ABSTRACT
This chapter continues to examine unfinished cosmopolitanism as double gestures by moving to the standards reform and research in teaching school subjects. In chapter 6, I discussed the alchemy with respect to schooling as performing a magical transmutation. As academic knowledge moves into the spaces of schooling, an odd thing happens: the different school subjects have a certain homogeneity in stated outcomes (see Popkewitz & Gustafson, 2002; Popkewitz, 2004a). The national music curriculum standards and the mathematics curriculum would seem at first glance to be knowledge that is either divergent and humanist or rational and scientific. However, they are not divergent but relate to a mode of living of unfinished cosmopolitanism: participation, decision making, problem solving, communication ("defending an argument" and "working effectively in a group"), work habits ("acquiring and using information"), and interactional proficiency that enables community collaboration and participation. The unspoken and unexpressed optimism of the standards reform is that the school will produce a more enlightened and cosmopolitan mode of living. Paired with this assumption are engendered threats to the unity of the whole. The joining of the hope and fears is visible in the phrase "all children," which produces recognition of the difference of the child who is left behind.
