Rethinking Curriculum in Times of Shifting Educational Context

239 Pages·2018·1.742 MB·English

by  Kaustuv Roy (auth.)

Kaustuv Roy
Rethinking
Curriculum
in Times of
Shifting
Educational
Context
Rethinking Curriculum in Times
of Shifting Educational Context
Kaustuv Roy
Rethinking
Curriculum in Times
of Shifting
Educational Context
Kaustuv Roy
PESSE Campus
Azim Premji University
Pixel A PESSE Campus
Bengaluru, India
ISBN 978-3-319-61105-1 ISBN 978-3-319-61106-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-61106-8
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017946019
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher
nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material
contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher
remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional
affiliations.
Cover design by Thomas Howey
Printed on acid-free paper
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature
The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
P
reface
There was a charged atmosphere those days among the curriculum group
on campus at Baton Rouge, LA, USA. In the Fall, the annual curriculum
conference at Bergamo, Italy, which everyone looked forward to, was held
in a magnificent monastic cloister with old pergolas, walkways, and recesses
adding to a sense of elevation. Sitting there on a bench beneath the glori-
ous trees and the marvelous silence, one was reminded of Margaret Mead’s
words, spoken half a century or more ago, that just as there were great
discoveries in science, we now needed such discoveries in the area of
human relations. On the way back, thought nibbled at T.S. Eliot’s mus-
ings in The Sacred Wood on what it means to be a poet (for some of the
most significant discoveries in human relations are made in poetry): “What
happens is a continual surrender of himself as he is at the moment to
something which is more valuable. The progress of an artist is a continual
self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.” When the two utter-
ances are brought together (Mead’s and Eliot’s), one might realize that
the great moves in human relations envisaged by Mead cannot be without
the progressive sacrifice of the constituted individuality as posited by Eliot.
The true birth of the present book is in this peculiar moment, the density
of which hits me like a brick, at once obvious and occult. Many years have
passed between that moment and the actual writing of the book, big
changes have occurred in circumstances, but the moment retains its
f reshness just as it was then.
How does the moment become the book? As in much growing up,
there are often things premature. And this prematureness is usually the
lack of adequate insight into the true nature of things contained in the
v
vi PREFACE
moment. Its remedy is in immersing oneself in careful and intense
observation of “what is.” The “what is” cannot be grasped unless the
mind refrains as an interpretive agent, for which a reasonable austerity is
necessary, otherwise it interferes with the investigation of “what is.” This
necessary austerity, in turn, is afforded by reducing volubility and bringing
upon oneself a voluntary aloneness that is not isolation. That is to say, the
writer’s life becomes a quiet laboratory for the meditation on what is, and
its careful articulation. I look for an obvious point of entry into the cur-
ricular process. In order to rethink curriculum, the phenomenon of disar-
ticulated Reason, surplus and impoverished at the same time, reduced to
being a logical inventory, even logistics for instrumental modernity, seems
to be that starting point.
Once the beginning is determined, the rest follows as a matter of neces-
sity. Each progressive step of inquiry leads successively to the next obvious
point. Phenomenologically, the greatest existential split—between aes-
thetics and reason, between Eros and intellect—tries to heal itself through
the act of writing. The end cannot be determined except inasmuch as it is
already given in the beginning. Homer must eventually bring Odysseus
back to Ithaca. The critique of empirical reason in curriculum begun in the
initial pages makes it imperative to push that line of inquiry to its limits. A
new unit of being as well as of social action is faintly viewed through the
intervening steps, leading to a complete reevaluation of the relation
between the two ends of the curriculum.
But unlike The Odyssey, the reconstruction of a self that is livable
and connected to all-that-is is not a heroic journey. Here both Scylla and
Charybdis are reflections of one’s own inabilities and disabilities. And
Circe is but a trick that the mind plays on itself to maintain old fears
and seductions. Nevertheless, Odysseus, whose name in Greek means
“trouble,” is meaningful here. The idea of reform is a deeply troubled
one and it must be understood correctly if it is to be useful. Reform must
reach all the way down to the proprioceptive sensory organization if it is
to make any difference. If the same Odysseus returns to the same Penelope
after 20 years, then there is only aging and all is wasted. The progress of
an artist … is but a “continual extinction of personality.” A book in the
final analysis is but a shedding of personality toward the Unthought. And
the energy released becomes available to the reader for crafting their
unique and meaningful perspective out of the offerings that mix freely
with their own existential imperatives.
a
cknowledgements
A book is of course much bigger than the writer. It contains in part the
acumen of so many predecessors and the voices of so many teachers that
one would have to turn to allegory to express gratitude. Besides, there is
also the inexpressible Open that is the source of any useful insight toward
