untitled.fr10

COLEGIUL DIRECTOR: dr. Eugen NOVEANU dr. Mihai JIGU prof. univ. dr. Viorel NICOLESCU

REVISTA DE P E D A G O G I E

DH L 1" oid] in I FCA FACULTII u n rJoWGKmgwx educaiei cot -4rff'!r;T'? inventar REDACIE:

acad. Alexandru BOBOC, acad. Alexandru SURDU, prof. univ. dr. Carmen CREU, prof. univ. dr. Jagdish GUNDARA, prof. univ. dr. loan NEACU, prof. univ. dr. Rodica NICULESCU,

prof. univ. dr. Dan POTOLEA, prof. univ. dr. Emil STAN, prof. univ. dr. Pavel ZGAGA.

cercet. t. dr. Otilia APOSTU, cercet. t. dr. Laura CPI, cercet. t. Atwell GRAHAM

cercet. t. dr. Irina HORGA, cercet. t. dr. Simona VELEA

RESPONSABILI DE NUMR: cercet. t. dr. Laura CPI, cercet. t. dr. Octavian MNDRU

TEHNOREDACTARE COMPUTERIZAT: Vlad PASCU

ISSN 0034-8678

Responsabilitatea asupra coninutului acestor articole revine autorilor lor. Aceast publicaie reflect numai opiniile autorilor.

ADRESA REDACIEI: Str. tirbei Vod Nr. 37, A l l U I L V 111 sector 1, Bucureti 010102 Tel.: 021-314.27.83/127 Fax: 021-312.14.47 ^ 3 ) 2 0 1 0 e-mail: [email protected]

REVISTA DE PEDAGOGIE NR. 58 (3) 2010

C U P R I N S

ABORDRI TEORETICE Cezar Brzea - Definirea i clasificarea competenelor 7 Thomas Popkewitz - Curriculum Studies and The History of The Present... 13 Dan Badea - Competene i cunotine - faa i reversul abordrii lor 33 Marin Manolescu - Pedagogia competenelor - o viziune integratoare asupra educaiei 53

CERCETRI, MODELE DE INTERVENIE, BUNE PRACTICI Nicoleta Bercu, Laura-Elena Cpi - Despre a nva elevul s nvee 67 Nicoleta Du, Kattherinne Urriola Lopez, Patricia Compario Fernndez, Juan Crdenas Tapia - Evaluarea prin competene: o abordare empiric a criteriilor utilizate de cadrele didactice universitare n activitatea cu studenii .... 87 Maria EHza Dulam - O nou paradigm n nvmntul romnesc: centrarea pe competene 95 Eyup Artvinli - 2005 Curriculum Reform in Turkey and A Case of Geography 111 Octavian Mndru - Instruirea centrat pe competene - ntre dimensiunea teoretic i aplicarea la clas 127 Mihaela Alexandra Pop - Orele de educaie plastic i kitsch-ul 139 Victoria - Delia Bunceanu - Sensibilite et expression culturelles: quelques pistes pour la formation actionnelle d'une competence ele 149 Ligia Sarivan - Competenele cheie - De la declaraii de politic educaional la integrarea n procesul didactic 161 Dan Ion Nasta - Instrumentarul politicilor lingvistice educative n Europa i competena cheie Comunicare n limbi strine" 169 Angelica Mihilescu - Domenii de competene cheie europene: comunicarea n limba matern 183 Luminia Catan - Domeniul de competen cheie Matematic i elaborarea curricular 193 Angela Teileanu - Dimensiuni axiologice i exigene europene n predarea-nvarea-evaluarea disciplinelor socio-umane 207 Mihai lacob, Alina Gavrili - Implementarea competenei sociale n coal 219

Petre Botnariuc, Luminia Tsica - Domenii de competene cheie europene: Competena digital 225 Robert Constantin Nenianu - Opinii privind predarea n ciclul primar n viziunea competenelor - cheie 237

AGENDA EDUCAIEI Simona Luciana Velea, Irina Horga, Laura-Elena Cpi - Restructurarea curriculum-ului naional. Analiza condiiilor de implementare 241 Constantin Dinc - Simpozion naional pe tema competenelor desfurat la Sibiu 247 Luminia Catan - Metodologia implementrii competenelor - cheie n curriculumul colar 249 Mariana Epura - Program de formare Competenele cheie n geografia colar" 253 Corina Leca - Deliberarea n democraie - Ghid de bune practici 255

RECENZII Gica Pehoiu - Mndru, O. Competenele n nvarea geografiei. Ghid metodologic" 257 Carmen - Gabriela Bostan - Nicolescu, B. Transdisplinaritatea. Manifest".... 259

C O N T E N T S

THEORETICAL APPROACHES Cezar Brzea - Defining and classifying competences 7 Thomas Popkewitz - Curriculum Studies and The History of The Present... 13 Dan Badea - Competences and knowledge - the head and crown to their approach 33 Marin Manolescu - The Pedagogy of competences - an integrative perspective on education 53

STUDIES, INTERVENTION MODELS, GOOD PRACTICES Nicoleta Bercu, Laura-Elena Cpi - On learning students how to learn ... 67 Nicoleta Du, Kattherinne Urriola Lopez, Patricia Compano Fernndez, Juan Crdenas Tapia - Competence-based evaluation: an empiric approach of criteria used by academic staff in their work with students 87 Maria Eliza Dulam - A new paradigm in the Romanian education: the focus on competences 95 Eyiip Artvinli - 2005 Curriculum Reform in Turkey and A Case of Geography 111 Octavian Mndru - Competence-based Teaching - between the theoretical dimension and the classroom application 127 Mihaela Alexandra Pop - Arts classes and the kitsch 139 Victoria - Delia Bunceanu - Sensibility and cultural expression: several trajectories for the acionai development of a key competence 149 Ligia Sarivan - Key competences - from statements to integration in the didactic approach 161 Dan Ion Nasta - The toolkit of Language education policies in Europe and the key competence "Communication in foreign languages" 169 Angelica Mihilescu -Fields of European key competences: communication in Mothertongue 183 Luminia Catan - The field of Maths key competence and the curriculum development 193 Angela Teileanu - Axiological dimensions and European exigences in the teaching-learning-evaluating of Social Sciences and Humanities subjects 207 Mihai lacob, Alina Gavrili - The implementation of the Social competence in school 219

Petre Botnariuc, Luminia Tsica - The Digital competence - domain of the European key competences 225 Robert Constantin Nenianu - Opinions on Teaching Key competencies in Primary education 237

EDUCATIONS AGENDA Simona Luciana Velea, Irina Horga, Laura-Elena Cpi - The restructuring of the National Curriculum. An analysis of the conditions of implementation 241 Constantin Dinc - National Symposium on the topic of competences in Sibiu 247 Luminia Catan - The field of Maths key competence and the curriculum development 249 Mariana Epura - A Teacher training program on "Key competencies through Geography education" 253 Corina Leca - Deliberation in Democracy - A G o o d Practice Guide 255

EOOK REVIEWS Gica Pehoiu - Mndru, O. Competenele n nvarea geografiei. Ghid metodologic" (Competences in the Leaming of Geography. Methodological Guide) 257 Carmen - Gabriela Bostan - Nicolescu, B. Transdisplinaritatea. Manifest" (Transdisciplinarity. A Manifesto) 259

ABORDRI TEORETICE

DEFINIREA l CLASIFICAREA COMPETENELOR

Prof. univ. dr. Cezar Brzea, coala Naional de tiine Politice i Administrative, Bucureti

cezar.birzea @ ise.ro

Rezumat Articolul trece n revist semnificaiile actuale ale termenului competen, pe care le comenteaz avnd n vedere contexte variate de utilizare. Sunt explorate dou dintre cele mai influente documente ale momentului - proiectul OCDEDefinition and Selection of Competences", prescurtat DESECO (2002), precum i la Recomandarea Parlamentului European privind competenele-cheie (2006) i sunt conturate cteva dintre aspectele care necesit nc un efort de clarificare. Cuvinte cheie: competen, Parlamentul European, OECD, evaluare. Abstract The paper starts by analysing the various definitions given to the word competence, taking into account the significant contexts in which it is used. Then the analysis is extended on two reference documents- the OECD project "Definition and Selection of Competences", (DESECO, 2002) and the Recommendation of the European Parliament and the Council of 18December 2006 on key competencies for lifelong learning. The point made by the author is that policy makers together with the research community will have to ponder further on the topic in order to extract more significant (i. e., applicable) conclusions. Key words: competence, European Parliament, OECD, evaluation.

