“School cannot be a place of pleasure, with all the freedom that would imply. School is a factory, and we need to know which workers are up to snuff. . . .The teachers in charge are the floor bosses, so don’t expect them to praise the virtues of free intellectual development when everything, absolutely everything in the school setting—the classes, grades, exams, scales, levels, orientations, streams—enforces the competitive nature of the institution, itself a model of the workaday world (p. 92).” (Pennac 1994)
In defining Curriculum, I suppose we can spend a great deal of time defining what it is and get nowhere to solve today’s public education problems. As we look at who defines it and what’s important, we must ask the questions: What is their agenda? Philosophically, where do they stand regarding the role of education and its institutions?
Traditionalists would have us believe the rules of grammar, reading, rhetoric, logic, mathematics, and the most significant books of the Western World are the tools of the trade. Hutchins stated, “Knowledge is truth. The truth is always the same. Hence education should be everywhere the same” p. 66 (Hutchins 1936). The question I have is whose truth? What is true to me in the little comfort zone of my life in suburban America is not the same for someone raised in the inner city. So should my educational process, or my child’s education, be the same as an inner-city child? Often, there are cries for equal treatment for all! Yet, can this occur when we aren’t all playing on the same level playing field?
Essentialists, according to Arthur Bestor in The Restoration of Learning (1956), focused on five areas of study – 1)command of language; 2)mathematics; 3) science; 4) history; 5) foreign language (p. 48-49) (Bestor 1956). If the sole basis of education is on these five areas, then the question arises: where does the pupils’ interest come into consideration? In the work, What Do 17-Year-Olds Know?, Ravitch and Finn focused on what students didn’t know, as revealed by their wrong answers to multiple-choice test items primarily based on recall of factual information (Ravitch 1987). The question again must be asked: are these results an indication of a failed curriculum, and according to whom? Perennialists and essentialists regard the mind as a vessel to be filled or a muscle to be exercised. Where is the human factor in all of this? It all sounds so mechanical and dry. Is it a wonder students get turned off by our schools? I believe Dewey was correct: “We get the case of the child vs. the curriculum.” (Dewey 1902)
In taking the more conservative approach of accountability and performance contracting, again, we look at factors such as input/output, rational testing, Goals 2000, system analysis, and accountability according to industrial standards and apply them to education. Is this the correct approach? I don’t believe life is so cut and dry. We don’t live in a vacuum. The events of today can adversely affect students. Are we to ask the students in the inner-city areas to ignore events surrounding them, continue memorizing and regurgitating material, and not concern themselves with those non-essential aspects of education? And besides this, do we even want to follow the model of the military-industrial complex? To dispel this concept, we need only look at cost overruns and the lateness in delivering finished goods.
As we search for alternatives to this conservative approach, some quickly dismiss the ideology from the late sixties and early seventies. Their approach to some of the “new academic left” ideas is simplistic, and they readily dismiss the radical ideology without much verification. Even some, perhaps not considered conservatives, will dispel the ideas of the academic left. Tanner and Tanner, in their book Curriculum Development: Theory and Practice, devote a mere two paragraphs in one chapter to the discussion of the “new academic left.” If the authors truly believe in their definition of curriculum, “that reconstruction of knowledge and experience that enables the learner to grow in exercising intelligent control of subsequent knowledge and experience” (p. 189), perhaps they should listen to their own words of “In order to avoid drowning in a sea of complexities, humans create systems or ways of analyzing phenomena, but the trouble begins when they take their fictional constructs and assume that these constructs are true in the larger ecological picture.” (p. 190) (Tanner 1995) Am I saying the “new academic left” was correct in their assumptions of the schools and teachers being accomplices in the perpetuation of the status quo? I’m not sure, but I wouldn’t quickly dismiss their assertions of our educational system's role in keeping things as they are. Besides, as Dewey states, “No one can tell another person in any definite way how he should think any more than how he ought to breathe or to have his blood circulate.” (Dewey 1933) When we look at our educational system, what are the parameters from which we work to educate students? From the first day in the educational process, we are indoctrinated into a society in which we answer to authority (the teacher), taught to conform to certain standards (classroom rules dictated by the teacher and school), and taught to memorize and regurgitate the “correct” answers. Isn’t it any wonder that by the time we have passed through the educational process, we are left with the feeling of apathy, powerlessness, and the inability or unwillingness to look deeper into matters that concern our society and the world?
