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Politics o f C urricu lum : O rig ins, C on troversies, and S ignificance o f C ritica l Perspectives A uthor(s): W illiam F. P inar and C. A. Bowers Source: R ev iew o f Research in Education, Vol. 18 (1992), pp. 163-190 Published by: A m erican Educational Research Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1167299 Accessed: 12 /09/2009 12:45

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Chapter 4

Politics of Curriculum: Origins, Controversies, and Significance of Critical Perspectives

WILLIAM F. PINAR Louisiana State University

C. A. BOWERS University of Oregon

In one sense, most educational theorists who have envisioned using the educational process to support social reform could be said to exhibit a “ critical perspective.” John Dewey (1916), George Counts (1932), and Harold Rugg (1929-1932), as well as recent conservative critics such as Alan Bloom and William J. Bennett, have argued for educational reforms that presumably would foster students’ capacity to think in more critical and informed ways about the issues of the day. While progressives, social reconstructionists, and conservatives would understand the social goals and consequences of such critical thinking from quite different ideological points of view, all could be said to advocate “ critical perspectives.” (In­ deed, President Bush, in his January 1991 State of the Union address, used the term empowerment, long a favorite of left-wing theorists in edu­ cation.) In the field of education, particularly in the field of curriculum, the concept of “ critical perspectives” has been appropriated by a group whose intellectual roots can be traced, variously, to the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory and to Marxist and neo-Marxist theoreticians as varied as Antonio Gramsci, Raymond Williams, and, in education proper, Paulo Freire.

Within this group there can be said to be two subgroups. One has iden­ tified its agenda with the concept of “ critical pedagogy,” and the most visible of its spokesmen include Henry Giroux, Peter M cLaren, and Ira Shor (1987a). Another group is more allied with concepts of critical schol­ arship and the politics of curriculum, the most visible being Michael W. Apple and his many students. Philip Wexler may represent the vanguard of a third group that both condemns the work of the first two and suggests

A shorter version of this essay, coauthored with William M. Reynolds, was presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Boston, April 1990.

163

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an alternative. Collectively, this effort— increasingly diverse and acri­ monious— to understand curriculum as a political text represents the larg­ est body of contemporary scholarship in the field. Especially due to the efforts of Michael W. Apple and Henry A. Giroux, political scholarship functioned to reconceptualize the curriculum field from its moribund, atheoretical state Schwab decried in 1970 to its dynamic and complex configuration today.

The origins of this work will be outlined in the first section, focusing on its conceptual development (i.e., reproduction and resistance theory). In the second section, controversies both within this discourse and from outside will be reviewed. In a third section, we shall conclude with a discussion of our concerns with this body of work.

CONCEPTUAL DEVELOPMENT Reproduction Theory

The first step in the effort to understand curriculum as a political text involved the concept of reproduction or correspondence. In their widely read Schooling in Capitalist America, Bowles and Gintis (1976) regarded schools as functioning in the stratum of superstructure, a stratum deter­ mined by society’s economic base. Strike (1989, p. 26) portrays this re­ lationship as follows:

Consciousness

Superstructure

Institutions

Relations of production

Base

Material productive forces

Causality occurred unidirectionally, from base to superstructure. Ele­ ments in the base are used to account for elements in the superstructure (Strike, 1989, p. 26). In classic Marxian terms, the base determines the superstructure. Bowles and Gintis argued that schools prepare students to enter the current economic system via a correspondence between school structure and the structure of production.

The structure of social relations in education not only inures the student to the discipline of the workplace but develops the types of personal demeanor, modes of self-presentation, self-image, and social class iden­ tifications that are the crucial ingredients of job adequacy. Specifically,

Pinar and Bowers: Politics of Curriculum 165

the social relationships of education— the relationships between admin­ istrators and teachers, teachers and students, students and students, and students and their work— replicate the hierarchical divisions of labor. Hierarchical relations are reflected in the vertical authority lines from administrators to teachers to students. Alienated labor is reflected in the student’s lack of control over his or her education, the alienation of the student from the curriculum content, and the motivation of school work through a system of grades and other external rewards rather than the student’s integration with the process (learning) or the outcome (knowl­ edge) of the educational “ production process” (Bowles & Gintis, 1976, p. 131).

Relying on this principle of correspondence, Apple (1979) and Giroux (1981a) argued that schools functioned to reproduce the class structure of the workplace (Liston, 1986). Although originating outside the curric­ ulum field, the principle of correspondence was an important first step in understanding curriculum as a political text.

A second concept imported from other fields aided politically oriented curriculum scholars to advance their argument. Louis A lthusser’s (1971) understanding of ideology provided another major concept in curriculum scholarship. M cLaren (1989) explains:

Simply put ideology refers to the production of meaning. It can be described as a way of viewing the world, a complex of ideas, various types of social practices, rituals and rep­ resentations that we tend to accept as natural and as common sense. It is the result of the intersection of meaning and power in the social world. Customs, rituals, beliefs and values often produce within individuals distorted conceptions of their place in the sociocultural order and thereby serve to reconcile them to that place and to disguise the inequitable relations of power and privilege; this is sometimes referred to as “ ideological hegemony.” (p. 176)

Wexler (1987) regarded ideology as the first key concept of the new sociology of education and curriculum. Rejecting what some character­ ized as more “ vulgar” interpretations of the base/superstructure rela­ tionships in Marxian theory, Althusser argued that the relation of the economic base to the institutions of society cannot be reduced to any linear cause/effect determinism (Giroux, 1983a, p. 79). Institutions were termed “ ideological state apparatuses” by Althusser (1971), who claimed that institutions functioned to subjugate the working class. Giroux (1983a) interpreted the Althusserian conception of ideology for curricularists:

First, it [ideology] has a material existence: rituals, practices, and social processes that structure the day-to-day workings of schools. . . . Second, ideology neither produces con­ sciousness nor a willing passive compliance. Instead it functions as a system of represen­ tations, carrying meanings and ideas that structure the unconsciousness of students, (p. 81)

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The concept of ideology became central in understanding curriculum as political text. Curriculum itself became conceptualized as an ideolog­ ical mystification (Apple, 1990a; Giroux, 1981a, 1981b, 1981c). Both Apple and Giroux described how the content and form of the curriculum were ideological in nature (Apple, 1990a; Giroux, 1981c). Generally, the ideas and culture associated with the dominant class were argued to be the ideas and content of schooling. Dominant culture was described as those “ social practices and representations that affirm the central values, interests, and concerns of the social class in control of the material and symbolic wealth of society” (McLaren, 1989, p. 172).

By the early 1980s, the largely economic version of reproduction (cor­ respondence) was being criticized by many of the same scholars who had embraced it in the 1970s. Now reproduction theory was characterized as deterministic and simplistic (Giroux, cited in Olson, 1981), as lacking a cultural analysis (Apple, 1979, 1980), as lacking an adequate theory of agency (Strike, 1989), and as basically mechanistic (Giroux, 1983a). In an essay titled “ Contradiction and Reproduction in Educational T heory,” Bowles and Gintis (1980) themselves criticized their earlier work:

The most critical [problem] is simply this: by standing in our approach as the only structural link between education and the economy and by its character as an inherently harmonious link between the two, the correspondence principle forced us to adopt a narrow and in­ adequate appreciation of the contradictions involved in the articulation of the educational system within the social totality, (p. 53)

Bowles and Gintis acknowledge that their earlier argument missed certain essential aspects of reproduction. As Liston notes (1986), they specify notions of sites and practices as crucial in understanding reproduction. They suggest that society be regarded as “ an ensemble of structurally articulated sites of social practice,” the primary three of which are state, family, and school (Bowles & Gintis, 1980, p. 55). Social practices rep­ resent “ fundamental and irreducible elements of social dynamics” (Bowles & Gintis, 1980, p. 56).