Termenul de competen este n centrul tuturor politicilor publice. n educaie i formarea profesional, competenele stau la baza curricula (care au devenit competence - oriented), a specializrilor din universiti (vezi enunurile din suplimentul de diplom), a calificrilor (vezi Cadrul Naional al Calificrilor) sau a standardelor profesionale. n nvmnt, decupajul tradiional pe materii colare tinde s fie completat de competene - cheie i standarde care s defineasc un anumit nivel (ex. Schoolliving Certificate n Angl ia, Abiturin Germania, i Maturitat n Elveia). De exemplu, n Germania, pe lng disciplinele tradiionale de la nivelul liceului (germana, limba strin, matematica), obinerea Ab/ftvrpresupune i achiziia a 12 competene referitoare la nelegerea structurii cunoaterii, capacitatea de judecat, autoevaluarea i altele. n Romnia, n acelai fel, s-au introdus ca probe obligatorii de bacalaureat evaluarea competenei digitale i evaluarea competenei de utilizare a limbilor strine. n rile nordice, competenele sunt adugate disciplinelor tradiionale i au o deschidere mai larg, de educaional goals,, (scopuri educaionale), care depesc cadrul limitat al unor cunotine specializate sau al unor materii. n Finlanda, de exemplu, competenele se refer la a nva s nvei, comunicare i disponibilitatea pentru educaie (

Revista de Pedagogie nr. 58 (3) 20! O 7

permanent. n Noua Zeeland, n schimb, ntregul curriculum vizeaz 8 essential skills,,, respectiv deprinderile de comunicare, de calcul, rezolvarea de probleme, competenele informatice, de autogestiune i competitivitate, competenele sociale i de cooperare, capacitile fizice, de munc i studiu.

n sectorul economic, competenele sunt considerate cheia competitivitii, att din perspectiva angajatorilor, ct i din cea a angajailor. Orice plan de dezvoltare strategic a companiilor vizeaz formarea de competene superioare, prin diverse aciuni de dezvoltare a resurselor umane (formare profesional continu, management participativ, cointeresare sau responsabilizarea angajailor). n mod curent, firmele recurg la analize ale pieei forei de munc, cu referire precis la evoluia cererii de competene. Sindicatele i asociaiile profesionale realizeaz frecvent inventare ale competenelor i ale standardelor ocupaionale. Cultura organizaional a oricrei instituii sau companii preocupate de calitate i competitivitate are obligatoriu ca reper stocul de competene pe care l deine sau pe care vrea s l obin. Pentru angajai, orice schem de dezvoltare a carierei, de orientare profesional, reconversie sau reciclare cuprinde inevitabil referine la competene. Mai mult, att ntreprinderile, ct i angajaii sunt preocupai s valorifice orice form de nvare sau formare, s recunoasc orice experien anterioar sub form de competene.

n administraie i sectorul public, managementul competenelor este la fel de important. Orice concurs de angajare precizeaz competenele postului, iar sistemele de promovare se bazeaz pe competene clar definite. Evoluia n aceste domenii este foarte rapid i este supus acelorai cerine ale eficienei ca i n sectorul economic. Ca s nu recurgem dect la dou exemple: europenizarea serviciilor publice i a administraiei a determinat o important schimbare a competenelor (de ex. asimilarea acquis-uriloi), la fel i aderarea la sistemul NATO care a nsemnat i continu s antreneze un imens efort de schimbare a competenelor n domeniul securitii i aprrii.

Astfel de exemple pot fi extinse. Este cert c n orice sector al resurselor umane, fie c este vorba de economie fie c ne referim la diverse servicii i politici publice, competenele au devenit factorul - cheie i referina principal. n orice structur de management a resurselor umane, n orice tip de activitate, fie la nivel individual, fie la nivelul organizaiei, al firmei sau al colectivitii, competena este reperul comun, obiectivul i elementul indispensabil pentru orice form de negociere colectiv.

Acest succes imens al termenului, popularitatea desosebit a competence - based policies" a fost nsoit de rspndirea sa nelimitat, n detrimentul claritii conceptuale. ntlnim astzi termenul de competen oriunde i oricnd, fr s avem ns un consens terminologic minimal. Avem competene i skills" (termen greu de tradus n limba romn), competene-cheie i competene de baz, capaciti i abiliti, standarde profesionale i standarde ocupaionale, calificri i capabiliti .a.m.d.

Se impune deci o clarificare n raport cu acest hi terminologic. Un efort remarcabil n acest sens 1-a fcut proiectul OCDE Definition and Selection of Competences" (2002) sau prescurtat DESECO, precum i iniiativa Comisiei Europene privind competenele-cheie

8 ABORDRI TEORF.TICE

(2006). Ne vom axa pe aceste contribuii n cele ce urmeaz.

nainte de toate, este interesant s evocm sensul cuvntului competen n limba romn curent, aa cum apare n DEX. Competena este capacitatea de a se pronuna asupra unui lucru, pe temeiul unei cunoateri adnci a problemei n dificultate". Competena este astfel neleas n sensul de expertiz sau capacitate profesional. Tot n DEX, abilitatea este ndemnare, iscusin, pricepere" (apropiat de sensul cuvntului skills") iar capacitatea este posibilitatea de a lucra ntr un domeniu, de a realiza ceva" (sensul de potenial sau de statut).

ntr-un dicionar specializat1, accentul este pus pe capacitatea de a face ceva: competena este un (ansamblu de) comportamente poteniale (afective, cognitive i psihomotorii) de care dispune un individ pentru a realiza o activitate". Din aceast definiie, precum i din altele asemntoare, folosite n tiinele comportamentale, competena presupune o activitate, deci trebuie s existe un context; reprezint un output(rezultat) care pune n eviden ce poate face o persoan, ca efect

al unui proces anterior de nvare i formare; implic definirea unor standarde sau niveluri de performan, care s msoare i s

acrediteze efortul anterior de nvare i formare; reprezint potenialul exprimat sau msura a ceea ce o persoan poate realiza la un

moment dat.

Tot din aceast analiz, se poate deduce faptul c o competen este un indicator al capacitii actuale, dar i un predicator al evoluiei ulterioare, al anselor de reuit ntr-un domeniu de activitate. De asemenea, psihologii au realizat diverse ncercri de deconstrucie a competenei, fie n forma multifactorial a abilitilor sau a operaiilor, fie prin descompunerea unei competene n metode, tehnici i procedee.

Proiectul DESECO, realizat de OECD la nceputul anilor 2000, este o referin prestigioas, indispensabil n orice discuie privind utilizarea competenelor. Echipa acestui proiect (OECD, 2002; Weinert, 2001; Rychen i Salganik, 2003) utilizeaz o definiie pragmatic, funcionalist, centrat pe rezultate i pe capacitatea unui individ de a rezolva problemele specifice unui anumit context (social, economic, cultural): Competena este definit drept capacitatea de a face fa cu succes solicitrilor individuale sau sociale, de a realiza o anumit activitate sau o sarcin" (OECD, 2002, p.8). ntr-o varaint mai elaborat, dup Rychen i Salganik (2002, p.43): Competena este capacitatea de a face fa unor solicitri complexe ntr-un anumit context, prin mobilizarea achiziiilor psihososciale (att cognitive, ct i non-cognitive). Aceasta este o definiie orientat spre cerere (n.n. demand - oriented) sau o abordare funcionalist. Focusul este pe rezultatele pe care un individ le obine prin aciune, decizii sau feluri de a se comporta n raport cu solicitrile referitoare, de exemplu, la o anumit poziie profesional, un rol social sau un proiect personal."

Aa cum precizeaz Weinert (2001), aceast definiie funcionalist i contextual nu depinde de o stratificare social i nici nu acord importan predeterminrii, diferenelor de status sau conveniilor de orice tip.


Fiecare competen este un ansamblu operaional construit ad-hoc (prin combinaii conjuncturale de entiti deja formate) sau n mod deliberat, ca rezultat al unor programe explicite de formare. Aceste ansambluri cuprind operaii intelectuale (sau abiliti ca de exemplu gndirea analitic), deprinderi practice (sau skills, de exemplu capacitile decizionale sau dexteritile instrumentale precum nelegerea unei limbi strine), motivaia, atitudinile, valorile i dispoziiile emoionale. Toate aceste componente pot fi formate anterior i mobilizate sau structurate n funcie de o solicitare anumit care vine la un moment dat, sau pot fi formate n mod sistematic i pragmatic, prin studii specializate, calificri i experien direct ntr-un mediu profesional. De exemplu, competena civic este un astfel de ansamblu care este activat ori de cte ori este nevoie (apare o solicitare expres sau o situaie care implic recursul la drepturile civice). La fel i competena de comunicare, competena digital, competena managerial sau competena intercultural. Cum este imposibil s se prevad toate tipurile de competene i toate situaiile operaionale de pe parcursul unei viei, se prefer o abordare flexibil i deschis, astfel nct o competen poate deveni element constitutiv al altei competene (ex. competena civic sau unele elemente ale sale pot fi actualizate n cadru! competenei interculturale i invers). De asemenea, deoarece mediul social este format din multiple domenii interdependente (munc, sntate, educaie, familie), competenele sunt transferabile de la un sector la altul. Astfel de competene transversale, eseniale pentru integrarea individului n societate i pentru politicile promovate ntr-un anumit context se numesc competene-cheie (key competences).

Uniunea European a preluat aceast abordare. ntr-un document important dedicat acestei teme, competena este definit drept capacitatea unei persoane sau a unui grup de a realiza o sarcin (de nvare, profesional, social) la un nivel de performan corespunztor unui criteriu sau standard, ntr-un context determinat. Competenele sunt de diferite tipuri i niveluri, suntcontextualizate i au produse specifice. Competena-cheie este o combinaie particular de cunotine, abiliti i atitudini adecvate contextului de care are nevoie fiecare individ pentru mplinirea i dezvoltarea personal, pentru cetenia activ, pentru incluziunea social i pentru angajare pe piaa muncii" (Recomandation of the European Pariiament and of the Council of 18 December 2006 on Key Competences for Lifelong Leaming).

