ABSTRACT
Conventionally, curricula are thought of as plans or frameworks for educational action, a species of policy directives to be implemented. This narrow conventional view hides the fact that curricula are also evaluations of previous curricula and imaginative texts that are produced by people living in the midst of a field of endeavor with a history and a context to which they are responding
through the creation of new curricular initiatives. When we image curricula in this less conventional fashion (not seeing them as practical policy directives), they become historical documents that speak of their times, their makers, and the conditions of their production. They become personal documents as well, speaking of individual responses to those situations. Additionally, for those of us who read these texts, we need no longer treat them as authoritative directions for actions but instead as documents that we may interpret in order, perhaps, to better understand ourselves and our own place in the field of endeavor that has a history and a context to which we, too, are responding. In short, from these texts we can learn who we are as historical beings living in the onflowing stream of thought that comprises our particular field of endeavor, and we may learn of the implications of our own curricular decisions.