Bowles and Gintis theorize four types of social practice, the point of which is social transformation. The first is the appropriative, the goal of which is the creation of useful projects. The second is the political, the goal of which is the transformation of social relations. The third is termed the cultural, which is said to transform the tools of discourse. The fourth is the distributive, which functions to alter the distribution of power and income (Bowles & Gintis, 1980; see also Liston, 1988). Sites and practices “ add up” to what Bowles and Gintis term a “ contradictory totality” (Bowles & Gintis, 1980, p. 56).

This mixing of sites and practices produces two dynamic tendencies that have distinct consequences: reproductive and “ contradictory” (and

Pinar and Bowers: Politics of Curriculum 167

undermining) effects (Liston, 1988, p. 54). Bowles and Gintis acknowledge that their earlier work (1976) failed to account for this fundamentally con­ tradictory character of social relations. Schools are said to exhibit these contradictory tendencies. The stage is set for “ resistance theory .”

Wexler notes that “ the Frankfurt School analysis of culture was also used to establish the view of education as a site for reproduction” (1987, p. 40). Among those associated with the Frankfurt School are Theodor Adorno, W alter Benjamin, Jurgen Habermas, Max Horkheimer, and H er­ bert Marcuse, all of whom are cited by politically oriented curriculum scholars, especially by Giroux and Wexler. What was the intent of the Frankfurt School? Broadly speaking, the Frankfurt School departed from the major Marxisms of the 1930s, namely Stalinist Marxism. Frankfurt School scholars deemphasized the economic foundations of Marxism and its theory of the historical inevitability of class conflict, including the close identification of the Communist Party with the “ dictatorship of the pro­ letariat.” Frankfurt School scholars tended to emphasize culture rather than economics— culture in its anthropological as well as aesthetic sense. They might be said to typify the “ early M arx” rather than the scientism characteristic of the “ late M arx” (Miller, 1979). More specifically,

It was the hope of Horkheimer and the others that their work would help establish a critical social consciousness able to penetrate existing ideology, sustain independent judgment and be capable, as Adorno put it, of maintaining its freedom to think that things might be different. (Held, 1980, p. 38)

Giroux (1983a) regarded the Frankfurt School as fundamental to un­ derstanding curriculum as a political text (i.e., as expressing a political meaning):

I argued that the foundation for a radical theory of schooling can, in part, be developed from the work of the Frankfurt School and the more recent literature on the hidden curric­ ulum. Whereas the Frankfurt School provides a discourse and mode of critique for deepening our understanding of the nature and the function of schooling, critiques of the hidden cur­ riculum have provided modes of analysis that uncover the ideologies and interests embedded in the message systems, codes and routines that characterize daily classroom life. (p. 72)

The hidden curriculum, first popularized by Philip Jackson (1968), was another important conceptual tool for politically oriented curriculum scholars. The concept refers to those unintended but quite real outcomes and features of the schooling process (Apple, 1975, 1990a; Giroux & Pur- pel, 1983; M cLaren, 1989). The hidden curriculum is to be distinguished from the “ overt” curriculum, or the planned curriculum, including ob­ jectives. M cLaren (1989) defines the concept:

The hidden curriculum deals with the tacit ways in which knowledge and behavior get constructed, outside the usual course materials and formally scheduled lessons. It is part

168 Review of Research in Education, 18

of the bureaucratic and managerial “ press” of the school— the combined forces by which students are induced to comply with the dominant ideologies and social practices related to authority, behavior and morality, (pp. 183-184)

Michael W. Apple, the first to reassert curriculum as a political text in the 1970s, defined the hidden curriculum in a way that pointed to the concept of hegemony, another important conceptual tool for politically oriented curriculum scholars.

The hidden curriculum in schools serves to reinforce basic rules surrounding the nature of conflict and its uses. It posits a network of assumptions that, when internalized by students, establishes the boundaries of legitimacy. This process is accomplished not so much by explicit instances showing the negative value of conflict, but by nearly the total absence of instances showing the importance of intellectual and normative conflict in subject areas. The fact is that these assumptions are obligatory for the students, since at no time are the assumptions articulated or questioned. (Apple, 1975, p. 99)

Owing to Apple’s efforts, in part, the concept of the hidden curriculum became taken-for-granted curriculum knowledge, widely cited by those who insisted that the curriculum functioned to maintain social stratifi­ cation as well as other stratifications, especially those of class, race, and gender (Apple, 1982b, 1990a; Aronowitz & Giroux, 1985; Beyer & Apple, 1988; Giroux, 1981a, 1983a, 1988b; Giroux, Penna, & Pinar, 1981; Giroux & Purpel, 1983; Oakes, 1985; Shapiro, 1981, 1983a; Sharp, 1980; Shor, 1986; Weis, 1988).

Another major concept employed in understanding curriculum as a po­ litical text was hegemony, borrowed from the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci (1971/1972), who borrowed the term from Marx and Engels (1974). Gramsci emphasized “ the role of the superstructure in perpetu­ ating class and preventing the development of class consciousness” (Car- noy, cited in Apple, 1982a, p. 86). He employed hegemony in two senses. First, hegemony referred to a process of domination whereby the ruling class is said to exercise political control through its intellectual and moral leadership over allied classes (Gramsci, 1985). (This is the sense in which Marx and Engels used the term.) Second, hegemony referred as well to the use of force and ideology in the reproduction of class relations (Aron­ owitz & Giroux, 1985, p. 88). Thus, hegemony is understood to occur via the use of force and via the shaping of human consciousness.

The concept of hegemony helped critical curriculum scholars refine the basic “ base/superstructure” model of reproduction that had been ac­ cepted during the 1970s. Relying on Raymond Williams (1976), Apple declared that the concept of hegemony captures the complexity of pro­ cesses of “ saturation.” In particular, Apple draws upon Williams’s con­ cept of “ selective tradition” to point to the ways in which curriculum

Pinar and Bowers: Politics of Curriculum 169

functions to privilege certain sets and orders of knowledge over others (Williams, cited in Apple, 1990a, pp. 5-6). Other politically oriented schol­ ars rely on this concept in their analysis of cultural reproduction (Apple, 1982b, 1986, 1990a; Giroux, 1980, 1981a, 1983a, 1988b; M cLaren, 1989; Sharp, 1980).

Henry Giroux worried that an overreliance on the concept of repro­ duction risks a “ discourse of despair.” If reproduction occurred as in­ contestably as Bowles and Gintis and the critical scholars of the 1970s insisted that it did, there was little hope for significant change aside from alterations in the economic base. The concept of ideology portrayed teachers and students as accomplices in the reproduction of the ruling class. Hegemony seemed to suggest that no escape was possible, as con­ sciousness itself was saturated, “ forged into the cognitive chains which bind the minds of the working class” (Strike, 1989, p. 137). In a word, reproduction theory lacked a concept of agency. Almost overnight, re­ production theory would give way to resistance theory.