Aceast sistematizare pe competene (ansambluri de capaciti menite s rspund solicitrilor mediului social), competene-cheie (competene fundamentale, indispensabile reuitei personale i sociale ntr-un context social, economic i cultural bine stabilit - ex. pentru realizarea societii cunoaterii) i skills (capaciti specializate, abiliti practice necesare anumitor activiti profesionale, sociale sau culturale) simplific i clarific un domeniu caracterizat printr-o mare diversitate conceptual. Aceast abordare pe trei niveluri ofer un cadru metodologic accesibil i polivalent, diferit de abordrile promovate de alte organizaii. n contextul UNESCO, de exemplu, Raportul Delors (2000), reduce competenele umane la cunotine (savoirs), atitudini (savoir-tre), deprinderi (savoir - faire) i capacitatea de a tri mpreun (savoir vivre ensemble).

UE a elaborat un Cadru European de Referin pentru competenele cheie n nvarea permanent" care stabilete 8 competene-cheie, indispensabile pentru orice individ:


comunicarea n limba matern; comunicarea ntr-o limb strin; alfabetizarea matematic i achiziia competenelor fundamentale n tiine i tehnologie; competena digital; a nva s nvei; competenele interpersonale i civice; competena antreprenorial; expresia cultural.

n acest fel, vechiul concept de cultur general (care reprezenta scopul principal al educaiei n sec. 18) sau termenul de literacy (nvarea scris - cititului i a calcului matematic - cei trei R care constituiau scopul educaiei n sec. 19), precum i conceptul de educaia de baz promovat de UNESCO la sfritul anilor 90 sunt nlocuite cu un set de competene indispensabile pentru individul european al sec. 21 n vederea integrrii sale prin ocupare, participare civic i dezvoltare personal.

Asemntor capabilitilor, competenele-cheie sunt mijloace pentru realizarea unor politici i ameliorarea vieii personale i colective. Ele sunt instrumentele principale pentru dezvoltarea resurselor umane (ex. n contextul Strategiei Lisabona 2010 sau al agendei Europa 2020).

La rndul su, OECD i Proiectul DESECO au plasat competenele - cheie n cadrui reuitei individuale (prin ocupaie remunerat, securitate personal i sntate, participare la viaa public) i colective (productivitate, coeziune social, echitate, respectul drepturilor omului, dezvoltare sustenabil). Inventarul competenelor- cheie elaborat de OECD (2002, p.12) ine cont de aceste dimensiuni, de aceast interaciune permanent ntre individ i societate. Competenele - cheie pentru o via eficient i o societate funcional" se prezint sub forma urmtoarei matrice: - Aciunea autonom

Capacitatea de a-i apra i exercita drepturile, interesele, responsabilitile, de a-i identifica limitele i nevoile;

Capacitatea de a elabora i implementa planuri de via i proiecte personale; Capacitatea de a aciona n interiorul unui context mai larg; Folosirea interactiv a mijloacelor i instrumentelor Capacitatea de a utiliza n mod interactiv limbaje, simboluri i documente; Capacitatea de a utiliza interactiv cunoaterea i informaia; Capacitatea de a utiliza interactiv (noile) tehnologii,

- Activitatea n grupuri sociale eterogene Capacitatea de a relaiona cu ceilali; Capacitatea de a coopera; Capacitatea de a gestiona sau de a rezolva conflicte.

Aceste trei dimensiuni/arii de competene au o competen comun, transversal, anume gndirea critic i abordarea holistic (integrat).


n raport cu aceste clarificri pe trei paliere (competene, competene-cheie i skills), 5 pune ntrebarea: ce evalum sau, care este nivelul operaional la care ne oprim penti evaluare, avnd n vedere faptul c o competen nu se manifest ca atare, n mod singul; i izolat, ci este integrat ntr-un context, iar o competen anumit poate s se expriir ntr-o multitudine de contexte i prin aciuni diferite. Mai mult, n momentul n care trecem analiza competenelor, constatm c acestea nu se operaionalizeaz la fel, nu sunt la f de compatibile cu deconstrucia sub form de skills, comportamente i indicatori c performan. De exemplu, acele componente non-cognitive ale competenei (valorile dispoziiile emoionale) nu pot fi msurate la fel de uor ca operaiile intelectuale sau activiti practice prin care se exprim o competen.

NOTE

'tiinele educaiei. Dicionar enciclopedic. Bucureti, Ed. Sigma, 2007, voi 1, p. 180.

BIBLIOGRAFIE

Boam, R. & Sparrow, P. (eds.). Designing andAchieving Competency. London: Falmer, 1992. Colardyn, D. La gestion des competences. Perspectives intemationales. Paris: PUF, 1996. Hodkinson, P. & Issitt, M. (eds.). The Challenge of Competence. London: Cassell Education

1995. Le Boterf, G. De la competence. Paris: Les Editions d'Organisation, 1994). Le Boterf, G. L'inginerie des competences. Paris: Les Editions d'Organisation, 1998). O.E.C.D. Definition and Selection of Competences (SEDECO): Theoretical and Conceptua

Fundations. Paris, 2002. Recomandation of the European Parliament and of the Council of 18 December 2006 on Ke)

Competences for Lifelong Leaming. In: Official Journal of the European Union, 30.10.2006 Rychen, D.S. & Salganik, L.H. (eds.). Key Competencies for a Successful Life and a Well-

Functioning Society. Gottingen: Hogrefe and Huber, 2003. Weinert, F.E. The Concept of Competence: A Conceptual Clarification. n: D.S. Rychen, L.H

Salganik (eds.), Definning and Selecting Key Competences, Gottingen: Hogrefe and Huber pp. 45-65, 2001.

Whiddett, S. & Hollyforde, S. A Practicai Guide to Competencies: How to Enhance Individual andOrganisationalPerformance. London: Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. 2003.

CURRICULUM STUDIES AND THE HISTORY OF THE PRESENT

Prof. Thomas Popkewitz, The University of Wisconsin-Madison,

Department of Curriculum and Instruction

12 ABORDARI TEORETICE

Rezumat Articolul i propune s identifice principiile care au stat la baza dezvoltrilor cumculare din SUA la sfritul secolului al XlX-lea i la nceputul secolului al XX-lea. Autorul prezint argumente care susin c printre factorii care au influenat dezvoltarea colii au fost ideile dezvoltate n aa numita ER A PROGRESULUI, influennd, la rndu-i modul n care s-a format un anumit tip de cetean. n acelai timp, automl consider c studiile despre curriculum trebuie abordate ntr-un context larg. Cuvinte cheie: istoria curriculum-ului, converting ordinance", valori sociale, istoria curriculum-ului. Abstract The study aims at identifying underlying pn'nciples and raionale to the curriculum development in the US in the late 19" and the 2(T centuries. It is argued that one of the factors that influenced the way in which schooling as a process was regarded is the way in which broader view.s on the American society were developed in the progressive era. School was considered to be of paramount importance in creating a particular type of citizen, while at the same time stressing democracy as one segment of the manifest destiny. At the same time, the paper argues for a broader approach (in terms of chronological framework) to curriculum studies. Key words: curriculum history, "converting ordinance", 19m - 2

pupils, the role of students and how changes in schools contribute to democracy through the structuring of social equality/inequalities. Structures and events are placed in chronological sequences whose links and functions reiate to one another in an emergence of successions that form the history of schools (Popkewitz, 1997). With variations and different nuances across nations, historical narratives of schooling express the progressive hopes of democracy and its denials through issues of social control and structural inequities (Warde, 2005).

This chapter takes a different approach to curriculum as a history of the presenV History is, as Walter Benjamin (1955/1985) suggests, the criticai engagement of the present. That engagement, ironically, undertakes to suspend history itself by making visible the conditions that make possible the thoughts and actions of the present. It concems itself with the systems of reason that order and classify what is seen, talked about, and acted on in schooling. Reason, as I explore below, is to explore historically what is known, done, and hoped for as generated through different social, cultural and institutional practices. Curriculum history is the study of the reason of schooling: the principles generated about what is known and how that knowing is to occur as cultural, social, and political practices.2 Further, it is the study of modem schooling as embodying a comparative style of thought that differentiates, divides and establishes principles of differences.

The following discussion is synoptic in thinking about curriculum history through focusing on American Progressivism and its sciences of education and, at points, its intersection with intemational studies of schooling.3 The first section considers curriculum as 'converting ordinances', drawing on Puritan notions of education as evangelizing and calculated designs on the souls of readers. The "converting ordinances" were inscribed in the school curriculum and pedagogy of Progressivism, I argue, as narratives of naional belonging and salvation themes of the education sciences related to pedagogy. Jhe second section examines American Progressive Education as a particular expression of a cross Atlantic Protestant reformist movementconcemed with the Social Question. The Social Question was a phrase that political reformers gave focus to particular Enlightenment hopes of a cosmopolitan citizen in the organization of social and economic life of the city and its schools. But in that hope were fears of the dangers and dangerous populations to the envisioned future. The educaional sociologies and psychologies of Hali, Thomdike, and Dewey, while advocating different pedagogical programs, are explored through as "converting ordinances" that embody the tensions of enlightenment hopes and fears. The planning inscribed practices of exclusion in its impulse of inclusion. The final section explores the formation of the curriculum of mathematics, literacy, and music education in relation to previous themes of the hopes, fears and The Social Question.