Some have dispelled the writings of Paul Goodman and Ivan Illich and their proposals for abolishing schools. Perhaps Goodman was not correct in his solutions, but we should ignore his criticisms as the ranting of some left-wing anarchist. Goodman wrote:
It is in the schools and from the mass media, rather than at home or from their friends, that the mass of our citizens in all classes learn that life is inevitably routine, depersonalized, venally graded; that it is best to toe the mark and shut up; that there is no place for spontaneity, open sexuality, free spirit. Trained in the schools, they go on to the same quality of jobs, culture, and politics. This is education, miseducation, socializing to the national norms, and regimenting to the national ‘needs.’
If Goodman was so far off, why, in today’s society, do people feel so alienated from their jobs and from each other? Isn’t it simply a fluke? Are we not supposed to question the educational process? Is there no accountability there? Even though Goodman’s six proposals for changing schools, found in Compulsory Miseducation, seem to be considered outrageous by some:
His suggestions came to be widely adopted, though in piecemeal and diminished form. Some were assimilated into established practice, like taking pupils out into the city itself, which expanded from the conventional field trip into a much more comprehensive interaction of the kind Goodman described, initiated by an innovative school superintendent in Philadelphia. Respected mainstream practitioners like Theodore Sizer, in his influential books Horace’s compromise (1984) and Horace’s School (1992), recommended dividing large, impersonal schools into smaller units, each with its own faculty. However, he would design a much more academic curriculum than Goodman. Sizer’s plan is now being explored in practice by some 200 Coalition of Essential Schools members, formed in 1984.
Perhaps further research on the part of educators would be beneficial in not “throwing the baby out with the bathwater.” If they were to consider a less literal interpretation of those on the left, some of the left’s observations and recommendations would not sound so absurd. I often think back to when I was getting my degree in psychology, and people would look at Freud and think all he talked about was sex. However, if you look at Freud from a more symbolic perspective rather than a literal perspective, you would see that Freud spoke of power and control and how “penis envy” and other terminology associated with him related to the male dominance of power in our society.
Those attacking the so-called left-wing academia, doesn’t it contradict their constant postulating of a more open approach to the curriculum? Tanner and Tanner, even in their own words, admit, “…The incessant external pressures on schools to censor certain materials, to avoid controversial issues, to indoctrinate for certain ends, or to minister to narrow and special interests – all are examples of forces that impinge on the educative process and serve to make it noneducative or miseducative. Such pressures stem from conditions outside the educative process and counter the concept of education as enlightenment (p.226)”. (Tanner 1995) So, are the assertions of some left-wing academia so far off?
I believe Dewey was correct in much of what he has said. I believe he discusses the importance of the Hidden Curriculum or collateral learning. Perhaps this is where the learning process is genuinely taking place. What is the whole reflective thinking process, and do we educate people to be reflective thinkers? As Dewey believes, I too, believe that we must move education towards society's problems and not away or ignore them when it comes to the educational process. And if we are to take a more social problem-solving approach, are we teaching social problem-solving, or do we teach the band-aide approach? Do we look at the core of the problem or simply the surface issues? When Dewey speaks of a better society, the question never asked is, who determines what a better society is?
I would also agree that the trend of our educational perspective today is rooted in specialization, the drill-skill-kill method of teaching, and the back-to-basics approach of the traditionalist. If we ignore the learner's nature, the process will continue to go awry. However, those like Tanner and Tanner need to see that some of the arguments/concerns they express are the same ones that the so-called “new left-wing” express. Once again, they argue that “sources external to the educational process tend to intrude on the curriculum, making the school vulnerable to narrow and vested miseducative interests. This commonly manifested in externally imposed and self-imposed censorship of the curriculum, the avoidance of controversial problems in the curriculum, the tendency toward indoctrination as a curricular function, and the delimitation of the curriculum to the safe function of skill development and the transmission of facts and information p. 238 .” (Tanner 1995) We can not ignore how particular interests or national fervor replace what the curriculum stands for.
Dewey was correct in this statement that the protest of the businessmen to return to the basics of the three R’s was fine for the masses, while their children received the “frills” in education. In some respects, it was educational socialism for the rich and educational capitalism for the poor. It would seem to me that the fundamentalists appeal to the lowest common denominator of our society by always looking for someone to blame. That it is those liberal or progressive educators that have caused the problems in education. If we could just return to the basics, we wouldn’t have the problems we have today.