which one can only genuflect in silence. As for the substantial conditions
of possibility, let me thank Visvabharati University, Santiniketan, for use of
library facilities as a visiting scholar. Thanks are also due to Azim Premji
University under whose auspices the present project was carried out.
Finally, I am grateful to Ms. Chitra L., who has worked on this project as
research and editorial assistant, for her careful work and perceptive
comments.
vii
c
ontents
1 Introduction: Toward a Living Curriculum 1
2 Reason and Curriculum: On Rethinking the Logistikon 19
3 Ideology and Curriculum: The “Lacunar” Dialectic 51
4 Suffering and Curriculum: The Judgments of History 77
5 Aesthetics and Curriculum: Developing
Negative Capability 103
6 Eros and Curriculum: Psyche and the Mechanosphere 125
7 Intuition and Curriculum: Beyond the Empirical 149
8 Corpus and Curriculum: Finding Our Rhythm 173
9 Colonial Modernity and Curriculum: The Other World 195
10 Epilogue: The Pedagogic Situation 219
Bibliography 227
Index 233
ix
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: Toward a Living Curriculum
This book is not about, but the doing of, curriculum theory—the practice of
theory, as it were. That means it is not a discourse about a discourse. Rather
it is a direct engagement with those very elements—reason (logos), nonreason
(mythos), becoming, dissipation, violence, uncertainty, insecurity, transcen-
dence, love, and death—the varying combinations and effects of which pro-
duce, at the phenomenological level, the horizon of the thing we call
curriculum. The practice of theory resides in the ontological grasp of knowl-
edge itself, its materiality, and not in its mere formal acquisition. The present
work lies at the complex and dynamic intersection of several disciplinary
domains such as philosophy, psychology, political theory, and pedagogy. The
discussion concerns a critical consideration of the relationship between knowl-
edge and knower from these multiple perspectives, implicitly and explicitly
raising the questions: What might be the conditions of possibility for a living
curriculum in which Eros and intellect (or reason and intuition) are not sepa-
rated? Is it conceivable to escape ideology that keeps curriculum bound to
impoverished categories? What are the ingredients of an educational culture
that is able to grasp curriculum as an expanding interpersonal movement? In
what way does the teacher- learner ensemble become creatively constituted
beyond obstructive dualities? How can we reinvent meaning in curriculum
without totalization? Which indigenous understandings can be recovered in
order to reinvent curriculum with greater relevance for diverse and peripheral
peoples? How can young people be helped toward openness and life possibil-
ity despite the contingencies and fragmentation of modern life?
© The Author(s) 2018 1
K. Roy, Rethinking Curriculum in Times of Shifting Educational
Context, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-61106-8_1
2 1 INTRODUCTION: TOWARD A LIVING CURRICULUM
The ultimate purpose of any inquiry of this nature is to provide the
educator-educated-curriculum ensemble the widest possible means of ori-
enting itself when realizing and fulfilling the existential potential of its
situation. The underlying theoretical stance of the present book may be
regarded to be along the lines of existential phenomenology. The latter,
through its insistence on inter-experiential space as the true unit of social
experience, avoids reference to human reality either in terms of an enclosed
thinking substance pondering subjectively or a perceiving subject facing an
objective world. Thus, the approach attempts to understand educational
experience and curriculum from beyond the usual binaries such as
experiencer/experience and teacher/taught, instead focusing on the inter-
experiential spaces that phenomenologically open up before us. The prin-
cipal argument concerns the urgent need to go beyond the underlying
perceptual limitations of the conventional modes in which curriculum is
considered, presented, and practiced. But much more, it progressively
leads us to consider experience in a new light that can creatively challenge
the deleterious effects of “common-sense” thinking on the categories such
as the teacher and the student. A different unit of analysis progressively
presses upon us that which may be called the pedagogic situation.
In using the word curriculum, I do not mean to limit the discussion to
any specific curriculum such as middle school curriculum or undergradu-
ate curriculum or something else. Rather, I refer to the fundamental
assumptions that underlie our ways of thinking about knowledge and
knower in modern education that stretch beyond any specific curriculum
to the very ways in which we simultaneously become the subjects and
objects of curriculum while maintaining claims to a dubious autonomy.
My concern is to expose the stale limits of the existing ways of considering
the knowledge-knower relationship and suggest ways of breaking out of
the current impasse onto a more creative and meaningful plane. Thus, our
discussion in the following pages may be thought of as a meta-curricular
activity that deconstructs conventional categories. The meta-curricular
effort goes beyond epistemology to seek a dialectical understanding of the
ontology that lies behind the epistemic cultures.
What calls for setting up a dialectic between the epistemic and the onto-
logical? First, if pushed far enough, epistemological questions turn into
ontological ones and vice versa. Symbolic knowledge must yield to material-
ity as soon as we consider the matrix in which cognition arises, and the cog-
nitive matrix in turn might be seen as layered systems of communication or
arrangements of signals (sensations). And, second, if there is an o verarching