The essay goes against the grain of curriculum studies. It argues that the history and study of curriculum are not merely the Spencerian question about what is selected, organized, and evaluated in schooling. Nor is the question of the political of curriculum about 'whose knowledge' sufficient. The study of the political of schooling and "an effective history", to return to the opening quote, is to introduce discontinuity into our very being through taking what is commonplace and natural and uprooting its traditional foundations and making fragile what is seemingly causal.


1. "Converting ordinances": providenial givng and the school curriculum

Schooling, O (2003) argues, is designed to act on the spirit and the body of children and the young. Examining French and Portuguese pedagogy at the turn of the 20m century, O explores the pedagogical sciences as observing and making visible the inner physical and moral life in order to map the spirituality of the educated subject ("the human soul"). The new sciences of psychology were central to the design of the child. The French pedagogue Gabriel Compayre in 1885 asserted that pedagogy is an applied psychology and the sources of all the sciences "that are related to the moral faculties of man; pedagogy contains all the parts of the soul and must use always psychology" (cited in 0,2003, p. 106). Pedagogy was the domain of psychology concemed with all the parts of the soul. The soul was not only of a providenial order but of European religious concepts of the person (re)visioned as categories of the human mind. The moral and raional qualities of the human mind, Compayre continues, enable action for intervening and changing the lives of others to ensure individual happiness and collective (social) progress.

The curriculum of the 190> century European school was to systematically develop civic virtue in the actions of the individual. The pedagogy of the school, however, was ordered through (re)visioning the processes of the Church's confessional in eariy American and European schooling. The confessional was a form of religious schooling by the preacher who provided pastoral care for the religious cultivation of the individual. In the new schooling, the catechism style of instruction of the confessional was transported into the state school as a technology of creating patriotism, morality, and republic civic virtue.-5 The style of 'educating" was to provide instruction in concrete obligations of the individual and of the individual to others through the use of reason and science (Weber, 1904-1905/1958).

The catechism of Martin Luther's Table of Duties, for example, provided a technology of modemization of Swedish schooling until the 1800s (Lindmark, forthcoming). Heavily infiuenced by the Scottish enlightenment, Swedish moral philosophers presented the common duties of man [sic] and civic virtues as the expression of the doctrines of knowing one's duties to God, the individual, and to neighbors. Schooling was to provide for moral and civic virtues by producing agents of progress capable of self-guided raional action for the public good. The Table of Duties was founded upon a patriarchal relationship between God and mankind as a father-child relationship, in which the weak and sinful child needed education and guidance. Ecclesiastic and political estates were organized in a hierarchy of superiors to the economic estates of families and servants. The catechism of the Tables instructed how husbands, wives, children and common people would leam obedience and moral virtue toward the patriarchal hierarchy of the estates. The search for perfection also harbored fears about hamessing passions and self-interest that would work against the common good.5

American schools were little different in purpose if not in its specific practices of working toward developing moral and civic virtues. Nineteenth century U.S. pedagogy was related to Puritan notions of education as "converting ordinances" in forming the greater corporate mission (McKnight, 2003, p. 25). The curriculum reflected Puritan concems with teaching as an evangelizing and calculated design on the souls of their readers. Drawing on John


Calvin's notion of curriculum vite or "a course of life", education was to prepare children for the conversion experience that gave the individual moral behavior (McKnight, 2003, p. 25). The Puritans, for example, attached the status and attributes of personhood to an inner soul in which the ethical techniques of individual self-monitoring and controlconsciousness and self-consciousnesswere developed. Reason, logic and method were leamed to find proper restraint and moral behavior necessary for self-fulfillment and for the benefit of society as a whole. Community was part of one's cuniculum vite. The individual's freedom was indivisible from the shared cultural world that gave unity to all of human kind.

With the founding of the republic in the later 189, century, pedagogy as "converting ordinances" was given providenial character to the land and its people (or at least certain parts of its population). The religious phrases "the New World", the citizen as "the Chosen People", and "manifest destiny" were re-inscribed in the nation. The providenial character gave the new nation its exceptionalism as the site of escaping the evils, disfigurements and corruption of the Old World Europe (Jehlen, 1986, Nye, 1999). The new foundation stories of the nation in the beginning of the 20m century narrated the nation as the apotheosis of cosmopolitan reason and the triumph of art and science in the liberation of the human spirit realized by the republic (Nye, 1999).6

The epic of the New World recapturing the pastoral past in its republican life was no longer sustainable by the close of the 19th century. The crises of unbridled capitalism, the perceived breakdown of moral order in the city, and the brutality of modem warfare coupled with the struggle over slavery of the American Civil War, among others, cast doubt on American exceptionalism as the idyllic reincamation of a biblical Garden of Eden (see, e.g., Menand, 2001). The special place of the nation in heralding redemption and salvation for humanity was in the future ratherthan recapturing the biblical garden in the incamation of the nation. The moral grace of the New World was revisioned as the millennial potential of the future. The new epic tale of the nation that replaced Fredrick Jackson Tumer's much heralded frontier thesis was told through the technological sublime: narratives of beauty, aesthetics, awe, and fear. The technological marvels of the railroad, electricity, bridges, and skyscrapers were placed in a cultural dialogue about the naional manifest destiny (Nye, 1999). The natural power of Niagara Falls, the Grand Canyon, and technologies represented in the railroad, bridge, and city skyscrapers were viewed as triumphs of art and science in the liberation of the human spirit realized by the young republic. The technological changes were made into the apotheosis of cosmopolitan reason and science in the making of the nation. The technologies of the canal and the railroad were narrated as a causal chain of events of an inevitable developmental process. Foundation stories were told about Americans transforming a wildemess into "a prosperous and egalitarian" cosmopolitan society whose landscape and people had a transcendent presence through its technological achievements (Nye, 2003, p. 5). The exceptionalism was of the technological promise of the future, which Nye called "the technological sublime", in which science and technology provide the forces of "reason" in social, cultural as well as material progress.

One can begin to think of the mass schooling that begins to emerge and American Progressive Education within this changing context of the (re)vision of American


exceptionalism and the challenges brought to bear upon these different social and cultural qualities. Progressivism in its broader political as well as educaional projects embodied the Enlightenment belief in cosmopolitan reason and science in the emancipation of the individual and the progress of society. The earlier 19*' century agrarian and pastoral image of society was now (re)visioned in the urban-ness of the nation and an expanded educaional system that substituted for the mobility of the frontier west (Faragher, 1994, p. 8). The common comprehensive high school at the tum of the century, for example, was initially proposed to be called "the cosmopolitan high school". That notion of cosmopolitanism embodied the faith and optimism of American exceptionalism as the providenial character of the nation (see, e.g., Krug, 1972).

The new social and education sciences that emerged in American Progressivism embodied the foundation narratives of science and technology and its salvation narratives. Stories of American Exceptionalism, for example, were inscribed in the work of Charles Horton Cooley, an early sociologist who wrote about education. Cooley (1909) saw the United States as "nearer, perhaps, to the spirit of the coming order" (p. 167) that would be totally different from anything before it. Evoking the narrative of American exceptionalism, Cooley wrote that "the new industrial modemity" of America is close to being the first real democracy that is "totally different from anything before it because it places a greateremphasis on individuality

innovation" and "does not inherit the class culture of Europe" (cited in Ross, 1972, p.

The narratives of the etemal promise of the nation were woven into child development and ' learning theories. G. Stanley Hali (1893/1924), a major figure in child studies, talked about

^ (\ education in the context of the nation bringing "the only complete history (which) is the story of the influences that have advanced or retarded development of man toward his completion,

{ always ideal and forever in the future" (p. ix). Edward L. Thomdike, a leading educaional psychologist, inscribed narratives of naional exceptionalism into the goal of education. Science, he argued, was discovering laws about the innate qualities of the individual. The laws would enable a shaping and fashioning individuality that would bring "the pursuit of happiness". Educaional psychology was to form "the mind and the spirit of man" so the individual can be responsible for their progress, or trustful of their future (Thomdike, 1909/ 1962a, pp. 46-7).

The prophetic vision of exceptionalism coupled with the faith in science as a mode of living was embodied in John Dewey's pragmatism. Dewey saw no difference between a universalized notion of Christian values about the good works of the individual and the democracy of the nation. Dewey's prophetic vision of democracy linked the ethics of a generalized Christianity (Calvinism) to the progressive revelation of truth. Christianity as the ethical mode of reflection was embodied in democracy as the individual discovers the unfolding and condiional meaning of life (Dewey, 1892/1967-1990). Both Christianity (Calvinist reformism) and democracy were processes through which individuals seek the "continuously unfolding, never ceasing discovery of the meaning of life" (p.5).

The "Christian Democracy," as Dewey called it in his early writing, emphasizes the triumph of reason and science in the calling of democracy (1892/1967-1990, p. 57). Analogous to

f r

Christ's teaching, democracy's spiritual meaning was in its notions of freedom as the continuous search for truth through loosening the bonds of tradition, wearing away of restrictions of individual growth and development, and the breaking down of barriers and partitions that limit the possibilities of people. This relation of religion to democracy, Dewey argued, was to think of the latter's politica! process as a mode of life rather than as a machinery of govemment.

I assume that democracy is a spiritual fact and not a mere piece of govemmental machinery... If God is, as Christ taught, at the root of life, incarnate in man, then democracy has a spiritual meaning which it behooves us not to pass by. Democracy is freedom. If truth is at the bottom of things, freedom means giving this truth a chance to show itself, a chance to well up from the depths. Democracy, as freedom, means the loosing of bonds, the wearing away of restrictions, the breaking down of barriers, of middle walls, of partitions (Dewey, 1892/1967-1990, p.8).

