The Seldom-Spoken Roots of the Curriculum

ABSTRACT

In language education, a number of recent curricular developments from expressive writing to interactional reading, share a common core of assumptions which can be shown to have their roots in the literature of British Romanticism. These developments, which I am placing under the rubric of the New Literacy, share with Romanticism a theory of organicism and a reverence for the imagination and the self. Among the specific parallels between Romanticism and the New Literacy, there exists a common language for the mind and creative act, a struggle against the books of the old guard, and a recovery of a common language for renewing the literary project. A comparison of the central tenets of the two movements brings to light the basis of the New Literacy's educational appeal and provides the grounds for an initial critique. It does so by bringing into focus this curricular movement's reconceptualization of the teacher, the student, and the language arts curriculum.