Crystallization and Dialectical Unlearning: Reviving Curriculum Studies

• In Event: 26.020 - (Re)reading Curriculum History and Theorizing Hopeful Spaces Yet to Be Designed

Abstract

In 1946 Alice Miel declared that the education field had a problem: “crystallization . . . an idea or habit is accepted uncritically, so that it limits the . . . self-expression of individuals and groups.” Later field critiques (Schwab, 1969, Au 2012) used a form of dialectics to offer new theoretical underpinnings. In this present research I return to Miel’s crystallization as a more fundamental problem but leverage the dialectic as a way of thinking. “Dialectical unlearning” interrogates our orthodoxies (such as critical race theory, queer theory, the practical, social class, deep democracy, post-colonialism, gender), recognizing their dialectical doppelgangers, investing these oppositions with equal meaning and salience to open our thinking to new ways of viewing experience.

Author

• Donald Blumenfeld-Jones, Arizona State University - Tempe