Dewey spoke of the curriculum through the prophetic language of Protestant reformism. Dewey declared that "Democracy is revelation", using a 19m century belief in English Moderate Calvinism (see, e.g., Sorkin, 2008). English ProtestantCalvinists replaced rigidness with the coordination of doctrines of reason, natural religion, and revelation. Revelation rested on an awareness of God's accommodation or condescension to time, place, and particular mentalities in creating the moral good. Democracy as revelation was to promote a mode of living ordered by an open-mindedness. Dewey's "habits of the mind", notions of problem solving, experimentation, community, and action, central concepts of pragmatism, gave a concrete form to what Dewey spoke of as democracy as revelation and curriculum served as the "converting ordinance" to secure the possibilities of the future. Science was a mode of thought was to order the school curriculum and its notions of leaming that enable children to think and act as moral beings in the search for truth in an uncertain world. For Dewey, science was the method that would free individuals from the unreflective habits produced through subjection to instinct, appetite, and routines.

The educaional sociologies and psychologies of Progressivism, while having different epistemological relations of the individual and society, overlapped with the commitment to science as planning for the future and pedagogy as converting ordinances. Science, however, operated in two related qualities in the curriculum. First, science calculated and ordered the social administration of change. That planning for change also entered the curriculum as cultural theses about what the child is and should live in everyday existence. This second quality of science was embedded in the theories of children's leaming, development and growth that ordered pedagogy to generate cultural theses about reflection and action in daily life, such as to "leam", or to design the future through problem-solving. To talk about the child as a problem-solver is not merely a category to help children leam and become better people. The pedagogical distinction of problem-solving embodies a cultural thesis about a mode of living; that is, problem-solving instantiates particular principles about how to order reflection and action.

The two notions of science as planning of the social and of life itself is embodied in Dewey's


expression of democracy as revelation. Science embodied the gesture of hope about the future that embodied fears. The fears were the dangers of the debilitating effects of modem conditions and dangerous kinds of people. In this context, science in its two trajectories of calculating and as a mode of living to enable progress and protect against the dangers to excessive power and partisanship.

The existence of scientific method protects us also from a danger that attends the operation of men of unusual power; dangers of slavish imitation partisanship, and such jealous devotion to them and their work as to get in the way of further progress. (Dewey, 1916/1929a, p. 11) The scientific method , Dewey argued, brought into everyday life as a means of reflection and action would protect society from the abuse of power and prevent the evil of the wrong development. Science and reason, he argued would free individuals from the unreflective habits produced through subjection to instinct, appetite, and routines. The fears of unreflective habits, were directed to the qualities of individuality inscribed a continuum of value that, as I discuss later, produce distinctions and divisions about characteristics inscribed as dangers and dangerous to the future of the republic.

The cosmopolitanism of the school curriculum and pedagogy embodied different cultural pattems internationally that were not just variations of one set of principles. If I use the worldwide traveling of Dewey's pragmatism at the tum of the 20th century, pragmatism combined and connected with other theories and cultural practices to shape and fashion notions of the inner moral and raional qualities of the child (Popkewitz, 2005). Dewey's "ideas" about agency as intelligent action, for example, traveled to Yugoslavia in the 1920s and 1930s to make Slavic modemity which viewed the child as embodying divine or natural forces of a "Slavic Soul". The soul valorized the rural and village as the true source of the purpose of action and agency (Sobe, 2005). Brazilian and German reforms placed Dewey as an anti-hero as reformers sought counter-reformation/Enlightenment notions of a universal spirituality that linked the nation, school and Church. Dewey was viewed as an urbanist (read Protestant reformer) who threatened the spirituality of the nation by Brazilian reformers (see, e.g. Warde & Carvalho, 2001). German pedagogues who rejected Dewey's Calvinist reformism were viewed as morally dangerous to Lutheran notions of education as joining the Geist or the spirit of the nation and Bildung (Trohler, 2005). Dewey's pragmatism connected with the Kemalist project in the formation of the Turkish Republic in the 1920s, and the reforms of the Chinese May 4 Movement in 1991 that redefined its sensibilities and political agendas as it was (re)visioned as a modemizing project coupled with, respectively, the reformist tendencies in tum of the 20"1 century Ottoman Islam and Confucian cultures.8

2. The social question of progressivism: science and the fears of dangerous populations

While Progressive Education and its sciences of pedagogy are usually considered as distinctively within its naional project, it embodied a cross-Atlantic social reform movement related to northern European Protestant and North American reformism. Central to the reform movement was The Social Question. The Social Question, what German social theorists called "Die Soziale Frage' in the 19m century, gave focus to the amelioration of the physical, social and moral conditions through planned intervention. The new social sciences


in conjunction with civil reforms would identify the causes of alcoholism, delinquency, prostitution, among other practices, that violated the presumed norms of civility. Important to the reform efforts were poor relief, public ownership and development of urban transportation, planning of city streets and zoning, wage labor protection, the development of public and modem housing, and mass schooling directed to urban populations.

The Social Question helps to locate historically Progressive Education as not merely of the temporal index of the development of schooling but within broader intemational social and cultural formations. When looking at American Progressive schooling, it embodied the characteristics of the northern European Protestant reform movements directed to urban reform. Phrased in a democratic rhetoric, the reforms were to produce a like-minded American and inclusive community and to make able, virtuous individuals who gave America its destiny (Franklin, 1986). The progressive deire for a virtuous society continually inscribed threats to that community. Criticism of the school curriculum brougbt to the fore questions about leaming the skills and dispositions that would enable urban children to become productive citizens. But questions about immigrants and race instantiated fears of the dangers and dangerous populations to the presumed social unity. The high failure rate and pressures on children not able enough, one critic of the teaching of algebra argued, produced pressures that injured "the mind, destroyed the health, and wrecked the lives of thousands of children" (cited in Krug, 1964, p. 347). Others complained about disturbing harmony and consensus through, for example, teaching giris mathematics, which would make her "lose her soul" and contribute "nothing to their peace, happiness, and contentment in the home" (Krug, 1964, p. 347).

The pedagogical reforms and the sciences of education were directed to urban populations through notions of planning urban life by changing urban populations. The search for civic virtue and its dangers were embodied in Lester Frank Ward's The Dynamics ofSociology, a founding member of the Chicago School of Sociology and colleague of John Dewey. Ward's sociology embodied a social Darwinism that gave attention to efforts to artificially intervene and civilize the immigrant family as they moved from their ethnic habits. Ward argued that education needs an "absolute universality" that was "to neutralize the non-civilizedor it will lower all of society"' Methods in socialization in education were I o raise the uncivilizedclasses up toward its level" (Ward, 1883, p.595, italics in original) and to take "the lesser of a civilization," "the savage person whose actions springs from emotions and not the intellect (Ward, 1883, p. 159-160). Edward Ross, in first edition of The Principles of Sociology (1920), saw the school as the most important instruments to contain the threat of the growing diversity of the American population. The diversity divides cultures, languages and norms. Ross argued that the U.S. relied on 'little red school house" to undo immigrants' modes of living and to disseminate the ideas and ideals of American Exceptionalism (Ross, 1920, p. 409). The social cohesion was to prevent "disruptive ideas" as those represented in the Bolshevik revolution or the idea of employers as exploiters. These dividing practices are to be counteracted with the pride in and spread of American ideas (Ross, 1920, p. 410). The correcting of the ignorance and moral disorder of the city is placed into psychological registers of pedagogy that ordered the selection and organization of the school curriculum. Thorndike's studies of children's leaming, for example, were bound to the Social Question


and its concern with urban life. Thomdike's psychology incorporated a hereditary view of intelligence that was moral in character (Franklin, 1986). The notion of intelligence and moral character embodied a belief that differentiated Black Americans as less intelligent than wh'rte Americans. Education was to ensure that children study those subjects from "which they may get health, escape poverty, enjoy their leisure hours, and otherwise have more of what a decent, but not very idealist, person wants" (Thomdike, 1912/1962. pp 142-3). The good will of men can be created and intensified, Thomdike continues, through identifying "the facts and laws" for the "treatmentofsubjectraces, in legislation forcriminals and dependents, in the care for public health, and in the new view of the family, we may see the influence of Darwinism beginning to spread to statesmanship and social control" (Thomdike, 1909/1962, pp.46-47). That determination of difference, for Thomdike, was hereditary and related to eugenics.

The inscription of the moral disorder of the city in The Social Question also brought into the foreground notions of community in theories of the family and childhood. Conservatives and liberals looked to nature as a nostalgic image of a past rural community to reform the urban family by the urbane city reformers. The notion of community emerged in the Chicago School of Sociology that drew from and adapted German social theories about the fall and resurrection of the city as a center of culture, belonging and home. The pastoral vision of community where the face-to-face interactions of neighbors prior to modemity come closest to nature was contrasted with that of society where such trust and moral order was no longer established. Cooley, for example, deployed the concept of community as a regulatory principie to think about the stability and change of society. The sociological theory was to provide ways of creating patterns of small community interactions that would eliminate the alienating qualities of modemity. For Dewey and his Chicago colleague George Herbert Mead, the formation of the individual was derived through processes of mediation and self-realization in the domains of community. Mead's social interactionism re-visioned the imagined pastoral image with an urban idea of community 'without doing violence to liberal democratic values" (Franklin, 1986, p. 8). Dewey's notions of "intelligent action", problem-solving and community provide a way to unbam'ze notions of the pastoral, rural face-to-face community into a mode of life in industrial conditions.