From Reproduction to Resistance In his widely read Learning to Labour, Paul Willis (1981) introduced

the concept of resistance to an eager audience disenchanted with repro­ duction theory. Willis observed that the working class boys he studied resisted both the official and hidden curriculum of their English secondary school. The roots of this resistance, he wrote, “ are in the shop-floor cultures occupied by their family members and other members of their class” (Giroux, 1983b, p. 283). Willis’s concept of resistance allowed politically oriented scholars to view the process of reproduction as con­ testable, thereby correcting the nondialecticism of the Bowles and Gintis (1976) thesis.

The early 1980s saw considerable discussion of resistance theory. Par­ ticularly during the period 1980-1984, many scholars discussed and de­ veloped resistance in terms of curriculum (e.g., see Anyon, 1979, 1988; Apple, cited in Olson, 1981; Apple, 1982a, 1982b; Apple & Weis, 1983; Giroux, 1981a, 1983a, 1983b). Giroux cited resistance theory as important insofar as it corrected the failure of both conservative and radical cur­ riculum theory. Conservatives, he alleged, tended to view oppositional behavior via psychological categories such as deviate, disruptive, and inferior. Radical theorists had overemphasized economic and cultural de­ terminants. Put differently, in radical curriculum theory there had been an “ underemphasis on how human agency accommodates, mediates and resists the logic of capital and its dominating social practices,” including school curriculum and instruction (Giroux, 1983b, p. 282). As noted above, Giroux characterized the reproduction theory of the 1970s as a

170 Review of Research in Education, 18

“ discourse of despair,” as it ignored the pedagogical possibilities of human thought and enlightened action.

In his introduction to Giroux’s Ideology, Culture and the Process o f Schooling (1981a), Stanley Aronowitz advocated resistance as a positive step for radical educators. Radical educators should begin to concentrate on the “ cracks and disjunctions created by oppositional forces” (Aron­ owitz, cited in Giroux, 1981a, p. 31). Doing so would permit the contes­ tation of power in the schools. Giroux asserted that struggles can be waged over administrative and curricular issues. Reproduction failed to inspire struggle; it was, in G iroux’s words, a “ myth of total domination” (Giroux, 1981a, p. 99).

A special issue of Interchange, edited by Paul Olson and published in 1981, illustrated the rapid shift from reproduction to resistance theory. A collection of papers from a conference held at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education in Toronto, the issue was titled “ Rethinking Social Reproduction.” In his introduction, Olson (1981) noted that “ social con­ structivists” wished to integrate knowledge of hegemony with strategies design to counter it. In his essay titled “ Reproduction, Contestation, and Curriculum: An Essay in Self-Criticism,” Michael Apple notes that his previous work lacked analysis that “ focused on contradictions, conflicts, mediations and especially resistance— as well as reproduction” (Apple, 1981, p. 35). He cautions his audience, however, that it is not enough to conduct research into resistance; one must actually resist, in practice.

In Giroux’s “ Hegemony, Resistance, and the Paradox of Educational Reform,” the outline of his scholarly agenda for the decade is evident. Discussing the assets and liabilities of reproduction theory, he praises resistance theories, which “ perform a theoretical service” (Giroux, 1981b, p. 13). These theories demand analyses of those social practices that constitute the class-based experiences of day-to-day existence in schools. He calls for the development of a notion of radical pedagogy based on the pioneering work of Paulo Freire (1970/1971). “ At the core of radical pedagogy,” Giroux insists, “ must be the aim of empowering people to work for change in the social, political, and economic structure that constitutes the ultimate source of class-based power and domination (Giroux, 1981b, p. 24). (Curiously, the concept of empowerment— used by relatively few radical curriculum theorists in 1981— would become educational cliche by the 1990s.) For Giroux, however, resistance theory quickly becomes a transitional concept to pedagogy.

In 1982, Michael Apple published two works examining issues of re­ production and resistance. In his introduction to Cultural and Economic Reproduction in Education , Apple distinguishes between two forms of reproduction theory, that which focuses on economic or macrostructural issues and that which concentrates on cultural or microstructural matters.

Pinar and Bowers: Politics of Curriculum 171

According to Apple, the school curriculum belongs to the latter category. Acknowledging difficulties with “ pure” reproduction theory, Apple sug­ gests that resistance and reproduction theory are intertwined, that studies inspired by this synthetical view would point to struggles in specific places. He alludes to issues of race, class, and gender, foreshadowing his own scholarly agenda for the decade.

In an essay titled “ Curricular Form and the Logic of Technical Control,” Apple (1982a) outlines the pervasiveness of resistance. He al­ ludes to developments such as the so-called poststructuralism, which he depicts favorably, an attitude toward that work that would change. Con­ cluding the essay is a discussion of resistances, especially those curricular sites of resistance. Despite increasing state control, Apple declares, there are moments of individual resistance. Teachers’ resistance is said to be never “ far from the surface” (Apple, 1982a, p. 269). The question be­ comes, What is the status of these resistances? Are they, in fact, coun- terhegemonic? Or do they function to reproduce the status quo? Willis notes, for instance, that the resistance of his “ lads” functioned repro­ duce vely: Their resistance to mental labor functioned to reproduce their entrapment in the working class.

In his second 1982 work, Apple continues his examination of resistance theory and, in particular, the possible reproductive consequences of re­ sistance. Apple worries that even the terrain of resistance can be viewed as determined by the interests of capital, not by those resisting (Apple, 1982b). Despite resistance, Apple concludes, reproduction proceeds. In fact, he continues, reproduction will continue “ as long as the penetrations into the nature of work and control generated by working-class youths and their parents are unorganized and unpoliticized” (Apple, 1982b, p. 108). Only a few years after its introduction, then, resistance itself seemed to be in danger of being swallowed by reproduction.

Two important efforts to understand the curriculum as a political text appeared in 1983: Henry A. Giroux’s Theory and Resistance in Education: A Pedagogy for the Opposition and Michael W. Apple and Lois W eis’s Ideology and Practice in Schooling. In both books, one discerns move­ ments away from resistance theory. For Giroux, resistance points to pos­ sibilities of oppositional pedagogy (1983a). He calls for a reformulation of the relations among ideology, culture, and hegemony, one that would “ make clear the ways in which these categories can enhance our under­ standing of resistance as well as how such concepts can form the theo­ retical basis for a radical pedagogy that takes human agency seriously” (Giroux, 1983a, p. 111).

Apple and Weis (1983) discuss the movement beyond simple repro­ duction theory, stating that “ hegemony is not and cannot be fully secure” (p. 28). Their view that the cultural sphere is relatively autonomous leads

172 Review of Research in Education, 18

them to move beyond resistance to a belief in the possibility of meaningful intervention in the schools. However, they caution that this action must be a kind of praxis and that the connections between the schools and the larger society must be made.

The concept of resistance would continue to appear in political analyses of curriculum, but after 1985 it seemed to be a point of departure rather than arrival. For instance, Geoff Whitty calls for a movement away from reproduction theory and academic critique generally to radical interven­ tion. He warns against romanticizing the resistances of the working class, even those that are reproductive. What is important now, he argues, is the elaboration of intervention strategies.

