Philosophy

Joäniai of Curriculum and Si^)etvisiori Summer 1993. Vol. 8, No 4, 277-292 277

CURRICULUM POSSIBILITIES IN A "POSr-FUTURE

WiaiAM E. DOLL, JR, Louisiana State University

'/he art horn as the echo of God's laughter [has] created the fascinating imaginât ire realm where no otw owns the truth and everyone has the right to be understood. '

// is necessary to rethink the world not in terms of its laws and its regularities, btu rather in tenfjs of pertttrhatiom and turhttiences, in order to bring out its multiple forms, unei'en structures, and fluctuating organiza- tions}

The great end of education is to discipline rather than to fumiii} the mind; to train it to the use of its own powers, rather than to fill it with the accumulations of others.^

The third statement above has been known in the curriculum field for so many decades it has turned into a cliché. In fact, it has become a shibboleth for progressive educators. Paradoxically, I suspect it may have its origins in Yale president Jeremiah Day's spirited defense of his university's classical curriculum in the late 1820s.'* But whatever its origins, the statement assumes the "mind" to be a thing (a vessel to be filled) or an organ (a muscle to be trained) or a liting fyeing (a creature with powers to be disciplined). All three of these metaphors have played a role in American thought on curriculum. The Progre.ssive movement, particularly from the 1930s through the 1960s, encompassed each of these trends, as well as the laissezfaire approach for which it may be best known—leave the child alone and ability, like a sun-

'Milan Kundera, 7Ü>t> Art ofthe Novet, trans, Linda Asher (New York: Grove Press, 1988). p. 164.

^Jasué Harai atid David Bell, "Introduaion: Journal à Plasieurs Voies," in Michel Serres' Hermes, ed. Josué Harai and David tiell (lialtimore, MD:Johns Hopkins Llniversit>' Press. 1983), p. xxvii.

''Herbert M. Kliebard, Forging the Americcm Currictäum: Essays in Cwricutum History and Iheoty {New York: Rouiledge. 1992), pp. 6-11.

278 Curriculum Possibilities m a "Post"-Fuíure

flower, will burst forth. The view of mind expressed in these metaphors— oddly both anthropoceniric and mechanical—had neither strong intellectual foundations nor a record of practical achievements.*^ I believe it is a view we need to replace, possibly with Dewey's or Whitehead's or Bruner's versions of mind as an active, self-organizing, self-abstraaing process, a process to which we give the label 'mind.'"'

But dealing with mind as anything other than a machine (brain) or an anthropocentric metaphor (vital force) has been almost impossible. The "thingness" of mind, a residue from Descartes' mind-body split, stubbornly persists. As a result, we have considered curriculum only in its "thingness" sense, only in its noun form (a racecourse to be traversed), and not in its infinitive verb form (currere—to run, especially the course). In the latter, the emphasis is on the activity of running or, metaphorically, on the activity of our making meaning from the course—our interpreting or dialoguing with the course. This currere view makes mind "a verb" (to use Dewey's phrase: an aaive, meaning-seeking and meaning-making verb)." Tlie implica- tions of considering mind as a verb are just beginning to receive critical acceptance.** At issue is whether or not such acceptance will result in funda- mental curricular change.

In the late 1960s, Joseph Schwab pronounced the curriculum field "mori- bund."^ Two decades later, Donald Schön said the same thing bur in different words, discussing the deadening effea of the "technico-rational" model.'" The curriculum reform movements of the time, whether structural-Piagetian or behavioral-competence, did little to encourage educators to disagree witli Schwab or to disown Schön. Curriculum remained bereft, without theoretical or praaical guidance. Students, teachers, administrators, parents—all evi- denced a malaise that is still apparent.

We are now in the midst of a budding new movement, characterized by Schön's "reflective practitioner."" Wiil this be but another passing fad, another

^Richard Rorty, Philosopt^ and the Mirror cf Nature (Princ«on, NJ; Princeton University Press, 1980).

^ a v i d Olson, "The Mind According to Bruner," Educaiiortal Researcher 21 (May 1992): 29-31-

^John Dewey, Art as Experience (New York: Perigee Books. G, P. Putnam's Sons, 1^0). Original work published in 1934.

Ilerome Bruner, Acts of Meaning (Cambridge: Harvard Universicv' Press, 1990); William E. Doll, Jr., A Postmodern Per^ctii'e on Curriculum (New York: Teachers College Press, 1992)-

^oseph Schwab, Science, Curriculum, and Liberal Education: Selected £ssa>s. ed. Ian West- bury and Neil Wilkof (Chicago: Universit>' of Chicago Press, 1978), pp. 287-321.

