ABSTRACT
The curriculum is the stuff that is taught in urban, public schools. There is virtually no talk among school people of the curriculum as interactive or constructed, of teachers as transformative intellectuals or moral agents. Talk of school improvement generally means buying a different package and inserting it into the existing structures, cultures, and realities. All education is about power—its goal is for people to become more skilled, more able, more dynamic, more vital. Teaching is about strengthening, invigorating, and empowering others. People may not agree about how to get there, but there is general accord that good teaching enables and strengthens learners. While education is about empowering people, the machinery of schooling is on another mission altogether. Schooling is most often about obedience and conformity; it is about crowd control, competition, hierarchy, and one's place in it.