If we believe that some philosophy should be our guiding light to a more socially aware educational process, how can we do so if we are uneducated? When I speak of uneducated, I mean that if we are educated in a society where we are led not to question authority, not dig deeper into why things are the way they are, how can we possibly hope to move ahead? Dewey’s belief that the function of education is to unleash human potential, not to set limitations, is well-founded.
In preparing our students, when looking at mastery learning, incorporating numerous instructive materials, is it just a method of learning a specific set of materials rather than truly learning? And in so mastering of concepts, are we truly promoting learning? In our methodology, we have trained, not educated, students. Students become disseminators of sound bites of information without knowledge beyond the simple yes or no answer or choice between A, B, C, or D. In being so focused on standardized testing to measure what students know, we have turned students from learners into products.
This “scientific’’ movement was predicated on three main concepts: (1) The School as a Factory, (2) The Child as a Product, and (3) Standardized Testing as Quality Control. The child was thought of as a piece of raw material to be shaped by the educational “factory” into a quality “product.’’ Teaching became viewed as a form of training, and schools were expected to operate more like assembly lines, working on children as they passed through various stages of the curriculum. Once these factories were “up and running’’ and the standards for the “child as product’’ were determined, standardized testing became the means for measuring the quality of this product. (Serafini F. W 2002)
In being so obsessed with standardized testing, we have an added troubling situation. Educational testing has resulted in schools nationwide spending millions of dollars per year. In so doing, we have those profiting from selling preparation and testing materials. The efforts then become a profit-driven endeavor more than an educational endeavor. And if we were to move away from this method of educating our children, how many of those companies would fight to make sure the well doesn’t run dry?
And what of those who consider alternative schools or schools of choice as an alternative to our “failed” public schools? The development of these schools has led to, in some respects, another method to attempt to subsidize the rich and turn schools into profit-making businesses. In so doing, we risk the chance of being less educated. We fail to see that with this tremendous push for alternatives, we are bringing into focus fewer alternatives in the long run.
The corporate media monopoly’s destructive impact on the public relates directly to the rise of educational conglomerates in that both share the ability to monopolize knowledge production. Private monopolies on the production of knowledge and culture threaten the possibility of democracy because they frame issues and history in the corporate interest, disallow public access to media production and content control, eliminate curriculum or content that challenges structural inequalities, and fail to distinguish the public from a private interest. (p.236)(Saltman K. J 2002)
In allowing corporate influence into the educational process, what do we risk?
[Corporate culture is] an ensemble of ideological and institutional forces that function politically and pedagogically to govern organizational life through senior managerial control and produce compliant workers, spectatorial consumers, and passive citizens. Within the language and images of corporate culture, citizenship is portrayed as an utterly privatized affair whose aim is to produce competitive, self-interested individuals vying for their material and ideological gain. Reformulating social issues as strictly individual or economic issues, corporate culture functions largely to cancel out the democratic impulses and practices of civil society by either devaluing them or absorbing such impulses within market logic. No longer a space for political struggle, culture in the corporate model becomes an all-encompassing horizon for producing market identities, values, and practices. In this discourse, the good life ‘is construed as in terms of our identities as consumers – we are what we buy.’ Public spheres are replaced by commercial spheres as the substance of critical democracy is emptied out and replaced by a democracy of goods, consumer lifestyles, shopping malls, and the increasing expansion of corporations' cultural and political power worldwide. (Giroux 1999)
There will be those who might argue, given our current situation with school districts struggling to advance in today’s ever-changing world, what is wrong with a little corporate subsidy?
In the 1980s, Michael Milken was sent to prison for his illegal financial dealings – fraud and insider trading. However, his legal activities in the junk bond market were destructive to companies, retirees, and to the general public. He was a major factor in the Savings and Loan collapse that cost the public billions.