What the American work increasingly recognizes is that whether or not particular aspects of education are ultimately reproductive or transformative in their effects is essentially a political question concerning how they are to be worked upon pedagogically and politically, and how they become articulated with other struggles in and beyond the school. (Whitty, 1985, p. 90)

Pedagogy and Practice: Issues of Race, Class, and Gender By 1985, scholarly efforts to understand curriculum politically had

begun to turn away from reproduction and resistance theories to issues of political and pedagogical practice. This shift away from resistance the­ ory is evident, for example, in the work of Henry A. Giroux, which, beginning in 1985, moved to questions of literacy, liberal arts, and trans­ formative pedagogy. In his 1985 book Education Under Siege (coauthored with Stanley Aronowitz), Giroux discusses reproduction and resistance insofar as they lead to radical action. In the field of curriculum, what is necessary is a “ language of possibility” (Aronowitz & Giroux, 1985). Educators must become transformative intellectuals rather than “ skillful technicians” (Aronowitz & Giroux, 1985). What is now necessary is to “ link emancipatory possibilities to critical forms of leadership by rethink­ ing and restructuring the role of curriculum workers” (Aronowitz & Gi­ roux, 1985, p. 142).

This shift toward action and practice is evident in Giroux’s many journal articles (1985a, 1985b, 1987, 1988c, 1989), emphasizing always the im­ portance of transformative struggle, both in school and in society gen­ erally. His most recent books, Schooling and the Struggle for Public Life: Critical Pedagogy in the Modern Age (1988a), Teachers as Intellectuals: Toward a Critical Pedagogy o f Learning (1988b), and Critical Pedagogy , the State and Cultural Struggle (1989, coauthored with Peter McLaren), emphasize critical or transformative pedagogy.

Freire’s work, which had been enormously influential in the late 1960s and early 1970s, reemerged as central to the effort to understand curric­

Pinar and Bowers: Politics of Curriculum 173

ulum as a political text during the latter half of the 1980s. In The Politics o f Education (1985), A Pedagogy for Liberation: Dialogues on Trans­ forming Education (Freire & Shor, 1987), and Freire for the Classroom: A Sourcebook for Liberatory Teaching (Shor, 1987b), Freire elucidated the significance of critical pedagogy. Among those Freire influenced was George Wood, v hose interest in transformation (Wood, 1988) led to the establishment of the Institute for Democracy in Education at Ohio Uni­ versity. (By mid-decade Giroux had established the Center for Cultural Studies at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.) Peter M cLaren’s Schooling as a Ritual Performance (1986) makes Freirían suggestions to teachers attempting to foster resistance in their own schools. In Life in Schools (1989), M cLaren provides examples of critical educators, among whom are John Dewey, Michael Apple, and Henry Giroux.

Apple’s work during the mid-1980s shifts also from reproduction and resistance to pedagogy and politics, especially as these are understood in terms of race, class, and gender. Apple’s scholarship during this time emphasizes political and pedagogical struggle (Apple, 1987a, 1987b, 1988; Apple & Ladwig, 1989; Apple & Teitelbaum, 1986). In Teachers and Texts: A Political Economy o f Class and Gender Relations in Education , Apple (1986) examines the textbook industry, particularly as it perpetu­ ates the “ selective tradition.” He calls for political and pedagogical action by critical scholars, teachers, students, and parents. Apple argues that the effort to democratize the curriculum must be a collective one involving interested parties in addition to educational professionals.

[Critical scholars] need to be closely connected to feminist groups, people of color, unions, and to those teachers and curriculum workers who are now struggling so hard in very difficult circumstances to defend from rightist attacks the gains that have been made in democratizing education and to make certain that our schools and the curricular and teaching practices within them are responsive in race, gender and class terms. After all, teaching is a two-way street and academics can use some political education as well. (Apple, 1986, p. 204)

In essays published in 1988, Apple extends his analysis of curriculum as a political text. In “ Race, Class and Gender in American Education: Toward a Nonsynchronous Parallelist Position,” Cameron McCarthy and Apple call for theoretical work that demonstrates how race, class, and gender interconnect, and how economic, political, and cultural power expresses itself in education (McCarthy & Apple, 1988). (A description of scholarly efforts to understand curriculum as a racial text requires a separate essay.) As well, they point to a shift in strategies for fundamental change in curricular content, pedagogical practices, and social structures (McCarthy & Apple, 1988). Landon Beyer and Apple’s “ The Curriculum: Problems, Politics and Possibilities” (1988) concentrates on issues of po­ litical and pedagogical agency. Fundamental to these issues is the concept

174 Review of Research in Education, 18

of praxis, which involves “ not only a justifiable concern for reflective action, but thought and action combined and by a sense of power and politics. It involves both conscious understanding of and action in schools on solving our daily problem s” (Beyer & Apple, 1988, p. 4).

Praxis implies “ critical reflective practices that alter the material and ideological conditions that cause the problems we are facing as educators in the first place” (Beyer & Apple, 1988, p. 4). In “ The Politics of Pe­ dagogy and the Building of Community” (1990b), Apple continues this emphasis on collective and concrete action, narrating episodes from his “ Friday Sem inar.” He reminds his students and himself that educational politics are inseparable from national politics: “ I am constantly reminded of how important it is that we participate in those larger struggles as well” (Apple, 1990).

The effort to understand curriculum as a political text has shifted from an exclusive focus on reproduction of the status quo to resistance to it, then again to resistance/reproduction as a dialectical process, then again— in the mid-1980s— to a focus on daily educational practice, es­ pecially pedagogical and political issues of race, class, and gender. The major players in this effort have continued to be Apple and Giroux— Apple through his voluminous scholarship and that of his many students (Schubert, Schubert, Herzog, Posner, & Kridel, 1988, pp. 173-174) and Giroux through his prodigious scholarly production. Clearly, serious stu­ dents of curriculum understand, as never before, the complexities and significance of curriculum’s political dimensions.

This effort to understand the curriculum as a political text has not been without criticism, however. The “ sociology of curriculum” has been cri­ tiqued from within its ranks as well as outside them. It is accurate to say that this work was generally ignored by the mainstream field during the 1970s. As it became too important to be ignored, it became criticized.

CONTROVERSIES A major critique appeared in 1988. In Capitalist Schools: Explanation

and Ethics in Radical Studies o f Schooling, Daniel Liston alleges nu­ merous weaknesses in Marxian analysis of schooling. Specifically, Liston criticizes the purposes and methods of explanation, justification, and em­ pirical validation in radical scholarship. After analyzing the work of Bowles and Gintis (1976, 1980), Giroux (1981a, 1983b), Apple and Weis (1983), Apple (1980, 1982), and Wexler (cited in Barton, Meigham, & Walker, 1980), Liston criticizes what he terms the “ facile functionalist” assertions found throughout these works. The fundamental base/super­ structure model is assumed, not explained. Additionally, there is no em­ pirical evidence presented in these works to support the model. Liston (1988) states: “ Marxist explanations of public schools, while critical of

Pinar and Bowers: Politics of Curriculum 175

functionalist approaches, nevertheless rely on functionalist assertions and ignore rigorous empirical assessments of these claims” (p. 101).

Liston is interested in ethical as well as methodological problems in the effort to understand curriculum politically. He notes that 4‘freedom was and still remains the central ethical standard” in radical thought (Lis­ ton, 1988, p. 143). However, the major scholars seem to be unaware that Marx himself viewed concepts of justice and equality as problematical. Liston argues that “ Marx viewed (and a consistent Marxist tradition would construe) justice as a deficient standard. Marx criticized capitalism morally but his standard was freedom (not justice), a standard embedded in the naturalist ethic” (Liston, 1988, p. 168). M arx’s primary concern was freedom.

