1tA~ul,7 ct; rplo

; h ir7!y:,t
nFe,ISi.p2nI
I
.d .Supwivisf,
2
3

RETHINKING SCHWAB: CURRICULUM

THEORIZING AS A VISIONARY ACTIVITY
WILLIAM A. REID. The C.nivetsity f Texyas at Auistin,

ABSTRACT. Though Dewey raised the philosophical question of the relationship of

theorizing to the field of cumculum, it was not one that was pursued with mucn
enthusiasm through the first half of the 20th century, However. Schwab's return to
it in his first "Practical t paper (19o9) imnm-lediately launched an intense debate that
has rumbled on ever since. On the surface he was making an intellectual poinu
;Girven the essentially practical nature of curriculum, what relevance can theory
have to it? However, reference to his other writings suggests that his argument a.-as
not merely an inteliectal one. Though Schwab was certainly concerned with mat-
ters of philosophy, he was also pursuing a visionary agenda centered on the idea
of a "moral comrunity. t Interestungly. publication of his paper was closely followed
by the launching of the "reconceptualist" movemnent in curriculum, .which
appeared
.n some ways to share in this visionary aspect of his ideas. Was he then a 'proto-
reconceptualist"? In some ways he could be so categorized, but against that one
must weigh his profound respect for tradition. Though his paper did mark 3 turn-
inig point in the history of curriculum. the field did not subsequently develop along
lines he woould have approved of.

W
A r hat kind of theorizing, if anv, is appropriate to the field of
curriculum? This was a question that was seldom asked in
vV the era of "classical" cLurriculum
s work in the United States.
by which I mean roughlv the first tw.o-thirds of the 20th centurv. The
leading figures of that period-Snedden, Bobbirt. Charters, Tyler,
and so on (with. of course, the vast presence of Dewey lurking over-
head, and occasionallv intervening with the kind of critical com-
ments to be expected from a major philosopher-were thought of
as indiv iduals, each getting on wNrith the job to be done in his or her
own particular wMay. Curriculum theorizing was simplv what curricu-
Lum workers did when general points or propositions needed to be
argued for. Discussion of curricutlum theory was, largely, discussion
of the biographies of those who had promoted it. On the other
hand, all those people were hound together by an intense concern
for the practical problems of schooling, so there seemed to be little
need to classify them by locating their work in distinctive theoreti-
30 RetRinking Schwab: Curriculum Theorizing as a VisionaryActivity

cal schools. When Jackson put together his Handbook of Curricu-

lum Research, he could happily lump them all together in a category
he labeled the "Dominant Perspective"'
Then suddenly, in 1968, Joseph Schwab announced that the
qyestion of how the field was to regard theory was by far the most
important one for curriculum workers and scholars. Judging by the
reaction that his AERA, Division B, paper provoked, many people
agreed, or at least felt that his remarks touched on some deep prob-
lematic of the field that needed to be addressed. Subsequent publi-
cation of his paper in School Retiew intensified the debate.2 What
Schwab had to say-as he himself would have been ready to
admit-was not new. Most, if not all, of it could have been gleaned
from a reading of Dewey. But somehow, through decades of cur-
riculum work in the earlier part of the century, Dewey's ideas had
been background, not foreground, in discussion. Perhaps this was
because he was a philosopher on a larger stage, rather than simply
a curriculum theorist. Or perhaps it was because there was so much
to be worked on in the field of curriculum, so many practical agen-
das to pursue, that doing was always more pressing than pbilos-
ophizing. In any event, Schwab's strictures on the field for not rais-
ing the Deweyan questions suddenly became relevant in a way that
Dewey's own worrying around the same issues never had been.
Schwab, as a lifelong Chicago scholar, was, of course, close to
a philosophical tradition that, emanating from Dewey and sustained
by the advocacy of Richard McKeon and others, had never lost sight
of fundamental questions about appropriate relationships between
philosophy and the practical arts.3 But the immediate provocation
for Schwab's intervention was his sense that, without any argument
or debate, the curriculum field had, in the 1950s and '60s, grown to
acquiesce in the idea that curriculum theorizing was simply a sub-
category of scientific theorizing; that just as, for example, physicists
try to produce universal explanations for the behavior of atomic par-
ticles, a new breed of curriculum theorists was setting out to estab-
lish universal principles and explanations concerning the events sur-
rounding teaching and learning. This worried Schwab on two grounds.
First, he felt that such an endeavor was logically mistaken. As he
pointed out,