He invented the junk bond market, and after failing to reap sufficient rewards from personally investing in junk bonds, he profited enormously by selling risky junk investments to publicly backed savings and loans. He promoted and pioneered the use of junk in hostile corporate takeovers that destroyed businesses, labor unions, and job security while only enriching a tiny corporate elite and prominently contributed to the rise of the corporate media monopoly. He promoted greed as a public virtue and still claims that his destructive profit-seeking behavior is the essence of democracy. Since his early release from prison, Milken has been building the first education conglomerate which is aimed at transforming public education into an investment opportunity for the wealthy by privatizing public schools, making kids into a captive audience for marketers, and redefining education as a corporate resource rather than a public good vital to the promotion of a democratic society. In Milken’s words, his entry into education is a direct continuation of his financial activities. He calls his destructive financial practices the democratization of capital. He describes his vulture-like relationship to public education as the democratization of knowledge. In both cases, democracy does not refer to public control over public resources but instead intensified corporate control over public resources and public decision-making power. Part of what is so disturbing about Milken’s predatory move into education is that the popular press has hailed it as redemption for a man with a tainted history. In reality, Milken’s predatory financial activities, which bilked the public of billions while making him a billionaire, continue in education. (Saltman K. J 2002)
This cautionary quote is not only to warn of those who are attempting to make inroads into the educational “market” but to those who are already there:
Through their control of media technology, the corporate elite limit, circumscribe, and control access to the making of public meaning, and they dominate the language in which issues are framed. The political and pedagogical implications of this struggle over the control of knowledge and language are readily apparent in the corporatization of the school curriculum. Shell Oil’s freely distributed video curriculum on the environment concentrates heavily on the virtues of the internal combustion engine, ‘while offering students pearls of wisdom like, “You can’t get to nature without gasoline or cars” ’ (Manning, 1999: 17). In this case, Shell Oil rewrites environmentalism as its diametrical opposite – the plunder, exploitation, and consumption of nature (p. 238) (Saltman K. J 2002)
Another alternative to our traditional education model is the concept of Accelerated Schools. However, are we creating advanced learners or good test-takers in establishing accelerated programs? In being so anxious about test-taking, our students become anxiety-ridden and get stuck in the educational cycle of moving from one test preparation to the next without questioning.
A better alternative would be to involve students in a more reflective, interested approach. “In this quest, it is not enough to prepare oneself for an occupation, but one must also develop … responsible citizen (p. 365).”(Tanner 1995) The premise is a good one, but do we create this? Our current methods of separating into subject matters seem more for operational convenience than for knowledge acquisition. The question is, does the specialization of subject matter feed into the idea or existence of keeping people separated and isolated from one another, and thus, by isolating people, we keep them apart and not a united front in perhaps questioning our policies and procedures? Teachers think their area of expertise is more important than others; a common occurrence in today’s schools only reinforces this separation. And does this specialization tend to make people feel their only value is in what they know in their tiny area of the universe (their specific classroom)? Bruener’s Spiral Curriculum concept of the mini-adult and specialist turns students off from education. When we turn the child into a physicist, as he states, we remove the curiosity of that child to explore their world. We force them to study information that has no connection to their world.
In moving away from this departmentalized world, are teachers in today’s world able to transition to a more synthesized curriculum, and what about the time factor to implement such integration? Today, if this synthesis is to occur, it is left to the students to take ownership while teachers or, for that matter, administrators don’t. What if we took all that is to be learned in math, science, social studies, etc., and devised a way to implement lessons incorporating all of these subject areas without stopping to put away our math book and get out our social studies book? Again, the question must be raised: can teachers and administrators move beyond our traditional approach? And what of the Disciplinarity Approach – When colleges prepare courses from the first course to prepare for a second, second for the third, etc? How quickly do we turn off the student who is not the specialist or will become the specialist? With a more collaborative approach to merging two fields of study, can we set aside egos and territoriality to promote learning? What if we created a new period during the day, the integration period, whereby all materials being taught are brought together, and an Open Core opportunity, whereby the Teacher and pupil plan activities? Can this type of problem-focused approach work? So, as reported in the 8-year study, problem-focused vs. subject-focused, whereby the problem-focused approach provided positive results. Is this approach happening in today’s gifted and talented programs?
Are teachers open-minded enough to handle this approach? There are a few obstacles that stand in the way of this approach. Today, textbooks and curriculum materials geared toward subject areas make it easy for teachers to follow and easy for publishers to profit from. Resources that are needed may not be readily available.
In searching for alternatives, we look at the Dewey Laboratory School based on the four impulses (social, constructive, investigative and experimental, and expressive/artistic) as a model to follow. Are students ready for this alternative approach? All you need to look at is the enthusiasm of the kindergartner versus the zombie appearance of the middle school student. Perhaps the freewheeling times of the ’60s and early ’70s did not allow enough time for the dust to settle and become a truly creative learning experience. As we moved towards the Reagan ’80s and the Cold War hardliners, we again placed nationalistic priorities ahead of learning. When the Japanese began to surface as a technological leader, we fell further behind in our creative approach with our need for specialization.