Yet, Liston observes, Marxist scholars often base their criticisms of the status quo on notions of justice. “ Marxist educators claim that the structure of the larger socioeconomic system is unjust and that the schools contribute to the reproduction of the unjust system ” (Liston, 1988, p. 123). If Marxist criticism of the status quo cannot be based on a concept of injustice, upon what can it be based? “ What is the basis of condem­ nation? The basis exists, I believe, in M arx’s notion of freedom ” (Liston, 1988, p. 136). Liston asserts that those Marxists who currently employ standards of justice in their arguments “ must at least recognize and ap­ praise the merits of M arx’s own critique of these standards” (Liston, 1988, p. 143). Furtherm ore, he advises radical scholars to “ revise the basis of their critiques or argue against M arx’s position” (Liston, 1988, p. 143). Liston makes clear that his critique is a “ friendly” one: “ Without en­ hanced explanatory claims or moral justification it does not seem likely the radical tradition will convince reasonable skeptics. I hope it does. Without convincing these skeptics it will inevitably fail. I hope it does not” (p. 174).

Liston’s claim of “ friendliness” appears to have been rejected, at least by one major theoretician. Peter M cLaren portrays Liston’s effort as having resurrected “ an old and theoretically threadbare Marxian ortho­ doxy” (M cLaren, 1990, p. 1). In his view, Liston’s call for empirical validation represents a return to an epistemological position radical schol­ ars long ago rejected, that is, a “ stance of objectivity and . . . the scientific goal of T ruth” (M cLaren, 1990, p. 8). L iston’s logic is characterized as “ reductionist” (M cLaren, 1990, p. 4). Recent debates regarding post­ structuralism make it “ difficult to remain sympathetic to Liston’s pen­ chant for causal mechanism and his reduction of ideology to flow charts and empirically based formulae” (McLaren, 1990, p. 5). Furthermore, M cLaren characterizes L iston’s treatment of G iroux’s scholarship as “ monumental in its speciousness” (M cLaren, 1990, p. 7). Liston’s anal­ ysis can be likened to “ what Sartre called ‘bad faith,’ a kind of ritualistic

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blood-letting, an exaggerated self-flattery, and an inflated moral right­ eousness that is damaging to the books’ intent and purpose” (McLaren, 1990, p. 7).

Like Liston, C. A. Bowers (1987) and Kenneth Strike (1989) allege that Marxist scholars have abandoned Marx. More specifically, Bowers and Strike regard radical scholars as moving away from Marxism toward lib­ eralism. “ Marxism has been decisively rejected. It appears that no al­ ternative hard core is on the horizon, unless it is some variety of liber­ alism” (Strike, 1989, p. 166). Among those whose work Strike discusses include Apple, Bowles and Gintis, Giroux, Willis, Levin and Carnoy, McLaren, and Dale. Strike meticulously describes the movement of these efforts to understand the curriculum as a political text, a movement that increasingly exhibits “ idealist and indeed liberal term s” (Strike, 1989, p. 160). The emphasis on cultural autonomy characteristic of radical schol­ arship after 1985 represents, for Strike, an “ abandonment of the core of the Marxist program ” (Strike, 1989, p. 155). M arx’s labor to substitute materialism for idealism has been forgotten, apparently, by those who claim the heritage. The consequence is the absence of a coherent research program. Strike (1989) concludes:

Finally, the fact that many of those who gave us the Marxist critique of schooling seem to have lapsed into liberal construction is at least a piece of evidence that allows us to see Marxism as a degenerative research program. It suggests that the problems generated by a Marxist research program cannot be solved without abandoning the program’s central as­ sumption. (p. 167)

In Elements o f a Post-Liberal Theory o f Education , Bowers (1987) cri­ tiques the work of Paulo Freire, upon which much of the transformative or critical pedagogy literature rests. That work shares four basic as­ sumptions with liberalism, according to Bowers: (a) Change is inherently progressive; (b) the individual is the basic social unit “ within which we locate the source of freedom and rationality” (Bowers, 1987, p. 2); (c) human nature is basically good or at least changeable via environmental manipulation; and (d) rationality is “ the real basis of authority for reg­ ulating the affairs of everyday life” (Bowers, 1987, p. 2). Bowers argues that Freire’s version of Marxism is more appropriately characterized “ as a form of democratic humanism, an ideology which would be scorned as a form of revisionist liberalism in those countries that rely upon a more scientific Marxism as a basis of their social organization” (Bowers, p. 1987, p. 37).

Perhaps the most compelling but caustic critic of political analyses of curriculum is Philip Wexler, himself an “ insider” to debates regarding base/superstructure, ideology, hegemony, and so forth (Wexler, 1976). In Social Analysis o f Education: After the New Sociology (1987), Wexler

Pinar and Bowers: Politics of Curriculum 177

charts the rise and fall of the so-called “ new sociology.” Central to his analysis is the linkage of academic work to social movements outside the academy. He points out, for instance, that the “ new sociology” arose in the aftermath of the radical student and civil rights movements of the 1960s. Wexler suggests that radical critics romanticized those movements. Politically oriented scholarship amounted to “ a displaced imitation of it [the student movements of the 1960s], an attempt culturally to recapitulate the practical historical course of the movement, in theory ” (Wexler, 1987, p. 26). Radical scholarship suggested a rediscovered but unfortunately idealized interest in educational change (Wexler, 1987). However, such change would occur within institutions and within professional roles. Wexler (1987) states:

In this view, new sociology of education is a rationalized cultural representation of identity politics: it is part of a po5t-“ movement” effort to create a meaningful professionalism that is consonant with the ideal of a defeated social movement, (p. 27)

In this respect, politically oriented scholars are committed to their own professional advancement, which they mistake for political activitism (see also Pinar, 1981b, p. 440). Their activism constitutes the “ cultural for­ mation of an identifiable social group which is engaged in sociocultural action on its own b e h a lf’ (p. 4). Consequently, “ left professional middle class institutional intellectuals became a socially residual remnant, rather than the institutional vanguard of an ascendant social class segment” (Wexler, 1987, p. 123).

Furtherm ore, Wexler alleges, the primary concepts employed to un­ derstand curriculum politically— reproduction and resistance— repre­ sented a “ combination of functionalist structuralism and romantic indi­ vidualism” (Wexler, 1987, pp. 16, 42). In consequence, “ the new sociology of education is historically backward-looking and ideologically reactionary, although its ideals combine the values of the New Left and traditional socialism” (Wexler, 1987, p. 127). The history of the effort to understand curriculum as a political text can be located in the social path of its producers (i.e., the so-called “ new sociologists” of curriculum). That path leads from

ideology-critique to awareness of systematic reproduction through the accumulation of cul­ tural capital; and then from idealized and socially displaced individual cultural resistance to the dissonant bifurcation between idealized social mobilization and an unconscious politics of internally exiled speech. (Wexler, 1987, p. 45)

The “ new sociology” may have become trapped in the progressive- liberal paradigm, but Wexler allows for the possibility of escape. Certain strands of feminist thought and the so-called poststructuralism point to

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social movements and change that might inspire collective mobilizations. Particularly, literary 4 ‘textualism ” is “ potentially transformative, . . .th e starting point for a counter-practice” (Wexler, 1987, p. 180). Additionally, poststructuralism might free political scholars from “ a socially inauthentic identification with ‘the working class’ or with the triadic oppressed groups of ‘class, race and gender’ ” (Wexler, 1987, p. 181). Reaction to this claimed political potential of poststructuralism has begun to appear in print (McCarthy, 1988, p. 8). A feminist critique of critical pedagogy ap­ peared late in 1989 (Ellsworth, 1989). (Understanding curriculum as a gender text intersects, of course, with understanding curriculum as a po­ litical text. The former, because of its significance, requires reporting in a separate essay, however.)

