ABSTRACT
The curriculum occurs through conversation—silenced by racism, misogyny, economic inequality—within and across the school subjects and academic disciplines. Curriculum theory aspires to understand the educational significance of the curriculum for the individual, society, and history. Banished from the public sphere, curriculum theorists appreciate political powerlessness. Private can imply isolation from historical forces and social movements. Such an implication would be mistaken: historical forces and social movements are both sources of interiority and provocations of theorizing and teaching. Curriculum theorists appreciate the significance of employing ethical, religious, and aesthetic languages to depict and structure our professional lives as educators. In colleges and universities many faculty remain clear that the curriculum is the intellectual and organizational center of education. Too few appreciate the significance of studying the education field’s intellectual history and cultivating its disciplinarity. Curriculum theory acknowledges, indeed, embracesthe complexity of educational experience.