'P. W. Jackson, ed., Handbook of Curriculum Research (New York: Macmil-

lan, 1992).
2
J.J. Schwab, "The Practical: A Language for Curriculum," School Revieu' 78. 1
(1969): 1-23.
3See Donald N. Levine, Habits qf tbe Mind: The Chicago Tradition of Liberal
Learn-ing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), forthcoming.
W2liam A. Reld 31

Theory, by its verv character, does not and cannot take account of all the
matters which are crucial to questions of what, who, and how to teach. that
is, theories cannot be applied, as principles, to the solution of problems
concerning what to do with or for real individuals. small groups, or real in-
stitutions located in time and space-the subjects and clients of schools and
schooling,'

But second, he saw the idea as not only logically but also morally
misguided. This theme appears as subtext rather than text in "The
Practical.' Schwab was an essayist, and his present concern was ex-
plication of his logical argument. As he says in the paragraph that
concludes his discussion of 'flights from the field,"
In the present context, the vice or vinue of these various flights is beside
the point. We are concerned with them as signs of collapse of principles in
a field . 5

Perhaps it was unfortunate that Schwab did not choose to focus

on moral objections to trends in curriculum theorizing, or to offer al-
ternative visions, By not doing so, he gave the impression that there
was no way forward for any varietv of then current curriculum work
('The field of curriculum is moribund . .. ) and left the wayr open to
those who would enthusiasticallv pursue the "flights" of which he so
disapproved. As it was, exclusive focus on the "Practical" papers, at
the expen of Schwab's other writings, led to a situation in which
Jackson cold lumf SchTab together with Tyler as an exponent of
his"Dominant Perspi" and depict him as evincing less concern
with idealismand moaly than Tyler, who, Jackson says, possessed
"an animating vision" while Schwab's focus was "on the concrete and
:the0 innedatet Schwab%s 4approach, says Jackson was problem-
centered: as opposed to 'visiobn-centered( and, hence he was much
less toant o ideistic tinigon the part of practitioners than
Wer seemns to have: been.T7 In the face of such judgments, claims
aboit a cmpensatotry visionary eleLment in the wrtings of Schwab
would seem hard to sustain. But these are exactly the kinds of claims
that I am setting out to make.

'I. Westburv and N. 1. Wilkof. eds.. Scietice. Cuniculm,. and LiberalEruca-

tion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), p. 287.
tbid., p. 302.
"Ibid., p. 301.
'. W Jackson, ed,, Handbook of Curriculum Research (New York: Macmil-
Ian, 1992).
32 Retbinking Schwab: Curriculum 7heorizing as a visionary Activity

SCHWiAB'S VISION OF COMMUNITY

To some extent, interpretation of sources like Schwab's "Practi-
cal" papers is a matter of discovering what you are looking for. Even
the most apparently factual statements in areas such as curriculum
theory will always leave room for interpretation. We are not dealing
with the demonstrable propositions of mathematics or the logically
consistent theories of physical science. As Jackson says of Tyler's
Rationale: "It is, quite simply, an expression of opinion. It is not a the-
ory. a model, a system, a taxonomv, an algorithm, a recipe, or a for-
mula."8 Then, too, there is the problem that writings in fields such as
curriculum will always contain undisclosed premises or undiscussed
commitments-there is only so much that can be overtly stated about
such complicated matters within a given compass. But, in the case of
Schwab, yet another difficulty exists. The four "Practical" papers rep-
resent only a small fraction of the output of a man whose favorite
genre of writing was the essay. And essay writers are notoriously
hard to understand in depth without extensive reading of their works.
As the editors of the 1978 edition of Schwab's papers remark:
There is in his writing a complex back-and-forth between the particular and
the more general so that grasp of any one essav requires appreciation bv
the reader of other essays, and of problems already discussed and closed. 9