A revised version of a presentation made at the 1988 Bergamo Con­ ference, Elizabeth Ellsworth’s (1989) ‘‘Why Doesn’t This Feel Empow­ ering? Working Through the Repressive Myths of Critical Pedagogy” critiques both the conceptual structure and daily practice of critical pe­ dagogy. Critical pedagogy should not be confused, Ellsworth insists, with feminist pedagogy, which ‘‘constitutes a separate body of literature with its goals and assum ptions” (Ellsworth, 1989, p. 298). The key terms of critical pedagogy— ‘‘em powerm ent,” ‘‘student voice,” ‘‘dialogue” — represent ‘‘code w ords” and a ‘‘posture of invisibility” (p. 301). Relying upon a decontextualized and universalistic conception of reason, critical pedagogy leads to ‘‘repressive myths that perpetuate relations of domi­ nation” (pp. 298, 304). Critical pedagogy, she continues, leaves the struc­ ture of domination and authoritarianism in place. In Ellsworth’s (1989) words, ‘‘[critical pedagogy] fails to challenge any identifiable social or political position, institution or group” (p. 307). The ‘‘utopian goals” of critical pedagogy are unattainable.

In working with participants in the course Curriculum and Instruction 607 (C & I 607), Ellsworth (1989) conceives of her role as interrupting institutionally imposed limits on ‘‘how much time and energy students . . . could spend on elaborating their positions and playing them out to the point where internal contradictions and effects on the positions of other social groups could become evident and subject to self-analysis” (p. 305).

This position is in contrast to that of critical pedagogy, which Ellsworth (1989) views as enforcing rational deliberation (p. 305). Furthermore, she alleges that critical pedagogy— here she quotes Freire, Shor, and Gi­ roux— fails to question its own stance of superiority of teachers’ under­ standing over students’ (p. 307). Ellsworth is skeptical of critical peda­ gogy’s claim of ‘‘emancipatory authority,” judging that the goals for which such authority is used remain ‘‘ahistorical and depoliticized” (p. 307). ‘‘Em powerm ent,” she insists, is defined so broadly that it fails to

Pinar and Bowers: Politics of Curriculum 179

challenge specific social or political groups or positions. This failure rep­ resents critical educators’ inability to confront the paternalism of tradi­ tional education (p. 307). Ellsworth goes on to criticize the concept of “ student voice,” as it is discussed in the critical pedagogy literature, relying on her experience in C & I 607 to suggest its flaws. From a gender perspective, for instance, she notes: “ The desire by the mostly White, middle-class men who write the literature on critical pedagogy to elicit Tull expression’ of student voices . . . becomes voyeuristic when the voice of the pedagogue himself goes unexamined” (p. 312). Concluding, Ellsworth notes that as long as critical pedagogy fails to understand issues of trust, risk, fear, and desire, especially as these are expressed through issues of identity and politics in the classroom, its “ rationalistic tools will continue to fail to loosen deep-seated, self-interested investments in un­ just relations of, for example, gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation” (pp. 313, 314). After critiquing critical pedagogy’s ahistorical use of “ dia­ logue” and “ dem ocracy,” Ellsworth suggests a “ pedagogy of the un­ knowable” (p. 318), in which knowledge is understood as “ contradictory, partial and irreducible” (p. 321). Reflecting on her own teaching, Ell­ sworth (1989) writes:

A preferable goal seemed to me to become capable of a sustained encounter with currently oppressive formations and power relations that refused to be theorized away or fully tran­ scended in a utopian resolution— and to enter into encounter in a way that owned up to my own implication in those formations and was capable of changing my own relation to and investments in those formations, (p. 308)

Ellsworth (1989) advocates labor toward a position informed by feminism and poststructuralism (p. 304) in which none of us is permitted to be “ off the hook.” Ellsworth’s criticism has provoked considerable controversy, as suggested by letters published in the August 1990 issue of the Harvard Educational Review. It is too early to judge to what extent this contro­ versy will lead to a new stage of formulation of key terms in the effort to understand curriculum as a political text.

CONCERNS A systematic effort to understand the curriculum as a political text

asserted itself forcefully during the 1970s and 1980s. The notion that cur­ riculum development, evaluation, and so forth could be conducted in a politically neutral fashion quickly became one conceptual casualty of this effort, as was the taken-for-granted assumption that schools functioned as avenues of upward social and economic mobility. The rejection of these mainstream and taken-for-granted ideas of the curriculum field was ac­ companied by the building of a relatively elaborate conceptual edifice,

180 Review of Research in Education, 18

among the foundations of which were notions of reproduction, resistance, ideology, and hegemony. As the effort grew more voluminous and com­ plex, so did the range of its interests, incorporating notions of critical pedagogy and literacy as well as issues of race, class, and gender. Ten­ sions have developed within the movement, as have criticisms from out­ side it. These, we think, are testimonies to its power and importance as well as to its internal flaws. What has become indisputable is that to understand the curriculum, one must understand it, at least in part, as a political text.

The phrase “ in part” leads to our first concern with this work. There are tendencies in critical scholarship to ignore those efforts that attempt to understand curriculum in other ways, as if curriculum were only a political text. It is, for instance, also a phenomenological text. There is a large literature on understanding curriculum and pedagogy as a phe­ nomenological text (Pinar & Reynolds, 1992), a sector of the field gen­ erally ignored by the critical scholars. Likewise, literatures reflecting ef­ forts to understand curriculum as autobiographic and biographic texts are passed over. The contextualization of political discourse in “ place” seems largely ignored (Kincheloe & Pinar, 1991). There is a tendency here that goes beyond focusing on those subjects that interest one or are germane to one’s specialization within a field. There is here an orthodoxy, a refusal to even acknowledge the existence of work outside the current boundaries of radical research. Politically oriented scholars are hardly alone in this, of course. During the 1970s, traditionalists refused to acknowledge their presence. It is also true that phenomenologists tend to look the other way when political issues are raised (there are exceptions; see Carson, in press). What we are worrying over here is a problem with the field at large (Pinar, 1990) that goes beyond the literature we have described herein. It is what we might loosely term conceptual isolationism, with attendant “ nationalism” and “ militarism.” There are what we might term— tongue in cheek— high tariff barriers (a skeptical outsider might term them “jargon taxes” ) that work against “ trade” (i.e., the exchange of ideas). Phenomenological curriculum theory could benefit, in our judg­ ment, from judicious employment of the knowledge the politicists have constructed and collected, and vice versa. Clearly, the political work does engage other traditions, sometimes appreciatively, as in the case of fem­ inist theory (although there are thorny issues here; cf. Ellsworth), some­ times ambivalently, as in the case of poststructuralism (cf. McCarthy, Wexler). At other times, it simply refuses to engage other segments of the field. One might expect such smug self-involvement from conserva­ tives, but from those who espouse “ dialogue,” “ voice,” “ dem ocracy,” and the like, this is a disheartening state of affairs. If the major players in this sector would engage other traditions of scholarship in an open and

Pinar and Bowers: Politics of Curriculum 181

nonadversarial fashion, not only would their boundaries be expanded, perhaps their internal disputes would be less vitriolic. It is almost as if, locked up behind ideological walls, these individuals seem to become a bit stir crazy, and what should be amicable differences of opinion as well as serious efforts to educate each other have tended to become cold-war confrontations.