Tanner and Tanner point out, “For a pyramidal society putting a severe strain on obedience, the safest and best education is one that wears away the energy of youth in mental gymnastics, directs the glance toward the past, cultivates the memory rather than reason, gives polish rather than power, encourages acquiescence rather than inquiry, and teaches to verify rather than to think (p. 410).” (Tanner 1995) The Cardinal Principles report advocated that what should be measured is growth, not mastery; the question must be asked: Mastery of what? The report is just as accurate today as it was in 1918, when it stated, “The school is the one agency that may be controlled definitely and consciously by democracy for the purpose of unifying its people.”(Education 1918) It is too bad our leaders don’t follow this observation.
We too often have attacks on public education by conservatives. We have this outcry from conservatives that our educational system is a failure. The question must be raised in whose interests are they advocating? Too often, conservatives tend to look out for the vested interests of corporate America at the expense of the majority of Americans.
The new common sense that the highest mission and overriding purpose of schooling was to prepare students at different levels to take their places in the corporate order. The banking or transmission theory of school knowledge, which Freire identified more than thirty years ago as the culprit standing in the way of critical consciousness, has returned with a vengeance. Once widely scorned by educators from diverse educational philosophies as a flagrant violation of the democratic educational mission, it has been thrust to the fore of nearly all official pedagogy. P.4 (Aronowitz 1998)
As Molnar points out, the endless attacks on the quality of public education from the corporate sector come even though US corporations spend less on worker training than any other industrialized country. The ‘quality' issue that corporate CEOs such as Louis Gerstner of IBM hurl at the public schools does not concern the schools from which IBM will draw employees. Those schools – heavily funded, largely white schools in the suburbs – provide IBM with well-educated members of the professional class. So, the ‘failing’ schools are not the ones from which IBM intends to benefit by hiring their graduates. However, IBM can certainly benefit from convincing the government to allow urban schools and their students to compete with wealthy white suburban schools for IBM’s shrinking number of jobs if those urban schools buy IBM’s many products (p.253).(Saltman K. J 2002)
With the focus on a single discipline approach, the question is, are we creating better learners or simply distancing ourselves from others? Is it out of fear or need to view the world as a win-lose situation that we create this single-minded approach to education? With our tendency to flip-flopping educational priorities as we attempt to define them, we don’t stick with our decisions, and the vultures circle to sell their wares. Our myopic nationalistic focus on education hasn’t produced better learners or educators; instead, it has focused on specifics that have supported the military-industrial complex and, once again, the vultures' circle to sell their wares. Moving towards a more specialized, discipline-specific approach, are we furthering our alienation from real life? Do we continue to battle with each other? What if we took a more unified, practical approach? Could we then find education to be a relevant and dynamic experience?
We attempt to create a Teacher-Proof Curriculum – once again, the development of materials that make life easier for the teacher and turn a profit for those selling their wares. As we develop a new curriculum, we have tended to deliver more alienated material from the students.
The current emphasis on method in the educational agenda views methodology as a panacea to promote learning in the classroom from a deficit-based perspective of student academic achievement in which discrete forms of knowledge are considered to be directly reflected in high or low test scores (see Shor 1992). This perspective leads to social control, for it promotes a passive, unquestioning acceptance of everything said and done. A “teacher-proof ” methodology becomes a mechanical and technical issue rather than a social, political, and moral issue: a “one size fits all” approach emphasizing passive obedience and doing what one is told. This ideology links the capitalist ethic of competitive individualism to academic and social experience, thereby preserving mainstream culture's existing forms and orthodoxies. Ideas and social practices are uncritically reproduced. The teacher-student relationship is based on a punitive framework, a punishment/reward system that manipulates learning. The teacher’s energy is devoted to imposing, establishing, and preserving control.
In contrast, most students’ energy is absorbed in dealing with or against the control through resistance mechanisms such as fear, boredom, indifference, inattention, silence, open disruption, or general passivity.(p 166)(Chilcoat G.W and Ligon J.A 1998)
The other aspect in educating children is how teachers’ personalities affect curriculum and how we shift that from a single discipline approach to a more holistic approach. We have attempted to use ideas such as the open classroom. The idea was good; however, other ideas tend to be used more for space utilization and staffing. Similar to inclusion in the classroom, it tended to be used more for staff reduction and budgetary reasons. In discussing the differences between the slums and suburbs, Conant pointed out the great disparity of resources and facilities between these areas and made an impassioned plea to address these issues.(Conant 1961) However, we continue to ignore this situation. As school districts struggle to survive, they must deal with budget cuts and constant pressure to meet standards. How do we justify $200 billion dollars to fight a questionable war and then plead poverty when it comes to providing adequate resources for our schools?