Thus, to understand the moral commitments that underpin the

apparently unvisionanr statements of the "Practical" papers, we need
to look beyond them and seek out other texts. Arrmed with the
knowledge that these yield, we may then be able to see the "Practi-
cal" papers in a different light. Sources that might be studied include
his essays on teaching, such as "Eros and Education" and "The 'Im-
possible' Role of the Teacher in Progressive Education"; and attacks
on inappropriate theorizing that long predated the "Practical" papers,
such as "On the Corruption of Education by Psychology."10 But the
most important text for our present purpose is the lengthy paper that
Schwab contributed to the 1976 volume of The Great Ideas Today
published by Encyclopaedia Britannica, under the title "Education
and the State: Learning Community.""
8
Ibid., p. 27.
9L, Westbury and N. J. Wilkof, eds., Science, Curriculum, anld Liberal Educa-
tion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), p. 2.
"'J. J. Schwab. "Eros and Education," Journal of General Education 8 (1954):
54-71; 'The 'Impossible' Role of the Teacher in Progressivre Education," .School Re-
view 67 (1959): 139-159: and "On the corrmption of Education by Psychology."
Etbics 68 (1957): 39-44.
0
3J. J. Schwab, "Education and the State: Learning Community," in 7he Great
Ideas Toda'., ed. R. M. Hutchins and M. J. Adler (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica.
1976), pp. 234-274
lVilhen A. Reid

Here me are introduced to a rather different kind of writer than

the one who emerges from the pages of the "Practical" papers. First
of all, he is much more plavful. We note the deliberate ambiguity of
his title. *'Learning Commiunitv." The idea of "community" is some-
thing we can learn about, but. also. iearning is something essentially
implicated with the idea of communitv:
The knowledge we learn has been garnered by a com-unitx of which we
are onrv the most recent members and is conveyed by languages of word
and gesture devised, preserved, and passed on to us bv that communit 1. 2

But inmmediatelv the apparent ambiguitv is resolved.

These two meanings of 'learning community" meet, in practice, to consti-
tute one whole. The propensities that constitute communitv are learned
oniv as we undergo with others the processes through which we learn
oither things."'

The practical and the theoretic, which are foreground in the "Practi-
cal" papers, are here background to a more inclusive view of the
world. the role of the theoretic is to objectively clarify the notion of
community" by dividing it up: but within the conspectus of the
practical. "community" must be an undivided whole.
Next, this other Schwab unexpectedly sw-itches to narrative
mode and. tells us a storv. It is that of a 10-year-old boy who runs
away from home. After a 25-mile trip on a freight train, he gets off
and sits on the porch steps of a frame hotel (we are in the Ameri-
can South) There he meets a man who, although he is careful not
to sav so, realizes the bov is a runawav. Thev go to a caf& for some
refreshment. He tells the boy about himself and then asks him some
questions about school. what he is reading, and so forth. Then,

When the food was gone. fthe mran' said. "You're not from here are you?"
"No. from Columbus.'
He said, "I onlv asked because there's a train headed south from here in
about ten minutes," A short silence. Then, Yd
ou vant to go home?"
.(. Another short silence). 'Yes,'
He pulled a dollar from his pocket and said, "For carfare, You can pay
me back some tine.' '4

And so the young Schwab returned home to Columbus, Mississippi.

