The Belly of the Whale: Who Dares to Certify?

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 29
  In Roundtable Session: Critical Issues in Culture, Curriculum, and Justice

Abstract

This is a fictionalized autobiographical inquiry that conceptually explores the intersection of myth and curriculum through the lenses of my lived experiences. It is a qualitative inquiry structured around the stages of the hero’s journey as described by Joseph Campbell (1949) in The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Methodologically, the paper is eclectic, utilizing narrative inquiry, auto-ethnography, and phenomenology to interpret and critique the curriculum of normative schooling experiences, and to consider the potential for a deeper, spiritualized, and subjective curriculum focusing on the development of self. The narration is based on the experience of attending a kindergarten graduation within a gentrified, affluent neighborhood of San Francisco.

Author

• D. Joe Ohlinger, Purdue University - Fort Wayne