" ^ n a l d A. Schön, The Refleciii'e Practitioner: How Prcfessionats Think in Action (New York: Basic Books, 1983); Donald A. ^hon, Educating tbe Ref}ectii<e Practitioner {Sun Francisco: Jassey-Bass Inc., 1987),

'Donald A. Schön, Tbe Refleaive Practitioner: How Prcfessionais Think in Action (New Yorit: Basic Books, 1983); Donald A. Schön, Educating the Reflectife Practitioner (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Inc., 1987); Donald A Schön, Tbe Reflective Turn: Case Studies in and on Educational Practice (New York: Teachers College Press, 1991); James G. Henderson, Reflectii-e Teaching: Becoming em inquiring Educator (New York Macmilian, 1991); Tom Russell and Hugh Munby. eds.. Teachers and Teaching: Ftom Classroom to Reflection (London: Falmer Press, 1992),

William F.. Doll. Jr. 279

in the list of 20th-century educational "reforms"—which themselves inevitably end up being reformed? Or will it, combined with such movements as site- based management, school choice, the decentralization of school control, and a rising entrepreneurial spirit, lead to meaningful curriculum and school change, indeed, to school and curriculum redefinition? It is far too early to answer this question with any confidence; and certainly issues of student achievement, teacher "burn-out," and increasing scKietal demands on the school do not provide encouraging early indicators. Yet, as we prepare to move into a new century, a new millennium, I see encouraging signs.

The level of curriculum discourse has definitely improved over the past decades. As William Pinar says, curriculum has moved from "an exclusively praaice-<iriemed field to a more theoretical, historical, and research oriented" one.'^ The increase in quantity and quality of journals, articles, discussions, conversations, research studies, and dcxrtorates of a theoretical nature has given the field an awareness of itself. However, this theoretical and historical awareness has not yet influenced school classrooms; there, curriculum is still very much practice-oriented, with little reflection on these practices. However, a rising groundswell of dissatisfaction—from corporations, parents, commu- nity groups, even teachers and administrators—questions how well these praaices are working. In short, the time may be right for more fundamental change. Yale president Benno Schmidt's leaving his university post for ihe Edison Projea can be seen in this light. In fact, as one reponer has said: "Mr. Schmidt's career choice reflects a clear judgment: Edison is the future, Yale is history.'"'

Eundamental changes certainly are prominent in a number of other fields as diverse as architecture and theology. In fact, we are currently immersed in a "post" era: post-Communist, post-national, post-industrial, post-patriarchal, post-struaural. To cover all these "posts," I choose the overarching term "post-modern" and use the hyphen to indicate that the new era, while breaking with the past, d t ^ s not negate that past. In fact, as Charles Jencks says, at the heart of post-modernism lies a "paradoxical dualism, or double coding, which its hybrid name entails: the continuation of Modernism and its transcen- dence."'"" Thus, the movement is Janus-faced, looking both backward and forward, to the past and to the future. This double or dual coding gives post- modernism its paradoxical and .startling power—to honor the past and yet to laugh at it (to ensure that we do not get caught in the hyperbole and hypocrisy such honoring brings); to build for the future and yet to doubt whether such a future will emerge. This is a worldview wherein traditional categories, such as order and disorder, are not diametrically opposed or

'-William Pinar, ed.. Contemporary Curriculum Discourses (Sconsdale, AZ: Gorsuch Scaris- brick. Publishers, 1988). p. 2.

""Bye. Bye, Eli," Wall Street Jounial, May 27, 1992, p. A 14. '^Charles Jencks, Wbal ft PostmodemismF (New York: St. Manins Press, 1987), p. 10.

280 Ctpriculum Possibilities in a "Post"-Future

separated but are entwined, each within the other, each reinforcing and sustaining the other.

Our present curriculum frames—those of the Tyler/Taylor rationale, of competency-based instruction, of Madeline Hunter's "seven steps"—are not constructed to use and welcome paradox and eclecticism, indeterminacy, self-organization, or satire and play. Yet these qualities inhere in a "post" worldview and define a post-modern perspective—to the degree such a perspective can be defined. To study post-modernism (or any of the other "posts") for curricular implications means to question much of what we have heretofore considered natural or normal. Such fundamental questioning, of course, is frightening; we worry about the collapse of stability, of the order we have known, of the values we hold dear. But as post-modern complexity theory shows, the collapse of simple, linear, preset order does not necessarily lead to disruptive chaos. Rather, a new kind of order—that labeled "chaotic order"—often emerges,'^ Although the phrase seems oxymoronic, it is not; it refers to the subtle, complex, nonlinear order we now see permeating the universe—an order the Hubble telescope is helping us "see,""^ By modernist standards this order does seem quirky and chaotic, really no order at all; but in a post-modern frame the complexity of chaotic order is both natural and beautiful—as shown in those magnificent computer designs of recursive spirals, or in the more natural designs of clouds forming, surf breaking, and smoke curling.'^

Obviously, this is not the simple, symmetrical, Euclidean order we con- sider "natural," Instead we find complexity, chaos, and contingency built into this new order. Its complexit>' appears far more pervasive in nature than do the simple and symmetrical Euclidean shapes modernisLs favored. The study of this nonlinear, or fractal, order began only in the mid-1970s. Understanding its paradoxical qualities is one of the challenges of post-modernism.

