ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we address the role of critical pedagogy and social justice education in challenging the curriculum in world language education courses. We explore the themes of the curriculum and curricular practice in world language education in the United States. In our discussion of the world language curriculum, we distinguish among the planned curriculum, the unplanned curriculum, the hidden curriculum, and the excluded curriculum. We also discuss the nature of curricular nullification, and how both additive and subtractive curricular nullification can and do operate in the context of the public school. Last, we explore the concept of the literary canon, and discuss both its value and the challenges that it poses in world language education. What we provide here is somewhat different from what is commonly available in the world language education literature, however: our focus here, as in World Language Education as Critical Pedagogy: The Promise of Social Justice more broadly, is on offering a perspective on the curricula used in world language education classes that is grounded in a critical perspective that goes beyond normal theoretical and practical concerns in ways that can help to promote critical pedagogy in the world language classroom.
