National Curriculum Standards and Social Studies Education: Dewey, Freire, Foucault, and the Construction of a Radical Critique

Abstract

In this paper the author examines the issue of national curriculum standards within the context of social studies education. First, he explores both the recent “conservative”-“liberal” consensus in favor of (at least) the idea(l) of national curriculum standards and the nascent opposition movements to national curriculum standards growing within both the pedagogical/political Left and the pedagogical/political Right. Second, focusing on the perspective of the radical Left—the author's own position as well as an increasingly legitimate one among social educators generally—he appropriates the work of John Dewey, Paulo Freire, and Michel Foucault as (1) significant and meaningful with respect to reconstructing and interpreting the origins, development, and evolution of a/the radical Left critique; and (2) a dynamic source of guidance and direction for critical social educators now working to advance, strengthen, and expand it. Here, the author provides a “reading” of the recent work of E. Wayne Ross as a “case study” of this relationship between Dewey, Freire, and Foucault and contemporary critical social studies scholarship. Lastly, the author suggests and considers implications of his analysis for today's social educators, specifically those implications relevant to current understandings of pedagogical theory, research, and practice.