Post-modernism is still too young to define itself, and indeed, it may never, or never want to, do so.̂ ** For to define the word in our usual, modernist sense of definition is to go against the very spirit of post-modernism; that is, definitions limit and close rather than generate and open. Those working on such a definition or nondefinition range from nihilistic deconstructivists to

'"'Katherine Hayles, Chaos and Order (Chicago; University of Chicago Press, 1991). "iSric J, Chaisson, "Early Results from the Hubble Space Telescope," Scient^ American

266 Oune 1992): 44-51; Richard T. Fienterg, X:OBE Confronts the Big Bang, " Sfey and Telescope 84 Ouiy 1992): 34-36; Stephen P. Manin, "Hubble Illuminates the Universe," Sky and Telescope 83 (June 1992): 619-625. Obviously, there is nothing new in this ' n e w order." The newness lies in our perceptions, both conceptual and visual.

'Peter Garrison, "Glued to the Set," Harvard Magazine 91 Ganuary-Februar>' 1989): 31. '**Stephen E, 'Yo\i\m\n, Return to Cosmology: Postmodern Science and the Theology of Nature

(Berkeley: University of California Press, Î982).

William E. Doll. Jr. 281

¡ma^e courtesy qf Peter Garrison.

process theologians.'^ Bui the issues of paradox, indeterminacy, self-organ iza- titin, and play seem appropriate concepts on which to base a working frame lbr post-modernism. We might begin by looking at each of these four qualities in terms of their curricular implications. Then we might attempt to find criteria for judging a "g(X)d" post modern curriculum. These criteria could possibly serve a post-modern curriculum as Ralph Tyler's criteria served the modernist curricula.

Let us begin with indeterminacy, that bugaboo of all modernist theories. As Dewey pointed out in V:)e Quest for Certainly, Western philosophy lias

G. Merquior, From fraf^tie to Paris: A Critique of Struct! tra/ist and Post-Structuralisl (London: Verso, 1986); David R, Griffin, Die Keetichantment vf Science: Postmodern

¡Proposals (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988),

282 Curriculum Possibilities in a "Post"-Future

sought certainty—through philosophy and mathematics—since the time of Plato.̂ " The Forms were permanent and determinative—worldly objects being but imperfea copies of the Forms. Descartes in the 17th century thought he had found the method "for rightly conduaing reason for seeking tmth."^^ Newton, three-quarters of a century later, was believed to have discovered the princple (gravity) that held the universe together. Laplace, writing after Newton, called him "the most fortunate" of men who ever lived "inasmuch as there is but one universe, and it can therefore happen to but one man in the world's history to be the interpreter of its laws."" Funher, Laplace argued, it is possible to determine the course of ail future planetary movements by knowing uHth precision the present planetary positions. All one needs to do after the data are collected is "the sums."^^ This procedure has been analogized into a linear, cause effect relationship, so that we now define the "scientific" approach (that most favored by education and the social sciences) as the colleaion of data and the placing ofthat data into a set formula. This mathemat- ical modeling method underlies much of economic forecasting, psychomet- rics, and numerous doaorai dissertations. It is pervasive enough to be consid- ered a semiparadigm for our "rightly conduaing reason for seeking truth."

in the early 1900s, Werner Heisenberg became bothered by the indeter- minacy he found in his study of the subatomic world. Movement in this world did not fit the patterns of linear order science had been following since Newton and Laplace. He and Bohr spent long hours arguing with Einstein over the nature and role of indeterminacy in the universe—Einstein always holding that "God does not throw dice." Indeed probability theory was devel- oped to help tame the randomness Heisenberg and others found in nature. Still, doubts lingered, and today with the advent of complexity/chaos theory we not only question God's gender but also have doubts as to whether the dice may not be loaded. Indeterminacy, nonlinearity, and a skewed (or "ordered") randomness seem to be woven into the fabric ofthe universe. The complexity of this fabric is stunningly beautiful, as the computer-generated recursions show; but understanding this fabric requires us to deal with such post-modern paradoxes as "ordered randomness" and "chaotic order." '̂*

In curriculum matters, the metaphysical commitment to certainty has encouraged us to structure the curriculum only in sequential, linear terms

I5ewey, The Quest for Certainty: A Study of the Relation of Knowledge and Action (New York: G. P. Futnam, I960). Original work published in 1929.

•'René Descanes, Discourse on the Method, trans. L. J. Lafleur (New York: The Liberal Arts Pres.s, 1950). Original work published in 1637.

^Edwin A Bum, The Metapfrt'Sical Foundations of Modem Physical Science: A Historical and Critical Essay (^ew York: Doubieday Anchor Books. 1955), p. 31. Original work published in 1932.

