Curriculum Is Everything That Happens: The Lesson of the Lockdown Drill

• In Event: Roundtable Session 21
  In Roundtable Session: Occupation and Empowerment: Lessons From Difference and Conflict

Abstract

What follows flows from a basic syllogism. Everything that happens in schools is curriculum.2 Lockdown drills occur in schools. Therefore lockdowns are curriculum where curriculum is understood as an artifact or process through which students learn something by converting an accident (or chance encounter) into a learning event after Deleuze. This event begs to be analyzed and understood according to its executive power over the conduct of human life. (Colebrook, 2002). Columbine then and Sandy Hook now were accidents that educators, parents, lawmakers, and school boards converted into the lockdown’s curriculum event. This paper does not argue against lockdown drills. It asks what is the lesson imparted when we pretend to kill our students twice a year?

Author

• Margaret Ann Shane, University of Alberta