Generational Ideas in Curriculum: A Historical Triangulation

Abstract

In this article, I examine the work of John Franklin Bobbitt, Ralph Tyler, and Joseph Schwab with the intention of identifying lines of continuity and change in the curriculum field. Most curriculum scholars cast this group of three in an analytical framework that puts Tyler in kinship with Bobbitt, and that puts Schwab, by virtue of his declaration of moribundity against the field, in separation from Tyler and the historical line of thinking that he represented. I argue, however, that the turbulence caused by Schwab’s 1969 criticism of the curriculum field, far from supporting an argument for some iconoclastic separation from the traditional lines of the field, could more accurately be interpreted as an endorsement (with improvements) of the historic field. I make this case by pointing to the sustenance of what I call generational ideas in the curriculum field, which are ideas that have their roots in the defining moments of the curriculum field and that have persisted (some with modification) over more than one generation of curriculum scholars. Generational ideas in the curriculum field include a focus on the development of the school experience and on the relevance of local school authority. Generational curriculum work also works out of a vision-building construct (without an a priori commitment to any type of vision) that advises key sources for curriculum decision-making (society, students, and subject matter). Schwab inherited these generational insights and then went an important step further by showing us the way toward a more participatory process in curriculum decision-making. In this sense, Schwab was as much a tool of continuity in the field as he was an innovator. Finally, I demonstrate that the six signs of crisis that Schwab outlined in his famous 1969 essay very much imply a return to many of the first principles that we find in Tyler’s work.