•'ibid., p 96. ^tlohn P. Briggs, and David F. Peat, Looking Giass Unii-erse: The Emerging Science ofWholeness

(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984J;John P. Briggs and David F. Peat, Turbulent Mirror (Nev/ York: Harper ajid Row, 1989).

William E Doll, Jr. - • • . 2 8 3

(a step by-step, explanation-first process) and to consider leaming only as a direct result of teaching.""^ Such sequential ordering and cause-effect episte- mology (based on a metaphysical commitment to determinism and certainty) underlie Tyler's modernist rationale for a well-designed curriculum. As Dewey pointed out well txífore Tyler wrote his rationale, such a view assumes the learner to be a receiver, not a creator, of ioiowledge, a spectator who in the most creative of moments can only discover that which already is. A curriculum based on these assumptions emphasizes transmission, linearity, and measure- ment rather than transformation, nonlinearit), and creation.

As might be expected, post-modernism sees indeterminacy in a positive, not a negative, manner. Once one moves beyond seeking certainty, it is possible to see indeterminacy as that which encourages, indeed entices, us to participate in the generation of meaning. The openness of indeterminacy invites us to dialogue with the situation at hand, to communicate with it and with each other. In Wolfgang Iser's phrasing, indeterminacy (especially in a text) "allows a spectrum of actualizations," actualizations that arise from our dialogue, our creative participation,^*' in this manner we, as makers, initiate "performances" of meaning. Such performance, of course, is always influ- enced by text and teacher (their role is to iniluence in a dialogical way), but the meaning making is ours. Thus, meaning is made, not received. The making of meaning requires, but is not guaranteed by, an open, indeterminate system.

Indeterminacy' becomes a meaningful concept only to the degree self- organization is operable. Without self-organization, indeterminacy does not take on the character of "primal soup" from which order arises; rather, indeterminacy remains nebulous or loosely and poorly formed. For indeter- minacy to have its own sense of power and being, to be a rich and generative dissipante structure, in Frigogine's use of this term, self-organization must be real and operable,"^^ Self-organization, with its spontaneous creation of new forms, has been around for as long as life has existed. As Jean Piaget says, auto- or self-regulation is the essence of life itself}^ It is the primary hypothesis of his theory of cognitive development.

Biological evolution, of course, raises the issue of self-organization— new species emerging from the competition for survival. But the Darwinian

Dewey, Tbe Quest for Certainty: A Study of the Relation of Knowledge and Action (NewYork:G. P, Putnam, I960), original work published in \92%ï.u-w\n\\\\im,V)e Metaphysical FoundiUions of Modem Physical Science: A Historical and Critical Essay ( New York: Doubleday Anchor íiooks, 1955), original work published in 1932; Richard Rom. Philosop/jy atid the Mirror ofNalure (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Universiiy Press, 1980).

• ^ o l f s a n g (ser. The Act of Reading (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978). p. 61.

' Ilya Prigogine, fVom Being to Becoming: Time and Complexity in tfje Physical Sciences (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman and Company, 1980); Hya Prigogine and Isabelle Stetigers, Order Out (^Cbaos: Man's New Dialogue with Nature (New York: Bantam Bcxjks, 1984).

^ear\Pi3í^&,Biologi'and Knowledge: An Essay on the Relations Betumeen Organic Regulation and Cognitiiv Processes, trans. Beatrix Walsh (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), ch, 1.

284 Curriculum Possibilities in a "Post"-Fuíure

view has paid no attention to purposiveness; the emergent species arise randomly, not willfijUy. It is in Piaget's and Prigogine's writings that we find this sense of looser teleology (one in which intentionalitj' is entwined with chance).

Piaget saw humans developing cognitive structures through interaaion with the environment. However, with his set stages and fixed sequences there is little if any role for chance. A strong sense of structuralism overlaps Piaget's constructivism. On the other hand, Prigogine's "dialogue with nature" is a good deal more open-ended. The future is unpredictable, dependent on the eventfiil interaaions that have preceded any moment in time. But both Prigogine and Piaget agree that time does have "an arrow"; the past cannot be rerun. In this arrow of time, new ideas, forms, species arise from the interaction between and among events. In this way chance and purpose become codeterminers.

In terms of curriculum, this means there needs to be just enough pertur- bation, disturbance, disequilibrium (Piaget), or dissipation (Prigogine) built in so that self-organization will be stimulated. Tlie teacher's role is to present the curriculum in just enough of a challenging, controversial, chaotic" man- ner so that self-organization will be encouraged. Such a role for curriculum, for the teacher—one wherein the teacher becomes "readily confrontable" by the students—is quite different from what we have developed using the Tyler rationale.^ The Tyler rationale has led us to emphasize precisely defined, well-articulated, preset goals and a delivery system that matches the clarity of the goal statements. Dissipation and disequilibrium are neither desirable nor necessary. In faa, in the operable curriculum model developed between the 1950s and 1990s—evidenced in the behavioral objeaives movement, competency-based assessment, and Madeline Hunter's set steps—the student has been looked upon more as a receiver of information than as a constructor or generator of meaning. The issues John Dewey wrestled with, challenged, and fought for in the early decades of this century—centering around the difference between the student as a spectator to others' knowledge or as a personal creator of meaning—remain in this last decade of the century. Educationally, we are mired in modernism.