The new sciences of pedagogy through which the curriculum was shaped and fashioned embodied inscriptions to govern individual lives, and to carry out responsibilities that are not only for self-development and growth but also for standardized public virtues. The invention of a range of technologies inscribed the norms of public duty in the child while not destroying its private authority. Rose (1999) refers to these as technologies of responsibilization where the school, as the family "link public objectives for good health and good order of the social body with the deire of individuals for personal health and well-being (p. 74).

The government of freedom, here, may be analyzed in terms of the deployment of technologies of responsibilization. The home was to be transformed into a purified, cleansed, moralized, domestic space. It was to undertake the moral training of its children. It was to domesticate and familiarize the dangerous passions of adults, tearing them away from public vice, the gin palace and the gambling hali, imposing a duty of responsibility to each


other, to home, and to children, and a wish to better their own condition. The family, from then on, has a key role in strategies for the govemment of freedom. It links public objectives for good health and good order of the social body with the deire of individuals for personal health and well-being. A "private" ethic of good health and morality can thus be articulated on to a public ethic of social order and public hygiene, yet without destroying the autonomy of the family- indeed by promising to enhance it (Rose, 1999, p. 74).

The significance of the science of pedagogy embodied a comparative style of thought that produced distinctions and differentiations that excluded in its impulse for inclusion. The educaional psychologies and sociologies were discussed in previous chapters. Pedagogy entailed double gestures. There was a growing optimism about the "eternal promise" of childhood in which the pragmatism of Dewey and the scientific pedagogy of Hali and Thorndike competed (Monaghan & Saul, 1987, p. 96). That optimism was not only about the child as the future citizen in the promised land. This hope, some historians have said, was of the Enlightenment that translated the ultimate question of "How can I be saved?" into the pragmatic one of "How can I be happy?" (see, e.g., McMahon, 2006). Pleasure was no longer seen as a distraction in the pursuit of virtue but as virtue itself.

One of the greater influences in the field of American curriculum was the science of Edward L. Thorndike. Thorndike's connectionist psychology provided one response to The Social Question. It brought to the fore the redemptive hope of American Exceptionalism and fears of the dangers and dangerous populations that threatened its promised future in the ideas of planning. Science was to reduce or eliminate the conditions that prevented the individual s pursuit of happiness, in what today might be seem as the construction of the subject that made possible the welfare state.2 Connectionism psychology in this context of intervention that differentiated the happy and unhappy populations,? Thorndike accepted Bentham's notion of seeking the greatest pleasure for the greatest numbers (Joncich, 1968). Educaional psychology was to prepare children for "the serious business of life as well as for the reftned enjoyment of its leisure" (Thorndike & Woodworth, 1901/1962, p. 58). The science of psychology was to identify the nature of the individual, which pedagogy could develop to bring greater happiness. Thorndike sought correlations between those actions that give pleasure and those that promote survival. The Spencerian question of "What Knowledge Is of Most Worth?" (Thorndike, 1912/1962a, p. 145) was transferred into the criterion of happiness identified through calculating individual wants: "We judge the relative value of different sorts of knowledge by the extent to which each helps toward the ultimate end of educationthe improvementand satisfaction of wants" (p. 144). The idea of worth is "worth more to most people".

The psychology of Thorndike assembled the more general cultural premise about producing the self-motivated and self-responsible individual who participates in processes necessary for the working of the republic. Here, we can think about Thorndike's leaming theory as the means to effect wants that were believed to further the cosmopolitan goals of freedom. The utilitarian purpose about leaming was to most efficiently pursue the ability to reason and act with freedom by developing what was natural to individual.


Effecting individual happiness is to reach into the soul. The modem soul, for Thomdike, was given efficiency by educaional sciences that shape and fashion "the mind and the spirit of man [sic]" so individuals they could be responsible for their progress or entrusted with their future (Thomdike, 1909/1962a, pp. 46-47). He argued, for example, that "what differentiates man is man's original nature to reason" (Thomdike, 1912/1962a, pp. 75-77). The role of education is to move the individual from mere instinctual habits "to more complex, capacity, predispositions that grow into thought, speech, music" that embody "the capadty for reasoning," so as to satisfy one's wants (p. 76). But these wants are not merely natura! to the child but are what the sciences of schooling would produce to enable social progress.. And that role of education is both the production and the prevention of change.

The art of human life is to change the world for the betterto make things, animals, plants, men, and oneself more serviceable for life's ends.... Man tries to change their original natures into forms which sen/e his needs.... Education is grouped with govemment, hygiene, medicine, business administration, and the like, as one of the arts busied with the production and prevention of changes in human beings. (Thomdike, 1912/1962a, p. 70).

Thorndike's aims of education were a double gesture of fnding happiness and decreasing human discomfort (Thomdike, 1909/1962b, p. 47). The decreasing human discomfort embodied fears of those qualities and capabilities that threatened the future of the republic. For Thomdike, the efficient practices to satisfy wants establish the "urge for children [to study] those subjects by ... which they may get health, escape poverty, enjoy their leisure hours, and otherwise have more of what a decent, but not very idealist, person wants" (Thomdike, 1912/1962a, pp. 142-143).

Making a more precise and accurate knowledge about individual behaviors was to improve the nation's human resources by enabling the fittest to profit the most from schooling Thorndike's references to the range of abilities among children and to equal practice opportunities gave scientific sanction to the liberal theories about individual freedom and self-actualization through the teacher's discovering "where the child stands and lead him from there" (Joncich, 1962, p. 21). At the same time, it embodied fears of the dangers posed in immigration questions that evoked divisions between the urban immigrants and Catholics and the rural pastoral images of the reform, urbane Protestantism. The disinterest of science in psychology embodied both a sublime and "interests" through its system of reason that form the objects of reflection and action.

The fear of those not schooled to not embrace the cosmopolitan mode of life were embodied in the narratives of sociology as well as psychology. Edward Ross, one of the founders of American sociology, took the notion of social control to argue for inscribing habits that would bring moral order. In Principles of Sociology {1920), Ross, responding to the Social Question, suggested that there were various instruments of social control to contain the threat of the growing diversity of the population but that none were as important as the school. The nationalizing of different peoples with different cultures, languages, and norms required schooling to unite the whole by disseminating the ideas and ideals of American exceptionalism: 'The Tsars relied on the blue-domed Orthodox Church in every peasant


village to Russify their heterogeneous subjects, while we Americans rely for unity on the 'little red school house'" (p. 409). The individual was to leam to be productive within his or her assigned role as a future citizen.3

Ross's conception of securing individual happiness in society was different from those of Dewey's or Lester Frank Ward, a University of Chicago sociologist. The problem of the social sciences, Ward argued was to artificially modify social conditions to provide for civilizing processes. Ward, for example, recommended moving the immigrant family of the settlement house away from the habits of the savage and the barbarian. Ward argued that education needsan "absolute universality" that was intended "to neutralize the non-civilized [italics in original] or it will lower all of society." The inscription of reason was to stand as a universal principie that made visible the civilized child who "can act as desired" with liberty Methods in socialization in education were to take "the lesser of a civilization," "the savage and ... stagnant people" (Ward, 1883, pp. 159-160) and 'Io raise the uncivilized [italics in original] classes up toward its level" (p. 595).

For Dewey, the leaming of science as "habits of the mind" entailed a rationalizing of daily life that was to create conditions for a democratic process that was simultaneously to respond to the Social Question about how to create a new moral order. Science was to enable children to think and act "democratically" in a world of uncertainty. That was its hope. Fears, as I cited eariier, were to protect against the debilitating effects of modern conditions.

Those fears were not only of the conditions of modernity. They were of the qualities of people dangerous to the future of the republic. The systematic training in "thinking" was to prevent "evil of the wrong kind of development [that] is even greater [as]... the power of thought... frees us from servile subjection to instinct, appetite, and routines" (Dewey, 1916/ 1929e, p. 478).

The double gestures of hope and fear were not that it was the intent of the reforms to exclude or abject. Just the opposite! What was at stake was the rules and standards of reason that ordered the different strands of Progressive Education given expression by G. Stanley Hali, John Dewey, and Edward L. Thorndike. The standards and rules that ordered the reason of pedagogy inscribed distinctions, differentiations and divisions in a continuum of values. Schooling and its sciences of curriculum design instantiated a comparative style of thought that differentiated and divided.

3. Alchemy of school subjects

I now want to pursue further previous arguments about science and the double gestures of hope and fear through examining a central aspect of curriculum, the school subjects. Contemporary U.S. and European teacher education reform efforts focus on the teaching of school subjects as important to improving the quality of teaching and for a more equitable school. The reforms call for teachers having greater subject content knowledge and pedagogica! knowledge. The view of school reform, I will argue historically here, takes for granted the system of reason that orders curriculum and its converting ordinances as


cultural theses about who the child is, should be, and who does not "fit" the principles generated about reflection and action.

The idea of school subjects was, in one sense, an invention of the 19th century. The early decades of the 19th-century school curriculum were linked to the names of the books read. For example, high school students were to read two books of Caesar and three of Virgil for the study of Latin. Colleges prescribed what books students should read in English for their admission and for the examinations that were given for enti ance up to at least 1885. By the first decades of the 2CT century, school subjects formed around particular disciplinary knowledge with the new sciences of psychology providing its pedagogical principles.

