A Philosophy of Curriculum: The Cautionary Tale of Simultaneous Languages in a Decentered World

Curriculum has become the new wonder word for our times. Even more, curriculum has become a concept, and an idea. This book provides a speculum mentis, a map of the mind, of modern curriculum theory to help trace the interactions between various forms of thought as they play out in contemporary schooling. This book is also about how the weaving of various forms of thought provides an umbrella of understanding about the nature of curriculum and perhaps a glimpse of human understanding. Griffith argues that to live in this modern- post modern world requires reflective thought about the question of what form connectedness will take when we teach and learn. In doing so he examines the narratives, and their implications, of those who have experienced the tension between the modern and post modern world. Some of these thoughts, ideas and narratives come from established thinkers in the social and natural sciences, while others come from thinkers and learners who live in our classrooms. The interaction between these two, Griffith believes, is crucial to understanding how curriculum might play out in our schools. In tracing the smaller stories of men and women working to paper over the cracks in the twentieth century Griffith offers a cautionary tale on the larger dialectical shifts at work in western civilization which he says must become the basis of our understanding. This is the road map he argues that is the foundation of a metaphor for the human condition as it is, not as it has been constructed. This book will be useful and thought provoking text in curriculum studies for students at the graduate level.