Playfulness and paradox—indeed, playing with paradox—may present ways of getting out of this bog, of breathing new life into our moribund curriculum. Paradox is very much part of our "post" world; it lies at the heart of quantum reality—a reality that accepts that elearons may be considered either as oscillating waves or particle pellets. The choice is ours. Hence we may legitimately say that electrons are both waves and particles. To explain reality in such contrary and contradictory terms is a paradox that modernist thought cannot fethom.

^'Donald Schön, The Reflective Practitioner: How Prc^esskmais Think in Action (New York: Basic Books, 1983), p. 296.

William E. Doll, Jr ,: 285

Some post-struauralists, such as Gilles Deleuze, take paradox be>'ond the microworld of science into the existential ness of being, to the concept of self ̂ Descartes, one of modernism's fathers, held that self was inherently contained within, and yet existed apart from, the body. He thought self to be the "I" of consciousness, the "I" that defines our being—physical and intellectual. His famous phrase "cogito ergo sum" means "thinking accounts for being." Separated from the bt)dy yet paradoxically kKated in the body, "mind" for Descartes was the essence of conscious being, the "I-ness" or subjeciivit>' that defines human being," This consciousness manifests itself in the human's ability to plan, create purpose, have thoughts. Yet, paradoxically again, these purposes, plans, thoughts, were themselves believed to "mirror" an outer (and static) reality. Tlius, human consciousne.ss was basically to form itself into a receptive mode in which its "mirroring" ofthe outer reality would be clear, precise, accurate." This is why Descanes worked so hard on founding tfje method "for rightly conducting reason for seeking truth." The method is basically copying, and its pedagogical power has been felt from his day to ours,

Foucault and other post-structuralists argue there is no fixed self, that we need to "erase" such a concept from our discourse,^' An "I" isolated from "others" and subjects separated from objects render both the I and the subjects meaningless. Self is understood only in relation to other. Both are needed, each becomes the sine qua non of the other. Self without an other is not a self The same can be said about subject and objea; neither exists without the other, neither exists independently and in isolation.

A pedagogy based on Cartesian-modernist separation is either a copy- model pedagogy or, at best, a discovery pedagog)'. In the former, curriculum is the fixed truths and procedures to be passed on generation to generation, person to person. It is a transmitted curriculum. The teacher-student separa- tion is simple: the teacher teaches, the learner learns, A discovery [•)edagogy provides more flexibility and openness; the object is not "to furnish the mind" but "to train it to the use of its own powers." However, the separation between subject and objea is still presumed: the discovered is that which is already there. One has gone beyond transmission to a limited form of transformation;

%il!es Deleuze. The Logic of Sense, trans. Mark Lester and Charles Stivale (New York: Q>tumbia University Press, 1990).

^'Kené Descanes, 'Description ofthe Human Body," trans, John Cottinghain, En Tbe Philo- sophical Writings of Descartes, vol. 1. (l/indon: Catïibridge University Press, 198S), pp. 314-324. Original work published in 1664.

'^Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton, N); Princeton University Press. 1980).

"Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1. An Introduction, trans. Roben Hurley (New York; VintaRe Books, 1978); Michel Foucault. The History of Sexuality. Vol. 2. The Use of Pleasure, traas. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage Btwks, 19S5)i Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality. Vol. 3. 7he Care of Self trans. Roben Hurley (New York: Vintage Books, 1986).

286 Curriculum Possibilities in a "Post"-Ft4ture

the subjea undergoes limited, controlled, and predictable change, but the extemal reality remains dominant, unchanged, and controlling.

A pedagogy based on paradox, a paradoxical pedagogy as it were, shifts the focus from this subject-object split to their integration, conjunction, union. The paradox of subject-object, or teacher-learner, or text-reader is that neither is the other, yet neither is without the other. Each needs the other for its own sense of being, This shifts the focus of curriculum from receiving or developing to dialoguing, negotiating, interacting. Tliese are not words or concepts found in either the Tyler rationale or in modernist curriculum thought. They imply (and use) indeterminacy, openness, self-organization. Tliey are the words of a transformative curriculum, a cwn-^-ii-oriented curricu- lum, one focusing not on the external attributes of the racecourse but on the process of traversing the course, of negotiating with self, others, and the course.

