploitation and gendered inequities within the institutions of schooling. The educational questions these filmmakers and curriculum theorists posed more than four decades ago continue to speak to things that matter. Many of these curricularists, like Maxine Greene, Michael Apple, Dwayne Huebner, and William F. Pinar to name a few provoked us to question why some administrators, teachers and students (including the authors of this writing) remain couched in our own indifference and accede ourselves to the political, silent extensions of bureaucratic and technocratic discursive arms. Are younger generations of politicians, curriculum scholars, principals, teachers and students taking account of our mediated consumption of things that matter? Are we questioning the underpinning causes and multiple literacies of our current environmental crisis, the ongoing racialized, homophobic, physical, psychical, misogynistic, exploitative and epistemic violence taking place inside and outside schools? Or, are we repeating the political and curricular bandwagon songs of the past? Are Iraq and Afghanistan, once again, yet another symbolic curricular recapitulation of Vietnam? Are schools designed to lead, inform and provoke society? Or, are schools merely created to reflect contemporary society’s beliefs, obsessions, preoccupations and frailties? Further, does curriculum mirror school’s focus or does curriculum work in opposition to what schools set out to achieve? In response to such pro/vocations we attempt to bridge a complicated conversation between two historical texts hoping, in turn, to relocate and re-enter the present temporal borders of our current lives beyond.... superficial curricular sighs.
Moving Forward, Looking Back: Renewing the Struggle for an American Curriculum
Journal of Curriculum & Pedagogy, 2011
Rationales for public school reform in the United States are often tied to historical perspectives on the birth and development of schools and are buffeted by the assumption that the history of public schooling says much about how reform efforts should proceed. This interpretive article explores 2 such perspectives on 21st century schools: those of Diane Ravitch, distinguished educational historian and commentator; and those of Herbert Kliebard, considered one of the preeminent authorities on the development of the American curriculum. This investigation reveals that Ravitch’s longstanding condemnation of progressivism and curricular differentiation as the source of what ails public schools fails to account for the demise of the schoolteacher as the central force in early 21st-century schools—a factor that Kliebard identifies as crucial to understanding the nature of 21st-century schools. It is then suggested that recommitment to teachers as the educational center of gravity in public schools may provide new insight into understanding how school reform on the 21st century might move forward.
The Promise of Cultural Studies of Education
Educational Theory, 1999
What shouldbe the ultimate purposes of education in a democratic society? This seems like a simple question, yet when posed to educators, numerous, varied, and often contradictory responses are given. These range from gaining knowledge to developing skills, from finding a job to making a life, from social consciousness to social control, and from cultural transmission to critical citizenship. Certainly how we respond to this question influences what we do in the name of education, including how we design public schools and curricula. Surprisingly, however, this is a question not often asked by educators, nor one seriously addressed in schools of education. Asking about ultimate purposes is a metaphysical question, one that requires us to consider the reasons we do somethingthe why, or the end goal. Yet too often in education we neglect metaphysical questions and focus instead on engineering ones.' Such questions are about means, about how we can best do something or how we can more efficiently reach some predetermined goal. Engineering questions are commonplace in education. Should students be able to choose their schools? How can we efficiently implement an educational strategy such as cooperative learning? What is the best way to teach biology? How can we better assess students? Some of these types of questions are more compelling than others, but "what they have in common is that they evade the issue of what schools are for. It is as if we are a nation of technicians, consumed by our expertise of how something should be done, afraid or incapable of thinking about why."2
[K-N-S] Reconceptualizing High School: Curriculum, Film, and Narrative Assemblies
Because we lack an educational poetry which stirs the imagination and harnesses our power we are forced to push our school images our present school materials and organization to the breaking point, without conviction or results, but with a naïve faith in our past ways. But the past must be rethought, not reused. (Huebner, 1975/2000, p. 275) To be human is to create. (Phenix, 1975/2000, p. 329) During the late 1960s, a group of American curricularists and documentary filmmakers, notably Dwayne Huebner and Frederick Wiseman, worked to provoke the educational and political issues of their time. In turn, these public intellectuals sought to disrupt, among other things, the institutional borders and everyday realities of racialized segregation, infringements against individual rights, economic exploitation and gendered inequities within the institutions of schooling. The educational questions these filmmakers and curriculum theorists posed more than four decades ago continue to speak to...