ABSTRACT
The field of curriculum has been diagnosed as moribund by Joseph J. Schwab. 1 The symptoms he noted were the incoherence of the curriculum, the failures and discontinuities within schooling, and various flights from the proper subject of the field. The cause of the malady was identified as the “inveterate, unexamined, and mistaken reliance on theory” 2 —theories adopted by and constructed within the field. Professor Schwab predicted that a “renascence” of the field would occur only if curriculum energies were “diverted from theoretic pursuits” to “modes of operation” that were “practical, … quasi-practical, and … eclectic.” 3 In an intellectual tour de force, he then developed his theories of the arts of the practical and of the eclectic. His theory of the nature of deliberation, one of the arts of the practical, is a significant contribution to those aspects of educational practice concerned with decision-making and institutional governance. Even more significant is his theory of the eclectic procedures by which the diverse theories can be used in and for educational practice, while maintaining both the integrity of the theories and the practical contexts of education. 4
