Educating Tomorrow's Architects and Builders: Lessons From William H. Watkins

• In Event: Engaging Praxis: Curriculum Studies in Classrooms and Communities

Abstract

The purpose of the presentation is to open a discussion about curriculum theorizing using Dr. William Watkins's work as a guide. As teachers and curriculum workers, we are always faced with the choices of what to teach and how to teach it. As Watkins's book (2001) explains, education was carefully designed to maintain and sustain a developing and delicate capitalism. Many teachers recognize that the goals of the original architects are in direct opposition to our own. While the white architects were intent on relegating Black Americans to positions of subjugation (Watkins, 2001), many of today's educators are committed to aiding their students’ upward mobility but also to co-creating a more just world
along with their students.

I approach the subject from a critical Marxist perspective, engaging in "critique that frames educational experiences within the conditions of Capitalism and, currently its current neoliberal and neoconservative form" (Hill, 2016, p. 161). I discuss how curricular choices can guide students to discover how education has been used to create and maintain modern capitalism and activate imaginative alternatives for the education experience. An essential component of
Marxist teaching is that learning should extend beyond the classroom and lead to real-world activism. I draw on Frierean pedagogical theories (Freire 2000) to center student voice and inquiry in guiding how classroom lessons can be applied to improving material conditions in the school and community.

This is a theoretical essay using Watkins and Freire's historical and political theories to reflect upon my curricular choices and classroom practice as a high school teacher. I use the work of Watkins and Freire to reflect on my curriculum work and classroom practice. For example, understanding how the original white architects Watkins
describes used education to shape ideology and systems of political economy challenges me to create opportunities for my students to imagine alternatives. Rather than passively consuming education, students begin to imagine the world I hope they will be empowered to create.

Drawing on the work of Watkins and Freire, I conclude that the knowledge of most worth to my students is that which will empower students to dismantle unjust systems and create new ones in their stead. Both curriculum scholars acknowledge the power education has on shaping ideology and material reality. Centering this possibility of education as a tool to build a more just world pushes me toward texts that critique current systems and invite exercises in the
imagination of a better world. In turn, students take the lessons from the classroom and apply them to their worlds.

Examining how curricular choices inspire activism reminds educators that what we do and how we do it matters far beyond test grades and career readiness. This paper invites educators to join in the creative curricular work of imagining new ways of educating today's youth that subvert the intentions of the white architects Watkins identifies and use education to co-create a better world for our students and ourselves.

Author

• Guadalupe Ramirez
  Presenting Author