Sunday, November 30, 2003

old stuff

I was attempting (albeit unsuccessfully) to do some blog-like stuff on the kps home page. I thought I'd pop them into here even though they date back a little in time.

I've dated them back using the dating facility of Blogger.

I was doing some tidying and came across some words of Colin's and Michele's from last year. As they argue, it is always easy to lose sight of what is at the heart of formal educational practice.

As a crude paraphrasing it has been said that history is written by the winners. So, for the most part, are curriculum and pedagogy so far as they pertain to the formal educational work of schools. They are designed and written from the standpoint of what counts as succeeding within dominant Discourses as we all know. But while we all know this, it is easy to forget it in the hurly burly of classroom life. Although we have it paraded before us almost constantly, it is also easy to forget that most of the world's population live outside the representations of what it is to know and do and be (in effective and successful ways) that are peddled by curriculum designers and pedagogical experts. This is true whether success and effectiveness are seen in terms of individual benefit and advancement/development, or from the standpoint of benefits to private and public corporations moved by performativity and profit, or, as in the case of social and economic elites, from the standpoint of both.