Reply to Huebner's Paper

A few years ago, Time magazine wondered on its cover, Is God Dead? A bit less loftily, Professor Huebner has announced that the field of curriculum is dead. The solution to the question about the curriculum, if it is still a question, may be more easily obtained than a solution to the question posed by Time, though; for Huebner implies the field of curriculum can be resurrected if we narrow its scope. Its presently deathlike state originates in our having embraced too much as belonging to our field. Unlike Atlas, we are incapable of supporting our domain, so it has fallen around us. If we buy the diagnosis, the question, then, is in what direction should we narrow our scope? Huebner would have us concern ourselves with determining educational content by carefully considering its relation to and with identifying which aspects of culture are appropriate as educational content. Huebner is rather unspecific about what he means here by culture, the stance of the school in relation to it, and why he chose this particular orientation to schooling over others. (In some respects, the paper boils down to the familar question of knowledge is of most worth?) Some of Huebner's lack of specificity is understandable, for he believes people in the curriculum field should concern themselves with these issues. This lack of specificity is reflected in several questions we might raise about Huebner's proposal. Does he envision schools functioning to transmit culture or to transform it? In a multicultural society, whose culture is to be considered? Or are all to be? What would be left out of a curriculum based on content related to culture? (What is culture, anyway?) Will culture have changed substantially when the children leave school, enough to have made their education unfunctional? In all likelihood, these are some of the very questions Huebner would have us -consider, as curriculum people. Yet I wonder whether we are likely to reach consensus, and whether national policy can (or should) be made about these issues-policy that can function equally well in all localities. In addition to determining educational content, Huebner believes that the other purpose of curriculum workers is to consider how to make content present for or accessible to students through educational technology, learning theory, and cognitive psychology. But should we narrow our focus in this direction? In fact, should we narrow it all? If so, to what extent? And on what bases? Let us consider some possible reasons for narrowing our scope in curriculum. Assuredly, it is important to have an identity, to differentiate between curriculum knowledge and everything else so we know and so others can tell what is in our domain. A narrower identity, we might say, lends coherence to and defines the field. It stakes out our territory. Additionally, delimiting our arena of action might conserve our energy as a field; and it is this energy which, Huebner believes, has been seriously dissipated by our tackling too much. 174

Curriculum · Epistemology · Field (mathematics · Multiculturalism · Pedagogy · Political science · Relation (database · Scope (computer science · Sociology · Computer Science · Global Education and Multiculturalism · Law · Mathematics · Multilingual Education and Policy · Philosophy · Second Language Learning and Teaching

• The Practical

  Joseph J Schwab•The School Review•1969

  Add to list