Discussion is given on the need for more/better education. Again, we look to corporate America for answers, but what has been the history of corporations over the last 30 years? Move jobs overseas to some poor country where there are no labor laws, and pay is lousy. Educational reform is just one piece of the puzzle that needs to be fixed until we look at the socio-economic factors. It is like fixing a flat tire on a bike by trying to take the top, which doesn’t look flat, and moving it to the bottom. With such programs as Goals 2000, No Child Left Behind, and other types of national policy, they tend to be catchphrases in which people can attach a statement to vent their anger toward public education. There is no substance behind the statement.
What of a well-rounded person, a person who has an interest in the pursuit of a better life for all? When we look towards the industry for educational solutions presently and in the past, we often fail to ask the question, “What’s in it for them,” as pointed out by Myrdal, “business and industry should be regarded as a supplement to, and not a replacement for the vocational and general education that should be provided by public educational institutions (p. 34)”(Myrdal 1965)
In all of this, the final question is how to educate the educators to a new way of thinking and those that have been so entrenched into this segregated, isolative approach towards curriculum. This technocratic methodological malaise relegates teachers and students to roles as agents of the status quo by denying teacher autonomy, including creative and imaginative thought, and ignoring students’ sociocultural histories, voices, and experiences. Teachers and students lose their critical abilities to change themselves and their world, both in and out of the classroom. The teacher becomes an accommodating high-level clerk or an obedient civil servant, simply carrying out predetermined content developed by “experts” and/or the school bureaucracy (Aronowitz and Giroux 1993). The students become passive and receptive: they do not define their problems; they do not choose and develop their resources; they do not formulate their procedures; they do not evaluate their results. The notion that students have different histories, experiences, linguistic practices, cultures, and talents is conveniently ignored. Students, particularly those from subordinated cultures, who have trouble in academic achievement or do not respond to “regular” or “normal” instruction are often submitted to blind replications of some generic instructional method that it is hoped will magically motivate them to master some specified content (Bartolomé 1994). Pedagogy under the banner of “academic achievement” is embedded in attempts at control: the “expert” creates a generic method; the teacher transmits it; the students absorb it. The methods’ internal logic dictates boundaries and the requirement that established social and power relationships be preserved. One consequence is that this approach obfuscates real questions about real learning among all students, especially students of subordinated cultures. Students in schools look, think, and act alarmingly alike. Another consequence is that students become invisible regarding how they name, see, and experience. They are robbed of their culture, language, history, and values—reduced to objects to be acted upon instead of empowered as subjects who can and do act. Still worse, this technical approach to methodology, argues Whitson and Stanley (1995), is artificial, tailor-made for phony and bogus classrooms where teaching occurs without relevance to the real world. P. 167 (Chilcoat G.W and Ligon J.A 1998)
References:
Aronowitz, S. (1998). Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy, and Civic Courage. Boulder, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
Bestor, A. (1956). The Restoration of Learning. New York, Alfred A. Knopf.
Chilcoat G.W and Ligon J.A (1998). ""We Talk Here. This Is a School for Talking." Participatory Democracy from the Classroom out into the Community: How Discussion Was Used in the Mississippi Freedom Schools." Curriculum Inquiry 28(2): 165-193(29).
Conant, J. B. (1961). Slums and Suburbs. New York, McGraw-Hill.
Dewey, J. (1902). The Child and the Curriculum. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
Dewey, J. (1933). How We Think. Lexington, MA, D.C. Heath.
Education, C. o. t. R. o. S. (1918). Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education. Washington, D.C., U.S. Bureau of Education: p. 14.
Giroux, H. A. (1999). "Corporate Culture and the Attack on Higher Education and Public Schooling." Phi Delta Kappa Fastbacks 442(a): 7-55.
Hutchins, R. M. (1936). The Higher Learning in America. New Haven, CT, Yale University Press.
Myrdal, G. (1965). Challenge to Affluence. New York, Vintage.
Pennac, D. (1994). Better than life. Toronto, Coach House Press.
Ravitch, D. F., Chester E. (1987). What Do Our 17-Year_Olds Know? New York, Harper.
Saltman K. J (2002). "Junk-King Education." Cultural Studies 16(2): 233-258(26).
Serafini F. W (2002). "Dismantling the Factory Model of Assessment." Reading and Writing Quarterly 18(1): 67-85(19).
Tanner, D. T., Laurel (1995). Curriculum Development: Theory into Practice. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, Prentice-Hall.