Play is a good medium for developing skills in dialoguing, negotiating, interacting. A transformative curriculum looks to and uses play for the devel- opment of tliese skills. Fre-modern, tribal, and medieval cultures honored play through the roles of the shaman, the fool, the jester. Shakespeare used word play extensively in his comedies, even in his tragedies and histories. However, except in kindergarten—with its origins in German romanticism— play has not been an integral or accepted pan of the academic curriculum. As David Hamilton points out, our current, modernist curriculum is well- grounded in Calvinist theology.'** A strong separation divides work and play. Work is the route to eternal salvation; play (the "devil's work") leads to idleness and damnation,"

Play, however, especially intelleaual play, has a great deal to offer a post- modern curriculum. Play deals not with the present and foundational, but with the absent and the possible. Its very nature invites dialogue, interpretation, interaction. Its free-following form encourages participation. All of these aaivi- ties are essential to meaning making; they are key elements in what Bruner calls the "narrative mode" of learning."' Whereas the analytic mode (which we use in leaures, textbooks, recitations) is transmittive and preset, the narrative mode is transformative and open-ended. Needless to say, the former mode has a set methodology—as evidenced in most curriculum methods courses. The latter mode asks the teacher and the students to be playful— with the material and with each other. This mode (metaphorical rather than logical) also places a great burden on the teacher: to help students develop

Hamilton, Toward a Theory of Schooling (Philadelphia: Falmer Press. 1989). Doll, Jr., Pk^ and Mastery: A Structuralist View (paper presented at the Terman

Memorial Conference, Stanford, 1978). ^^eronie Bmnet, Actual Aiinds, Possible Worlds (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986),

ch. 2,

William E. Doll, Jr. .. 287

their play with and metaphoric use of ideas, forms, procedures, and patterns to create pnxJuctive happenings. This is not an easy task.

Another advantage of play, once one is attuned to its nature, is that its freedom allows challenge and exploration in a nonhostile and nonthreatening way. Rap music at its best does this. At its worst, rap crosses the thin, invisible, imaginarv' line between produaive and destruaive happenings. Play, like its counterpart chaos, if it is to develop into creativity, needs a sense of boundary- or attraction to an "event" (to use a Whitehead term).^^ Such, of course, will not always iiappen, and the teacher's role in helping such creativity occur is tenuous and delicate. Nondirection leaves all to chance—a point that b(>thered Piaget immensely; over-direction robs the event of its spontaneity and unique- ness, resulting in mediocrity—a point that bothered Piaget just as much. Creative development occurs in the tension between chance and direction. This tension, which Kuhn calls "essential," must always be maintained.^"

THE FOUR R'S

iTie Tyler rationale, with its emphasis on closure—choosing "purposes," "experiences," "methods of organii'^tion," and tlien evaluating to "determine whether these purposes [experiences, methods! are being attained"—is so much a p r o d u a of modernist thinking that it is hardly appropriate to use it as a set of criteria for a post-modern curriculum." A new educational mind- set and curriculum frame require a new set of criteria to determine what constitutes a gixjd or quality post-modern curriculum. Toward this end, 1 propose using the four R's of" richness, recursion, relations, and rigor as criteria. As the three R's of "reading, 'riting, and "rithmetic" were foundational to late 19th- and early 20th-cemury curricula, I propose the four Rs as poten- tially foundational for the last years of this century and the early ones of the next.

Ricfjness

The paramount feature of a post-modern curriculum is openness— defined here as generativity, multiple layers of interpretation, and varied realms of meaning. To achieve openness, the curriculum needs to be rich; that is, it needs to be filled with enough ambiguit>', challenge, perturbation to invite the learner to enter into dialogue with the curriculum and with those working in the curriculum. Meaning making occurs through dialogue

'^Alfred N. whitehead, 5cíÍE7íceímí/fl!)ejWoífer«UforW( New York: Free Press, 1967), original work published in 1925; Alfred N. Whitehead, The Aims of Education (New York: Free Press. 1967), original work publi.shed in 1929.

^"^ornji, S.Kuhn, The Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientific Traditions and Change (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1977).

'^Ralph W. Tyler, Basic Principles ofCumculum and Instruction (Chicago; The University of Chicago Press, 1949), pp- 1-2.

288 Curriculum Possibilities in a "Pœt"-Fuiure

and interaction. Thus, the curriculum needs to be rich enough in depth and breadth to encourage meaning making. Both the curriculum and the teacher must be challenging and open enough to invite and encourage participation.

Here is a pedagogic creed I try to follow in dialoguing with students:

In a reflective relationship between teacher and student, the teacher does not ask the student to accept the teacher s authority; rather, the teacher asks the student to suspend disbelief in thai authority, to join with the teacher in inquiry, into that which the student is experiencing. The teacher agrees to help the student understand the meaning of the advice given, to be readily confrontable by the student, and to work with the student in refleaing on the tacit understanding each has.*

The sort of dialogue advocated here can occur best when the curriculum is rich with problems, perturbations, possibilities.

