Educational Stagnation and Affective Malaise: Octavia Butler and Curricular Possibilities

• In Event: (Re)Tracing the Contours of Educational Possibility and Imagination

Abstract

This conceptual paper explores the affective and intellectual consequences of contemporary education. Although battles over curricula in the United States and beyond have intensified in recent years, we argue that the essential structure and content of school curricula remains wedded to the transmission of Western knowledge, and privileges a single mode of thinking defined as deductive reasoning. The result of this curricular fetish is none other than the death of thinking, and collective feelings of misery and malaise for teachers and students alike. In order to address this dilemma, we draw inspiration from Octavia Butler’s to ask different questions about the purpose of education, and how we might reorient conversations about curriculum towards surviving and thriving in a precarious world.

Authors

• Tristan G. Gleason, California State Polytechnic University - Humboldt

• Asilia K. Franklin-Phipps, SUNY - College at New Paltz