Curriculum: In Theory and Policy

This seminar examines the school curriculum as a primary site for working out philosophical, political, and practical issues entailed in thinking about how best to organize student learning in the US public school system. While focusing on contemporary schools, we will steep our discussion of curriculum in the thinking of Plato, Rousseau, Dewey and others who have made the curriculum of schools a part of a larger philosophical tradition. This work addresses the responsibilities of education in a democratic society by homing in on the meanings associated with learning, knowing, equality, and opportunity in an effort to rethink what are taken as the foundations of curriculum theory, policy, and practice. The course is timely given our current national debates about what should and should not be taught in schools, from Critical Race Theory and the 1619 Project to mandates around topics of gender and sexuality in the school curriculum.