While richness in the sense of having multiple layers of interj^retation, meaning, and problematics does produce an exciting curricuium, it also produces one akin to the current view of the nature of the world in which we live. Descartes' set method for "rightly conducting reason for seeking truth"—a foundation of positivist philosophy—was based on the assumption that the universe we live in (indeed, reality itselO is stable, consonant, and simply ordered. As Newton was fond of saying: "Nature is comformable to Herself and simple."^' It is this metaphysical assumption, of course, that encouraged Newton to look for the same order in the movement of the planets (the spheres) that existed in apples falling to the ground. Hence was bom the concept of gravity. Today order is also posited, but not Newton's simple uniform order. Now order is seen as complex, self-generative, "lumpy," and inherently unstable. Quantum physics shows us a universe (and reality) both quirky and "quarky." Instead of simple order, we posit complex, chaotic order. From the richness of this milieu comes an order which, as we engage it, transforms both ourselves and itself. This is the nature of our creative universe as we now see it.'*̂

A creative curriculum, like a creative universe, emerges through dialogue. The produa is not preset but emerges through the process—a favorite point of Dewey's. This is why Rorty advocates we "keep the conversation going."'*^ The challenge, then, is to develop a curriculum rich enough to keep conversa- tion 'going and going and going and going."

•^Assimilated from Donald Schön, The Reflective Practitioner: How Prof^sionals Think in Action (New York: Basic Books, 1983), pp. 296-297,

•"Isaac Newion, Opticks, 4th ed. (New York: Dover Publications. Inc., 1952), p. 397. Original work published in 1730,

* I lya Prigogi ne and Isabel le Stengers, Order Out ofChaos: Man's New Dialogue with Nature ( New York: Bantam Books, 1984 ); Paul Davies, The Cosmic Blueprint: New Discoveries in Nature's Creatii'e Ahility to Order the Universe (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988); Paul Davies, The Mind of God: Tbe Scientific Basis for a Rational World (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992).

••'Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton, N): Princeton University Press, 1980), p. 377.

William E. Doll. Jr. . 289

Recursion

Recursion means to return. It is from the Latin ream-ere (to run back). The conneaion with curriculum as currere is obvious. A recursive curriculum emphasizes the notion of returning—to look at itself, yet again, in a new light, for the first time. This metaphorical playing happens more easily in the humanities than in the sciences. In mathematics, recursion is synonymous with mathematical iteration—working an equation in a nonlineaer way so that the solution v (in an x-y formula) is fed back into the equation as a new X. This is done over and over, each new solution (y) becoming input (x) for the next repetition of the equation. It is these recursions/iterations that make up the marvelous fractal computer graphics one sees in chaos mathematics, the Mandelbrot and Julia sets.

In the humanities, however, recursion has a broader meaning. Here, it refers to the aa of a mind or self "looping back," "turning around," or refleaing on itself, and in this way actually creating itself as a conscious self— the highest expre.ssion of human awareness. In education, recursion means displaying, to self and others, "what one has thought and then turning around on it and reconsidering it.""*"* Through this turning around" or "reconsider- ing"—which is akin to Dewey's concept of reflection, a second looking— transformation, growth, development occur. A recursive curriculum, then, leaves rix>m for students (or a class) to loop back on previous ideas, to run back or revisit what has gone before. Such a «on/iWisr approach to curriculum represents a definite departure from the linear lesson plans, course syllabi, and textbook constructions educators have worked with and accepted for so long. A recursive curriculum is dialogical; its development is open, dependent on the ongoing interaction among teachers, students, texts, cultures. The art of curriculum construaion—no mean feat when these four elements are diverse—consists of coordinating and directing these forces. As with Dewey's concept of growth, this coordination and direaion must be neither overem- phasized nor underemphasized.

Relations

A linear curriculum has a definite beginning, middle, end. A nonlinear curriculum is more akin to a matrix, maybe even to the computer graphics of a Mandelbrot set. A matrix, sphere, or Mandelbrot blob has no beginning or ending, just an ever increasing middle, a middle filled with conneaions and interconneaions. The heart of the curriculum process calls for adding continuously to these conneaions, making the overall system deeper, richer, darker. Charaaerizing curriculum in terms of "dark" systems may be an unfamiliar concept; but as more interconnections are made, the points where

"Jerome Uruncr.ActidalMimis, Possihte Wortds (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986), p. 129.

290 Curriculum Possibilities in a "Post"-Fiuure

Fractal ¡ma}>e of liw Mcmdelhroi Si't courtesy of An Matrix, Ithaca,

they meet become darker, richer, more ambiguous, Shakespeare's poetry has lived for centuries not because of its simplicity but because of the richness of its multiple inteq^retations. The Newtonian metaphysical idea of simplicity— nature comformable and simple—is passé.

The Mandelbrot set appears mostly black, with luminescent colors at the fringes. The dark blob—itself almost symmetically ordered—represents an area where the equation generating the set is strong, powerful, "alive" with relations. On the fringes, filled with dynamic luminescence and all .sorts of weird and fascinating shapes, the equations border on extinction, wandering off into nothingness. Paradoxically, the borders and fringes display the most visual, mathematic^al, and aesthetic excitement, Here is where the spirals and swirls for which the set is known occur. Here lie Prigogine's "far-from-

William E. Doll Jr . 291

equilibrium" situations, the most fragile, the most generative, the most trans- formative.

