Methodological Pluralism and Curriculum Inquiry

Abstract

The roots of literary criticism extend back over a thousand years. A discussion of criticism would not be complete without mentioning the Platonic dilemma, Aristotle's Poetics, Longinus's notion of the sublime, Dryden, Pope, Arnold, Brooks, and numerous other critics who have discussed and evaluated literary works throughout the centuries. Compare this to the field of curriculum theory-a field claiming less than fifty years of existence, tied intimately to the world of American schooling, labeled dead and ready for burial over ten years ago-and a sense of scholarly humility on our part seems justified. Yet, despite our comparative newness on the academic block and the untimely rumors of our demise, the curriculum field is alive and, if not entirely well, at least kicking. Despite our theoretical concerns, millions of North American children are experiencing daily the practical effects of curriculum work. Curriculum professors and theorists have continued writing. Witness the number of new curriculum publications collected in the December 1979 newsletter of the SIG on the Creation and Utilization of Curriculum Knowledge (Bibliography of Curriculum Texts). And, although numerous people agreed with Joseph Schwab in 1969 that the curriculum field was indeed moribund (reflecting perhaps the it-hurtsso-good response to attack), the critical argument generated about the reasons for the sorry state of the field and the possible remedies for it suggests a community of scholars eager for new direction. The question this article addresses is how the field of curriculum theory can benefit from the perspective of the long-standing discipline of literary criticism. My approach will not be to recommend specific schools of critical thought (e.g., structuralism or nihilism), but rather to join the two