A second concern involves the import of this scholarship for the school community. That this work will exert significant influence on classroom practice in the United States is doubtful. This prognosis is based partially upon the failure of leading theorists such as Michael Apple, Henry Giroux, Ira Shor, and Peter M cLaren to respond constructively to critics outside the critical tradition and, most recently, to critics who, like Elizabeth Ellsworth, address issues in the politics of curriculum but who do not wish to be identified with the more messianic tendencies in critical ped­ agogy and critical perspectives. More significant, our view that this work will fail to enlist widespread support among school personnel is based on the failure of critical perspectives to address major cultural shifts currently under way. First, this work has inadequately addressed issues of multi- culturalism and racism. Second, it has failed to address the intensifying ecological crisis.

Cameron M cCarthy (1990a, 1990b) has pointed to the failure of radical or critical curriculum scholarship to address adequately the concept of race. Critical scholarship was largely silent regarding race during its first and more significant phase— reproduction theory— and when mentioned, race tended to be subsumed under class or assumed to be of equal ex­ planatory weight (McCarthy, 1990b). Relatedly, the very rhetoric of emancipatory or critical pedagogy resides in a European-American dis­ course (Ellsworth, 1989). Consider the following assumptions of critical pedagogy: (a) individual emancipation and empowerment are to be achieved through a process of critical reflection that demystifies histor­ ically and socially constituted forms of authority, (b) The goal of the educational process is emancipation; it must be viewed as a social process furthered through dialogue. For instance: “ In the process of knowing the reality which we transform, we communicate and know socially even though the process of communicating, knowing, changing has an individ­ ual dimension” (Shor & Freire, 1987, p. 14). (c) The historical process of change (i.e., progress) is facilitated as individuals pursue social and individual emancipation. Put another way, the continual process of au­ thorizing ideas and values through critical reflection (a process experi­ mental in nature when viewed within the longer time frame of a cultural group) displaces other forms of knowing, (d) The educational process of transmitting culture is preeminently political. The goal of critical work involves “ making the pedagogical more political and the political more

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pedagogical” (Giroux, 1988b). (e) A participatory democracy, wherein every member evidently experiences the same freedom and equality in all aspects of public life, represents the only legitimate form of political organization, (f) Finally, reality can be grasped in binary terms. For in­ stance: “ Liberatory dialogue is a democratic communication which dis- confirms domination and illuminates while affirming the freedom of the participants to re-make their culture. Traditional discourse confirms the dominant mass culture and the inherited, official shape of knowledge” (Shor & Freire, 1987, p. 13).

As these assumptions suggest, critical pedagogy and critical scholarship generally incorporate the ideals of the W estern Enlightenment. As well, they incorporate the silences, misconceptions, and hubris of this tradition. Applied to education, this tradition reproduces modes of reasoning Alvin Gouldner identified as distinctive to the “ culture of critical discourse” (i.e., intellectuals whose own position is strengthened by forcing others to adhere to the rules of discourse they themselves have created and now represent as universally applicable to all culture). The highly abstract concepts characteristic of political scholarship (reproduction, resistance, emancipation, liberation, etc.) are, in principle, disconnected from the lived beliefs, values, and practices of specific cultural groups. Members of cultural groups who attempt to retain or recover their identities by repudiating the homogenization associated with mainstream consumer culture would take exception to many of these assumptions. Cameron McCarthy (1988) notes, in this regard:

I have begun to see contemporary Marxism as something of a classical realist text in which the subjective and omniscient speaking positions are reserved for white new middle class male intellectuals. Much of radical education theory is there part of the enabling linguistic competence of a peculiarly unreflexive community. In these frameworks, third world people are constituted as the objects of radical forms of intellectual tourism (Roman, 1987). (p. 8)

Probably, few cultural groups, including the advocates of critical per­ spectives themselves, would be willing to live continuously in the state of liminality that would accompany an ongoing and thorough process of demystification (which, in this work, requires politicizing) of “ the his­ torically and socially constructed forms by which they live” (Giroux, 1988c, p. 177). Such utopian language threatens to sweep away not only blocks to genuine progress, but sacred and life affirmative traditions as well. Additionally, the uncritical embrace of dialogue as the sole means of education discloses a lack of understanding of how group identity and traditions are maintained over time (e.g., Hopi and Jewish traditions, to name just two). For many cultural groups, it is doubtful that progress would be viewed as achievable through the critical pedagogy ideal of continual doubt: “ to doubt everything, and to try to identify those forms

Pinar and Bowers: Politics of Curriculum 183

of power and control that operate in their own lives” (M cLaren, 1989, p. 233).

The goals of critical scholarship (empowerment, emancipation, and so on) and the limited suggestions offered by advocates to inspire classroom practice must be viewed as problematical because of the anthropological and linguistic poverty of their fundamental assumptions. As well, there are gender and racial blind spots that underline the fact that the leading advocates are European-American men. It may be that critical scholarship is self-referential scholarship and that, because these men insist on the primacy of their concepts and methods, their work functions in politically conservative, even reactionary ways. This divergence between rhetoric and political consequence has been noted at least twice (Pinar, 1981b; Wexler, 1987).

A third concern involves the relative silence of critical scholarship re­ garding the ecological crisis, a silence that could be linked with the cultural provincialism of this work. While the crisis merits book-length treatment, suffice it to say here that the accumulation of “ greenhouse gases,” cou­ pled with massive disruptions in the ecosystem caused by deforestation, topsoil loss, and toxic waste dumping (to cite only a few aspects of the crisis), has led to an increasing awareness regarding the interdependence of human and natural systems. Evidence of the diverging trend line, with human population and consumer demands on the sustaining capacities of natural systems moving upward at a rapid rate while there is a corre­ sponding decline in toxic-free ecosystems, has prompted many to question whether the most basic assumptions upon which modern (Western) con­ sciousness rests may be exacerbating the crisis. Aldo Leopold was among those to first recognize that modern consciousness is based on an an- thropocentric view of the universe and that long-term survival of the spe­ cies depends on the emergence of new modes of cognition that represent the community of all life forms. Others, among them Gary Snyder, Wes Jackson, Wendell Berry, and Gregory Bateson, have begun to question the adequacy of W estern contemporary cultural assumptions for long­ term species survival. How we understand freedom and knowledge, among other fundamental constructs, must be linked with these consid­ erations, not with a narrower— and historically discredited— Marxist agenda of class conflict and social change.