At the center of the set, the relations are rich with interpretations, but stable. The fringes reveal relations that are also among the mo.st exciting, but that border on extinction. Trans[X)sing this metaphor into classroom teaching and curriculum suggests die teacher needs to help the students deal with the richness of multiple but stable interpretations as well as the excitement of tenuous and "far out" ones. Both t>'pes of interpretations exist. Without its fringes, the Mandelbrot set is nothing but a blob; but the fringes could not exist without the stability of the blob, the center and core of the set.

Just as richness applies to more than curriculum, to reality in a cosmologi- cal sense, so also d o relations. In a cosmology such as that described by Whitehead, Prigogine, or process theology—all of which move away from cíínsidering Newtons hard, massy, impenetrable particles" (atoms) as the ultimate essence of reality—relations become foundational or es.sential. Rela- tions form the hean of these cosmologies. The same can be said of post- modernism or post structuralism in gênerai—relations, not things, become the prime ftxrus. Relations, of course, are far more flexible than "impenetrable particles." Relations require interpretation and dialogue for the assessment of meaning; particles require precise measurement and definition. Such precise measurement and definition are not jxissible in a quantum world, as both Heisenberg and Gödel have .shown. Therefore, a post-modern frame substi- tutes relations for particles as its chief charaaeristic. The curriculum field, however, has yet to make such a shift. Our current concept envisions curricu- lum as a prearranged set of linear particles, not as a gathering or matrix of interrelated "tKxasions." Shifting from particles to relations helps us under- stand with greater depth Whitehead's statements: "Do not teach too many subjects," but "what you teach, teach thoroughly." "Let the main ideas which are intnxiuced . . . be few and important, and let tliem be thrown into every combination '̂

Rigor

In some ways rigor is the most important of the four R's. If richness most distinguishes a post-modern curriculum, then rigor is what makes rich- ness rich. The problems, perturbations, and possibilities that constitute rich- ness need to be o r d e r e d (albeit loosely) if they are to shed new and interesting light on a subjea. Without such loose ordering, they become merely a jumbled colleaion of d i s c o n n e a e d perturbations, useful to no one. Rigor molds these into a coherent and dynamic unity; rigor is the struggle to work through the problems, perturbations, and possibilities to achieve a sense of coherence

'•̂ Alfred N. Whiiehead, The Aims of Education (New York: Free Press, 1957), p, 2. Original work published in 1929.

292 ^ Ctaricttlum Possibilities in a "Post"-Future

and integration not evident (maybe not present) when the struggle began. Rigor enables coherence to emerge from disequilibrium, chaos, and confusing complexity.

The word rigor (fi-om the Latin of the same spelling and rigere in the infinitive verb form) means stifftiess, severity, strictness. Rigor mortis is the obvious and direct carryover from Latin to contemporary usage. In a method- ological sense, to be rigorous is to be severe and stria in applying a procedure, with no loose, humanist, personal, subjeaive infringements. In the deductive sciences, this rigor leads to the closure tiiat logic provides for our "ri^tly conduaing reason"; in the empirical sciences, rigor reduces possible causes to the one influential cause. In the Tyler rationale, rigor produces the close (or high) correlation between the purposes intended and the results achieved; this is what educational evaluation is all about.

Moving into a hermeneutic frame or into the narrative or post-mtxlern mode softens rigor's harshness and severity. In these modes rigor means not so much strict conformity to a preset procedure as the careful exploration of multiple possibilities and unstated assumptions. Here one looks deeply, critically, generatively, and even contrarily into the "matter at hand." (It is hard to leave the language of modernism, even to express post-modern thoughts.) One explores thoroughly that which interpretation and metaphor present. Rather than deny the role personalness and subjectivity play in inter- pretation, one uses personalness and subjectivity to help achieve better, deeper, more comprehensive understanding. If, as humans, we are makers of meaning and not merely discoverers or followers of others' meanings, then rigor in this hermeneutic and heuristic sense needs to be included as a criterion of good curriculum.

It should go without saying that the criteria presented here in the four R's are as far removed from the open and progressive movements as they are from the behavioral movements associated with the Tyler rationale.

WILLIAM E. DOLL, JR., is Professor of Education, Department of Curriculum and Instmction, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803.

Kessler, Shirley, and Beth Blue Swadner, eds., Reconceptualizing the Early Childhood Curricutum: Beginning the Dialogue. New York: Teachers Col- lege Pres.s, 1992. 308 pp. $22.95/$49.0O.

This collection of articles provides historical, social, theoretical, and cultural contexts for early childhood education research and praaice and addresses the issues of interest, voice, and pedagogy in the early childhood curriculum. Authors use critical and feminist perspectives and highlight Issues of cultural and linguistic pluralism. The final section ofthe book examines the relationship between the researcher and the researched,

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