Fly and the Fly Bottle: On Dwayne Huebner, the Uses of Language, and the Nature of the Curriculum Field

Abstract

A review of

“Curricular language and classroom meanings”

(Huebner, D. 1966. In J. B. Macdonald & R. Leeper, Eds.,

Language and meaning, pp. 8–26. Washington, DC: Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.)

Notes

Notes

1 I do not want to be misunderstood here. Anyone who has followed my work over the past 2 decades knows that I have employed both structural and poststructural approaches and theories, in particular in my analyses of the ways in which rightist alliances have creatively employed discursive strategies to create new and more conservative identities for people and to bring them under the leadership of neoliberal, neoconservative, and authoritarian populist movements. Thus, I am not at all arguing that a focus on discourse and identity is incorrect. But, such a focus, using, for example, Foucauldian-inspired frameworks, is not a replacement for other critical frameworks (Apple, 2010). As Nancy Fraser (1997) reminds us, both a politics of redistribution and a politics of recognition are essential for serious progress.

2 It is perhaps worth stating as well that Herrick was a professor at the University of Chicago before coming to Wisconsin to help form the elementary education program there. What we call the “Tyler Rationale” was in essence the Tyler/Herrick Rationale in many ways. At Wisconsin, I fill what was Herrick’s position. And this essay is being written on a computer that more often than not sits on Virgil Herrick’s desk, given as a gift to me when I first arrived at Wisconsin in 1970.

3 I have purposely put the word “THEORY” in capital letters to highlight one of its unfortunately growing uses. “Theory” is absolutely essential for any field. But in the case of many figures now, it serves a different function. And here I need to be honest. It becomes an all too easy way to establish unnecessary academic and social hierarchies. “THEORY” then becomes a bludgeon in which anyone who does not have the appropriate “THEORY” can be dismissed, even when such “THEORY” may be mystifying and nearly impossible to understand, is rhetorical, and when translated results in what are often quite pedestrian claims.

4 This is one of the main reasons that James Beane and I published Democratic Schools (Apple & Beane, 1995, 2007). We felt that one of the roles of the committed educator in curriculum studies was to act as the secretary for those practicing teachers, administrators, and community activists who are successfully laboring every day to build critically democratic classrooms and schools. For a more complex discussion of the varied roles of the committed scholar/activist, see Apple (2010).