Currently in my Regular Education classes I am teaching about the election of 1800 and my advanced classes are studying the War of 1812. For the past two years we have utilized a textbook by Holt, called
As a social studies teacher, this chapter was really interesting to me in various ways. I find it difficult to embrace both authors, Apple & Slattery, idealistic views of education. Other difficulties I have are that sure I would love to take my kids to battle sites or where MLK was shot, but the state of Ohio has limited that by their implementation of state standards and high stakes testing. I did not enter the teaching profession to teach history as facts to be memorized, however in the "educational trends" have forced me to step away from the teachings of facts and mold a student's mind so they can pass that test.
Overall, I am having trouble understanding why we are reading perspectives on curriculum when we as teachers have no control over curriculum? State and now national governments have unfortunately done that for us. Therefore, shouldn't we be focusing on how to make the information relevant to students and using the standards given to us to find creative ways to present the information?
Slattery opens the chapter historical interpretation from two perspectives "one viewing it a progressive series of distinctly separate and chronological events on a time line and the other as a progressive experience of interrelated occasions, with the past and future embedded in the existential present reality." The "present reality" for middle school students is who fought when, what did she say about me, my boyfriend did this or that and the list goes on and on. Obviously not our reality.
I definitely agreed when Slattery brought up the destructive consequences when hegemonic structure dominate. At the high school, the school experiences are all organized about sports. IF they are failing your class the coach comes and pleads with you to raise his grade so he can play at the "big game" on Friday, even though he has a 7% in a class.
Slattery ends the chapter by saying "history of curriculum in the postmodern era must be recounted and understood from this autobiograplical perspective" and "our accountability must be to human person and not to tests and measures", sounds to me like its been a while since he has been in a classroom or a district meeting.
In Chapter 3, Slattery discussed the ideas of both autobiography and currere. I was unformilar to the concept of "currere", obviously as someone in education I know what curriculum. It was interesting to look at curriculum in a different form. I learned that currere means to run and describes it as over a racecourse. I feel that is a perfect explanation for education today (probably not the way he meant it) but with the birth of state standards/core standards, we are limited as teachers as are the students. In order to "properly" prepare as a teacher we must recognize that we need "make it through all the curriculum is taught in order to prepare for the state tests". Therefore, courses are merely snapshots of numerous topics, rather than allowing teachers to draw out many experiences from students in order for them to develop their autobiographies.
On a closing notes, I think Slattery is an "interesting" person. I will leave it at that :)
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