Fifty years since the publication of Toward a Poor Curriculum, William F. Pinar and Madeleine R. Grumet reflect on the ongoing need for a poor curriculum—one stripped of distractions such as technology to allow for the reflection and self-questioning at the heart of the book’s central methodology of currere. Featuring a brand-new preface cowritten by William F. Pinar and Madeleine R. Grumet, as well as revised chapters and a never-before included chapter on the four phases of currere, this anniversary edition invites scholars of curriculum theory and teaching methods to revisit the original essays and reconsider their relevance in light of present educational and political challenges.
Table of Contents:
We Invite: Preface to the 50th Anniversary Edition Preface (2015 – 3rd edition) Preface (2006 – 2nd edition) Preface (1976) 1. Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown 2. Self and Others 3. Existential and Phenomenological Foundations 4. The Method of Currere 5. Toward a Poor Curriculum 6. Political-Spiritual Dimensions 7. Psychoanalytic Foundations 8. Subjective Reconstruction and the Rehabilitation of Habit 9. Currere 10. Autobiography: Personal Stories in a Public World
About the Author :
William F. Pinar is Tetsuo Aoki Professor of Curriculum Studies at the University of British Columbia, Canada.
Madeleine R. Grumet, now retired, formerly served as Professor of Education and Dean at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Brooklyn College, City University of New York, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Review :
“In this text, Pinar and Grumet return to question of what subjective study means for gaining a deeper understanding of ourselves as relational human beings, what they frame as a necessary first step toward any sustainable social change efforts on the part of educators and students alike. Against a backdrop of 50 years of erasure of the inner self, where what’s purported to matter most is numeric conversions of the empirical world, Toward a Poor Curriculum returns us once again to the systematic study of our educational experiences as the most liberating of human endeavours. Through deeper engagement with our own subjectivity, and the places that made us, what becomes possible is the defamiliarizing of the world in which we live. By making the familiar strange, which is the purpose of currere, radical hope and social reconstruction become possible by way of a self that is born again, born anew. “
Erik Malewski, Professor of Curriculum Studies, Kennesaw State University, USA
“The 50th anniversary edition of Toward a Poor Curriculum by Pinar and Grumet reminds us that curriculum is not a product to be delivered but a phenomenon to be lived. Through critical self-reflection, they invite teachers to challenge reductive, technocratic interpretations of their professional practice and to embrace their curriculum work as an ethical, relational, and transformative practice.”
Kevin Smith, Reader of Education at Cardiff University, UK
“This great book in the field of curriculum studies will always be on the cutting edge. Pinar and Grumet wrote this definitive volume that those of us still working with/on currere continue to use, to refer to in our scholarship, and to draw inspiration from. This book should be read by future generations of scholar-practitioners interested in developing an orientation that surfaces and cultivates subjectivity and deep reflection in education, the keys to realizing curriculum possibilities in our lifetimes and beyond.”
Thomas S. Poetter, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, USA