The changes in the principles organizing school subjects can be considered as analogous to alchemy of 16th- and 17th-century alchemists and occult practitioners who sought to tum base metals into pure gold. As the alchemy, pedagogy is a practice that magically transforms sciences, social science, and humanities into school subjects (Popkewitz, 2008). Processes of translation are necessary as children are not social scientists or concert musicians. What are at issue are the particular technologies of pedagogy that translate and order school subjects.

When examined, the particular rules and standards for teaching school subjects of mathematics, literacy, music, and social studies education had more to do with the converting ordinances of pedagogy rather with pedagogies related to leaming disciplinary practices. The selection and organization of school subjects was, at one level, to bestow moral grace on the nation and the promise of progress. Although possibly seeming far-fetched today, school textbooks in the 19m century taught geometry and chemistry as bringing progress to the lands of the west through their use in mining and smelting (Reese, 1995, p. 111). Edward L. Youman, a founder of Popular Science Monthly, wrote how the teaching of chemistry involves "the processes of human industry, connects its operation with our daily experience, involves the conditions of life and death, and throws light upon the sublime plan by which the Creator manages the wortd" (cited in Reese, 1995, p. 108). Geology taught the truths of Genesis, and zoology provided leaming of classifications that placed man at the top of nature's hierarchy. "Understanding scientific laws drew people closer to God, partly by enhancing productivity," and by teaching students that life and death were shaped by a chemical process that was part of "an endless cycle of dust to dust" (cited in Reese, 1995, p. 109).

With the tum of the twentieth century, secular themes of salvation were embodied in school subjects. The curriculum of science, mathematics, literature, and history were to improve "mankind" and develop a world community centered from the narratives of the nation and salvation themes of Protestant reformism (Krug, 1964, p. 342). These narratives, however, need to be historically considered within the technological sublime discussed eariier that gave focus to science and technology in a cultural dialogue about the triumphs of art and science as the apotheosis of cosmopolitan reason and science in the making of the nation. Mathematics education, for example, was seen as a practicai subjectthat students needed for understanding everyday activities as well as necessary in "the practicai needs in building homes, roads, and commerce" (Reese, 1995, p. 111). Thomdikes' studies of arithmetic


were to enable democracy to work through enabling people to pursue their happiness that related to their original (and differential natural ability) (Thorndike, 1909/1962b). The leaming of the concepts of arithmetic was to order life through bringing scientific "reasoning" into the child's understanding and for giving relevance to the world through the logic of mathematical relations (see, e.g., Thorndike, 1923, p. 1333).

The teaching of school subjects was also a response to the urban reformism embodied in the Social Question. The new curriculum opened up to the "inarticulate and illiterate" of the working classes and immigrants. Thomas Jesse Jones, associated with the settlement house movement and the 1916 report on The Social Studies in Secondary Education, spoke optimistically of the "Negro and Indian races" as not being able to develop properly, but would now be able to do so through education (cited in Krug, 1964, p. 343). English as a subject in the English school related to the govemmental provisions for social welfare (Hunter, 1994). The narrative structures and ethical messages of literary texts were to help the reader become the moral agent who embodied cosmopolitan values and its notions of "civility." The rules of moral conduct were accomplished by making the stories of literature relevant to the everyday experiences of working-class children. Relevancy was to show how the rules and standards for moral conduct could be practiced in daily life.

Seemingly with different public priorities than science and social studies, the inception of school music in Boston during the 1830s linked the tradition of singing in Prussian schools to the govemance of the child as the future citizen (Gustafson, 2005). Horace Mann, Secretary of the newly created Massachusetts Board of Education, wrote in his 1844 "Report to the Boston School Committee", that the harmony of song in vocal instruction provided the child with the model for the child's own self-regulation in society. Mann discussed music education in relation to the risks that epidemic disease posed to civil society. Vocal instruction was to provide regimens to stimulate circulation that would serve to prevent poor moral as well as physical health among the urban populations. Teaching the proper songs would remove the emotionalism of tavem and revival meetings and provide a way to regulate the moral conditions of urban life with a "higher" calling related to the nation.

Music appreciation joined vocal instruction by the beginning of the 20th century. The curriculum was to eliminate juvenile delinquency, among other evils of society. Its prescriptions for comportment entailed the avoidance of degenerate characteristics associated with racial and immigrant populations. Physiological psychology about the proper amount of stimulation for the brain and body was coupled with notions of musical aesthetics, religious beliefs, and civic virtue. Singing, for example, was to give expression to the home life of industriousness and patriotism that was set against racial stereotypes of Blacks and immigrants. Minstrelsy, a satiric version of Black music and spirituals, was contrasted with the complexity of music of European "civilization." A medical expert in the 1920s, employed by the Philadelphia High School for Giris, described jazz (by this time a rubric that included ragtime) as causing disease in young giris and society as a whole. Psychology was deployed to create a scale of value that compared immature or primitive human development with those of a fully endowed capacity that corresponded to race and nationality. The "attentive listener" was one who embodied the cosmopolitan mode of the civilized life. In teaching manuals, the child who did not leam to listen to the music in a pajicular way was "distracted," a determinate


category bound to moral and social distinctions about the child as a drifter, a name caller, a gang joiner, a juvenile offender, a joke maker, or a potential religious fanatic, having acute emoional stress and an intense interest in sex.

4. History in the study of curriculum

The discussion mapped an historical project that I eariier called "the history of the present". That projects focuses on curriculum as the study of systems of reason. The notion of 'reason' goes against the grain. Reason is generally considered a property of the working of the mind (psychology), or as a universal logic determining the truthfulness of statements. Yet there is nothing natural about, for example, 'seeing' the child through conceptions of childhood, stages of growth, and development, orto order school subjects such as literacy, science, and art as processes of problem-solvingor as communities of learners. To focus on systems of reason is to consider how the objects of schooling are historically produced to generate principles of reflection and action, such as the rules and standards that shape and fashion what is seen and acted on as childhood, school subjects, and psychologies of leaming. The strategy is to consider the very foundations of the present that are taken for granted and accepted as natural and inevitable. The focus on "reason" is to think about what is seen, acted on, and talked about as historically goveming the possibilities of schooling. These rules and standards are historically produced, and function as cultural theses about how the child is, and should live.

The historicizing of reason and rationality is to make visible the 'materiality' of curriculum. Rabinow (2003:3) suggests, for example, that knowledge is political, ethical, and aesthetic: [Knowledge] is conceptual because without concepts one would not know what to think about or where to look in the worid. It is political because reflection is made possible by the social conditions that enable this practice (though it may be singular, it is not individual). It is ethical because the question of why and how to think are questions of what is good in life. Finally, all action is stylized, hence it is aesthetic, insofar as it is shaped and presented to others.

The curriculum study and curriculum theory as a history of the present is taken as 'natural' to see, think, and act in the present as historically produced; and that double sense of the subjects of schoolingthe disciplines that organize curriculum and the child as the object of changeis the political (Popkewitz 1997). The historicizing of the subject of change is, as the feminist philosopher Butler (1993) argues, to challenge what is uncritically taken as natural in regulating and producing subjects. Words like 'leaming', 'empowerment', 'problem-solving', 'self-realization', 'community", and so on, are not merely there in order that educators should 'grasp' some reality to act upon. The words are made intelligible and 'reasonable' within historically-formed rules and standards that order, classify, and divide what is 'seen' and acted on in schooling. These rules and standards of reason are effects of power and the political of schooling.

This historicizing of "reason" was explored, for example, through "seeing" the conditions that connect and made possible different historical icons of schooling such as Hali, Dewey, and Thomdike. While at one layer of analysis, it is accurate to say that the notions of the


child, of individuality, and the social embodied in these iconic figures of early American schooling are different and with different consequences for the programs of schooling. At a different layer of analysis as I argued here, the principles of schooling generated among the three were given plausibility and intelligibility through a particular grid of practices through which differences were inscribed. These differences, for example, embodied particular salvation narratives of American exceptionalism, Protestant reformism, and enlightenment notions of science as they overiapped in the formation of Progressivism and its practices to reform society by changing people. Further, curriculum embodied a comparative style of thought that generated the double gesture of cosmopolitan hope and fear of the dangerous populations.

The focus on "reason" was also a way to consider Progressivism within a comparative strategy for understanding the changes occurring. While the focus was on the U.S. Progressive Education reforms, the "reason" of curriculum as converting ordinances was not merely a naional phenomenon but circulated in the formation of the modem school, albeit with different sets of principles and historical connections. Focusing historically on the rules and standards of reason is a strategy to "see" the limits of the present through making observable the principles governing what is known, seen, and act on.

Why call this approach to history a history of the present? One response is that the possibilities of change are in locating the continuities and discontinuities in the rules and standards of reason. The double gesture of hope and fear, for example, brings to the surface the cultural theses that govem the present. This double gesture is spoken about today through the phrase that "all children can leam". The a//(re)visionsthe Social Question through recognizing and making difference. The intent of such phrases is for an equitable society. The unity of the whole inscribed in the phrase all instantiates and divides all children from the child who is urban, "at-risk", disadvantaged, and the immigrant.

