Comments on: “Conceptions of Curriculum”

By: peter jones

peter jones — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 21:37:19 +0000

Thanks for this source. I picked up the discussion on XMCA and noticed the medical source for the pdf. One of these days I will investigate curriculum theory in more detail. It (or more specifically curriculum development) was one of the four original stimuli for the production of Hodges’ model.
If in looking at Hodges’ model anyone has any thoughts please let me know through the main site. All the best for 2008!

By: Yuexia

Yuexia — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 02:44:25 +0000

Tony,
I was there when she delivered that AAACS presidential address.I did check out Giroux’s work Border crossing and his newly published book America on the edge: Henry Giroux on Politics, Culture, and Education. I hope they would provide any unconventional wisdom to my work.

By: Tony Whitson

Tony Whitson — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 19:56:10 +0000

First, Yuexia, I should provide links to the papers that you are quoting from.

My Tampere (Finland) paper is at
http://curriculumforge.org/WikiIaacsConferencesPapers?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=Whitson_Tampere.doc
The passages you quote are not actually my own writing; they are quotations from
http://www.uwstout.edu/soe/jaaacs/vol2/chambers.htm

Actually, that paper by Cynthia Chambers would be very relevant to your own work on cultures, cultural identities, and cultural differences. The idea of “borders” is often used in a somewhat metaphorical sense — in education, most famously, in Giroux’s work on “Border Crossings.” But in Chambers’ paper (I think you were there in Montreal when she gave this talk as the Erlbaum presidential address to AAACS), she is talking about “borders” and identity in a way that is more literal, less metaphorical. How this may be relevant to Mexicans and Puerto Ricans would be an empirical question — and not necessarily the same as for other Latin Americans.

By: Yuexia

Yuexia — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 04:00:09 +0000

Tony,
I have a hard time to understand the notion of “border” as it appears in your paper presented at Tampere. I quoted this here from your paper and it says

The border has been a high-end metaphor in the re-conceptualization of curriculum around politics, identity, and difference

But the border for Canadians, the International Boundary between the US and Canada, is hardly a metaphor

Norman Hillmer, Professor of History and International Affairs at Carlton University, claims the border is integral to Canadian identity: “We are a border people. The border is our livelihood. The border is our identity.”

Out of my complete ignorance, I want to know the extent to which the border exerts that kind of impact upon Canadians. Would it be fair to paraphrase it like, for instance, (Mexican/hispanics) We are a border people. The border is our livelihood. The border is our hispanic identity.”

Another thing I want to mention is that I learnt from your paper “there are a lot of things between heaven and earth that may not participate in the formation of human being(s), and thus, by this conception, would be outside curriculum.”(p. 8 of your Tampere paper) It reminds me of a famous saying by Mao Zedong,

battling with heaven is endless joy, fighting with the earth is endless joy, and struggling with humanity is endless joy.

So I wonder if this kind of human being’s interaction with heaven and earth could also be described as course of formative experiences that actually occurs.That being said, it is not outside curriculum but inside.