Although Giroux and M cLaren (Giroux, 1991) have incorporated the discourses of postmodernism and feminism into their more recent ex­ positions, critical scholarship as a whole remains located within a mode of reasoning that is unresponsive to the urgent, overwhelming character of the ecological crisis. Because space is limited, we limit this discussion to two essential issues: (a) how the ecological crisis leads to a different way of thinking about human freedom, and (b) the forms of knowledge

184 Review of Research in Education, 18

that contribute to living in a sustainable relationship with the habitat. First, the recognition that humans are part of a biotic community leads to a view of human freedom different from that of the anthropocentric formulation of critical scholarship. Interdependence with the biotic com­ munity requires a concept of freedom as self-limitation for the sake of others, for the sake of species survival. According to Leopold, “ a thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherw ise” (Leopold, 1966, p. 262). In providing an ecological model of cognitive processes that overcomes the human/nature dichotomy, Bateson challenges an an­ thropocentric concept of human freedom: “ In no system which shows mental characteristics can any part have unilateral control over the whole. In other words, the mental characteristics o f the system are immanent, not in some part, but in the system as a whole” (Bateson, 1972, p. 316). Bateson also challenges the W estern bias that understands the human and natural worlds as separate because of the rational capabilities of human beings:

The total self-corrective unit which processes information, or, as I say, “ thinks” and “ acts” and “decides” is a system whose boundaries do not at all coincide with the boundaries either of the body or what is popularly called the “ s e l f ’ or “ consciousness.” (Bateson, 1972, p. 319)

He warns us to recognize that human beings, regardless of their ideas of freedom and progress, cannot survive independent of their habitat; that is, “ the unit o f evolutionary survival turns out to be identical with the unit o f mind” (1972, p. 483).

The position advanced by Leopold, Bateson, and others leads to a profoundly different view of “ hum an” freedom than that implied in crit­ ical scholarship. In that work, the past seems to represent domination and the future an ever-expanding realm of possibility, each succeeding generation demystifying the forms of domination presumably perpetuated by the previous generation. This sense of ever-expanding human free­ dom— material, political, intellectual— does not incorporate a vision of human freedom as contingent and interwoven with the larger biotic com­ munity of which we are part. Their anthropocentric view of freedom re­ produces the W estern myth of perpetual progress (Lasch, 1991), a myth that has led to the current crisis, and is silent upon this, the most fateful issue of the present time.

The ecological crisis implies that we must understand the very concept of knowledge differently. Recent and sympathetic studies of primal cul­ tures that have evolved in ecologically sustainable ways (Hughes, 1983; Nelson, 1983) point to how these low status cultures (as viewed by main­

Pinar and Bowers: Politics of Curriculum 185

stream W estern intellectuals) function in species-affirmative ways. These ecologically wedded ways of knowing must not be interpreted as senti­ mentalized calls for earlier, premodern forms of social living, but rather as suggestive of knowledge forms unreflected in critical scholarship. Wes Jackson uses the rural farm to illustrate knowledge that is accumulated over generations, tested in the context of family and community sur­ vival— knowledge that has sustained, variously, the Koyukon hunter, the Hopi, and even certain European-American groups. In Altars o f Unhewn Stone, Jackson writes:

Species extinction and genetic narrowing of the major crops aside, the loss of cultural in­ formation due to the depopulation of our rural areas is far greater than all the information accumulated by science and technology in the same period. Farm families who practice the traditions associated with planting, tending, harvesting, and storing the produce of the ag­ ricultural landscape, gathered information, much of it unconsciously, from the time they were infants: in the farm household, in the farm community, and in the barns and fields. They heard and told stories about relatives and community members who did something funny or were caught in some kind of tragedy. From these stories they learned basic lessons of agronomy. But there was more. There was information carried by a farmer who looked to the sky and then to the blowing trees or grasses and made a quick decision as to whether or not to make two more rounds before quitting to do chores. Much of that information has already disappeared and continues to disappear as farmers leave the land. It is the kind of information that has been hard won over the millennia, from the time agriculture began. It is valuable because much of it is tuned to the harvest of contemporary sunlight, the kind of information we need now and in the future on the land. (Jackson, 1987, pp. 11-12)

We are not arguing, of course, that tacit, analogical forms of knowledge can or should be accepted uncritically as guides to social practice. Jack­ son’s statement reminds us that the rationalistic and experimental forms of knowledge embedded in the work of the critical group, forms that can be traced back through Descartes to Plato, may not always represent the highest forms of knowledge, nor may they be suited for living in ecological balance.

The ecological crisis confronts educators with a new set of challenges unacknowledged by critical scholars. Required are forms of authentically radical thinking that enable us to articulate and provisionally answer fun­ damental questions hinted at by the following:

1. What cultural beliefs, values, and social practices currently trans­ mitted via school curricula are ecologically affirmative, and which are rooted in assumptions formed in earlier historical periods when the natural environment was regarded as an exploitable resource?

2. How are ecologically unsustainable aspects of our culture encoded in those language patterns that are employed in classrooms and that teach­ ers tend to take for granted?

3. How can we reframe in curricular forms the study of diverse his­

186 Review of Research in Education, 18

torical narratives in ways that enable students to recognize the conse­ quences of anthropocentric biases, as well as prejudices against learning from ecologically sustainable cultures that have, in the main, been labeled pejoratively as “ primitive” ?

4. What forms of folk knowledge (technologies, social practices, etc.) that have evolved in harmony with the bioregion are pertinent to the crisis today, and how might these forms be incorporated into the curriculum?

5. How do we, as educators, begin to develop the languages of dance, painting, music, and narrative that primal peoples used as a means of encoding the moral templates for living in ecologically sustainable rela­ tionships, and for providing members of the community the experience of transforming the ordinary into an extraordinary, transformative sense of reality?

If, as a field, we become aware that the ecological crisis requires both cultural and technical responses, the scholarly forms of understanding curriculum as a political text will shift. W exler’s insistence that critical scholarship functions in politically reactionary ways— an allegation our summary of the ecological crisis supports and expands— will be acknowl­ edged generally, and this judgment will then produce epistemological as well as thematic revisions in the effort to understand curriculum as a political text. The preoccupation with reproduction, resistance, and crit­ ical pedagogy will disappear or be revised dramatically. An ecologically informed agenda will occupy a central place in future political scholarship. The time for such change is past due.

Conclusion Fundamental problems plague the contemporary effort to study the

politics of curriculum. These are problems associated with gender, race, and culture; they are embedded in the modes of cognition as well as the themes and slogans of critical scholarship. Additionally, the political prac­ tices of critical scholars themselves seem self-involved, walled-in, and at times even militaristic. Finally, critical scholarship tends to omit what must be regarded as one of the political issues, if not the central issue, of the day— the ecological crisis. These are staggering problems, and, if unsolved, they threaten to undermine the most voluminous body of schol­ arship in the field.

Despite these significant problems, the effort to understand curriculum as a political text must be regarded as one of the great achievements of the curriculum field since the 1970s. At that time, the curriculum field, many readers will recall, was judged as moribund, dead, and arrested by Joseph Schwab (1970), Dwayne Huebner (1976), and William Pinar (1978), respectively. Concerns and questions notwithstanding, no commentator would regard the present field in these terms. Indeed, the volume and

Pinar and Bowers: Politics of Curriculum 187

dynamism of critique testify to the vitality and complexity of the field. Without doubt, the apolitical blindspot of the traditional field has been corrected. Now we understand, to an extent few could have fathomed 20 years ago, the complex of ways in which curriculum is a political text.

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Apple, M. W. (1975). The hidden curriculum and the nature of conflict. In W. F. Pinar (Ed.), Curriculum theorizing: The reconceptualists (pp. 95-119). Berke­ ley, CA: McCutchan.

Apple, M. W. (1979). Curriculum and reproduction. Curriculum Inquiry, 9(3), 231-252.

Apple, M. W. (1980). Analyzing determinations: Understanding and evaluating the production of social outcomes in the schools. Curriculum Inquiry, 79(1), 55-76.

Apple, M. W. (1981). Reproduction, contestation, and curriculum: An essay in self-criticism. Interchange, 72, 27-47.

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