My moving to the present, however, is not to suggest the repeating and replicating of the double gestures of The Social Question. The historical trajectories of today are not the sum of the parts, nor is there a singular evolutionary origin. Today's reason has different assemblies, connections and disconnections in the making of the child and differences.

NOTES

' The category of curriculum studies is largely absent but its conception is embodied in certain European continental scholarship (see, e.g., Foucault, 1971; in education, Popkewitz Pereyra & Franklin, 2001; Popkewitz, 2008). This notion of curriculum studies is related to studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the developing of curriculum history, from the writings of Edward Krug, Herbert Kliebard, Barry Franklin, and Miguel Pereyra, an historian and comparativist, have over the years continually sought to engage me in e thinking of curriculum historically.

2 Curriculum and pedagogy will be used interchangeablely in the text to recognize the relation to what is to be known and the modes of knowing that knowledge.

For a more extensive references to the arguments about historical studies of schooling, see Popkewitz, 2006.


4 The term is drawn from Dussel, forthcoming. 5 Notions of hope and fear are embodied in the Bible. The hope and fears about those who

can become ethically purified in the sight of God and those who do not take the sacraments wouid be ruined by being denied grace (see, e.g., Weber, 1904-1905/1958).

6 Nye calls this new foundation of the nation as the technological sublime. Discussed later 7 I realize that some historians might object and say we need to differentiate periods of

Dewey's writing and these quotes are from an earlier period. My response is that my concern is with systems of reason and its rules and standards. While the subject and word usage of Dewey does change, the principles through which argumerrts are made, problems defined, and solutions proposed may not have as much of a difference as an intellectual historian might argue when using biography as a distinction.

8 This is discussed in the various case studies in Ohkura, 2005; Jie, 2005; and Bilgi & Ozsoy, 2005.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Benjamin, W. (Ed.). (1955/1985). Illuminations: Essays and reflections. New York: Schocken Books.

Bilgi, S., & Ozsoy, S. (2005). John Dewey's travelings into the project of Turkish modemity. In T. S. Popkewitz (Ed.), Modemities, inventing the modern seif, and education: The traveling of pragmatism and John Dewey {pp. 153-180). New York: -PalgraveMacmilIan.

Cooley, C. H. (1909). Social organization: A study of the larger mind. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.

Dewey, J. (1916/1929). The schools and social preparedness. In J. Ratner (Ed.), Character and events: Popular essays in social and political philosophy (Voi. II, pp. 474-478). New York: Henry Hoit and Co.

Dewey, J. (1892/1967-1990). Christianity and democracy. The Collected Works of John Dewey, 1882-1953. The Electronic Edition. The Early Works of John Dewey, 1882-1898 ((This database is based on the 37-volume printed edition The Collected Works of John Dewey, 1882-1953, published by Southern Illinois University Press, 1967-1990 [edited by Jo Ann Boydston] from http://library.nlx.com/titles/index.cfm ed., Voi. 4:1893-1894). Springfield, IL: Southern Illinois University.

Dewey, J. (1929). The sources of a science of education. New York: Horace Liveright. do O, J. R. (2003). The disciplinary terrains of soul and self-government in the first map of the

educaional sciences. In P. Smeyers & M. Depaepe (Eds.), Beyondempiricism: On criteria for educaional research (Studia Paedagogica 34) (pp. 105-116). Belgium: Leuven University Press.

Faragher, J. M. (1994). Introduction: "A nation thrown back upon itself': Frederick Jackson Turner and the frontier. In J. M. Faragher (Ed.), Rereading Frederick Jackson Turner{ pp. 1-11). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Foucault, M. (1979). Governmentality. Ideology and Consciousness, 6, 5-22. Foucault, M. (1971/1977). Nietzsche, Genealogy, History. Language, Counter-Memory, Practice.

Selected Essays and Interviews. (D. F. Bouchard, ed.) (pp. 138-164). Ithaca: Corneli University Press

Franklin, B. (1986). Building the American community: The school curriculum and the search for social control. New York: Falmer Press.


Gustafson, R.(2009). Race and Curriculum: Music in Childhood Education. Palgrave MacMilIan Hali, G. S. (1893/1924). Aspects of child life and education: The contents of children's mind on entering school. The Princeton Review, II, 249-272.

Hunter, I. (1994). Rethinking the school: Subjectivity, bureaucracy, criticism. New York: St. Martin's Press.

Jehlen, M. (1986). American incamation: The individual, the nation, and the continent. Cambridge, MA and London, England: Harvard University Press.

Qi, J. (2005). A history of the present on Chinese intellectuals: Confucianism and pragmatism. In T. S. Popkewitz (Ed.), Inventing the modern seif and John Dewey: Modemities and the traveling of pragmatism in education (pp. 255-278). New York: PalgraveMacMilIan.

Krug, E. (1964). The shaping of the American high school, 1880-1920. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

Lindmark, D. (forthcoming). New Wine into Old Bottles. Luther's Table of Duties as a Vehicle of Changing Civic Virtues in 18th and 19th Century Sweden. In D. Trohler.T.Popkewitz, and D. Labaree. The Child, the Citizen, and the Promised Land: Comparative Visions in the Development of Schooling in the Long 19" Century.

Menand, L. (2001). The metaphysical club. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux. McKnight, D. (2003). Schooling, the Puritan imperative, and the molding of an American naional

identity. Education's "enand into the wildemess". Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Nye, D. (1999). American technological sublime. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Ohkura, K. (2005). Dewey in the modern Japan. InT. Popkewitz (Ed.), Modemities, inventing the modem seif, and education: JThe traveling of pragmatism and John Dewey (pp. 279-299). New York: PalgraveMacmilIan.

Popkewitz, T. (2008). Cosmopolitanism and the age of school reform: Science, education, and making society by making the child. New York: Routledge.

Popkewitz, T. (Ed.). (2005). Inventing the modem seif and John Dewey: Modemities and the traveling of pragmatism in education. New York: PalgraveMacmilIan.

Popkewitz, T. (1991). A political sociology of educaional reform: Power/Knowledge in teaching, teacher education, and research. New York: Teachers College Press.

Popkewitz, T., Franklin, B. & Pereyra, M., (Eds.). (2001). Cultural history and criticai studies ol education: Criticai essays on knowledge and schooling. New York: Routledge.

Popkewitz, T. (1997).The production of reason and power: Curriculum history and intellectual traditions. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 29/2,131-64.

Rabinow, P. (2003). Antropos today: Reflections on modem equipment. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Reese, W. (1995). The origins of the American high school. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Rodgers, D. T. (1998). Atlantic crossings: Socialpolitics in a progressive age. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Rose, N. (1999). Powers of freedom: Reframing political thought. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.

Ross, D. (1991). The Origins of American Social Science. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Ross, D. (1972). G. Stanley Hali: The psychologist as prophet. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Ross, E. A. (1920). Principles of sociology. New York: The Century Company. Sobe, N. (2005).Balkanizing John dewey, In T. S. Popkewitz (Ed.), Modemities, inventing the

modem seif, and education: The traveling of pragmatism and John Dewey (pp. 135-180).


New York: PalgraveMacmilIan. Sorkin, D. (2008). The religious enlightenment. Protestants, Jews, andCatholics from London to

Vienna. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Thorndike, E. L. (1912/1962). Education: A firstbook. InG. M. Joncich (Ed.), Psychology and the

science of education: Selected writings ofEdwardL. Thorndike (pp. 69-83; 141-147). New York: Bureau of Publications, Teachers College, Columbia University.

Thorndike, E. L. (1912/1962). Education. Afirst book. In G. M. Joncich (Ed.), Psychology ana the science of education. Selected writings of Edward L. Thorndike (pp. 69-83; 141-147). New York: Bureau of Publications, Teachers College, Columbia University.

Thorndike, E. L. (1909/1962a). Darwin's contribution to psychology. In G. M. Joncich (Ed.), Psychology and the science of education. Selected writings of Edward L. Thorndike (pp. 37-47). New York: Bureau of Publications, Teachers College, Columbia University.

Thorndike, E. L. (1909/1962b). The psychology of arithmetic. In G. M. Joncich (Ed.), Psychology and the science of education. Selected writings of Edward L Thorndike (pp. 88-90). New York: Bureau of Publications, Teachers College, Columbia University.

Thorndike, E. L. (1923). Educaional psychology. Volume II: The psychology of leaming. New York: Teachers College, Columbia University.

Trohler, D. (2005). Langue as homeland: .The Genevan reception of pragmatism. In T. S. Popkewitz (Ed.), Inventing the modern seif and John Dewey: Modemities and the traveling of pragmatism in education (pp. 61-85). New York: PalgraveMacmilIan.

Ward, L. F. (1883). Dynamic sociology, or applied social science, as based upon statisticaI sociology and the less complex sciences. New York: D. Appleton and Co.

Warde, M. & Carvalho, M. (2001). Politics and culture in the making of history of eudcation in Brazii. In T. Popkewitz, B. Franklin, & M. Pereyra, eds. Cultural history and education. Criticai essays on knowledge and schooling. (pp. 83-106). New York: RoutledgeFalmer.

Warde, M. (2005). John Dewey through the Brazilian Anisio Teixerira or re-enchantment of the world. In T. S. Popkewitz (Ed.), Inventing the modem seif and John Dewey: Modemities and the traveling of pragmatism in education (pp. 203-230). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Weber, M. (1904-1905/1958). The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism (T. Parsons, Trans.). New York: Charles Scribne

untitled.fr10

Documents