having undergone a vivid practical experience of "leaming commu-
nity." Among its elements,, drawn from a longer version of the story
than 1 have quoted here. were the following: helping and being
2
'1 bid.7 p 235.
11Ibid.
' Ibid., p. 236.
34 4Rethinking Schwab.' Curriculum 7Theonzing as a Visionary Activity

helped; collaboration; relations between persons, not merely be-

tween ranks or roles; honoring of difference; nurture of seiflhood,
Schwab offers his story as "a sketch of what is involved in conmmu-
nity conceived as propensities and as the acts that issue from
propensities." 1 5 And he goes on to a detailed elaboration of this in-
troductory sketch, suggesting that community and individuality are
mutually interdependent:
Quite contrary to the popular sociology which opposes individual and so-
ciety. individuality can only arise in society, only through community. In-
dividuality is not a genetic given, growing of itself and merely awaiting dis-
covery. It must be made."6

But at this point a more recognizable Schwab takes the stage.

Just as the impulse for his "Practical" papers came from a doom-
laden scenario-"the field of curriculum is moribund"-so, it turns
out, his passionate support for the idea of community also stems
from a perception of imminent collapse: 'Community is threatened
with extinction in Amrerica,"'1 7 he says. So, what is to be done? Un-
like others who have offered similar analyses of the death of com-
munity in the face of industrialization. urbanization, or colonializa-
tion, Schwab recognizes that the clock cannot be put back: "Onlv
the very romantic believe that we can reconstitute durable, small
geographic communities on a useful scale. The city is here to stay.`"S
But if Schwab is a realist, he is not a pessimist. Human beings are
resourceful and adaptable. What matters is not that traditional forms
of community should survive or be resurrected, but that community
should be enabled to flourish as ia state or condition of persons, a
set of internalized propensities, of tendencies to feel and act in cer-
tain ways with other people."I9 And the place where such propen-
sities and tendencies can be nurtured, to the benefit of all, is the
public school.
If there is to be a revival of American community, it requires an institution
which is an American place, a place open to all and receiving all in fact,
cutting across and including the numerous economic, social, ethnic, and re-
ligious groups which constitute us. The tax-supported school is the Amer-
ican institution which comes closest to being such a place.2 0

5I1bid.. p. 237.
"6Ibid.
'lbid., p. 238.
18lbid., pp. 24(-241.
' 9lbid.. p. 241.
20
Ibid., p. 242.
William A. Reid

Once again, a Schwab unfamiltiar to readers of the "Practical"

papers is about to show himself. In those texts, apparently, we were
listening to someone who had no specific recommendations for
what should be in school programs; whose remedy for curriculum
problems was to suggest that they be put into the hands of delib-
erating groups representative of the curriculum commonplaces-
teachers, students. subject matters. the milieus, and curriculum mak-
ing-who would resolve them in the light of local circumstance:
'Thlis student, in that school, on the South Side of Columbus, with
Principal Jones during the present mayoralty of Ed Tweed and in
view of the probabilitv of his reelection."21 To put that simple inter-
pretation on Schwab's ideas would be a mistake. But it is verv easy
to see hov, in that instance, the mistake could be made. In "Learn-
ing Community-" on the other hand, there is no scope for error.
Schwa.b is totally specific in his recommnendations. The school itself
is to be reorganized:
Iwel propose . .. the restructuring of the school organization and lesson
plan so as to remove the invisible boundary which usually insulates one
classroom from another, even one table of children in a classroom from
other tables there., and to replace this isolation by a commerce, an ex-
change of favor, service, and need. Our learning comPmunity is to become
a group of interlocked learning communities, their interconnections con-
sisting of learning needs on the part of one group which are 'properties"
or 'serices` of, or from, another.22
And within the school there are suggestions for how areas of
teaching should be handled. For example:
MThe social studies generally ... could do much to exhibit both the exis-
tence and the usefulness of alternative ethics. mores, and political sys-
tems as viable solutions to varying problems of existence. or as alterna-
tive solutions with differing strengths and weaknesses .., differences could
be examined as a culture's necessarily imperfect solution to its own prob-
lems. suggesting that inevitably each culture has its own strengths and
weaknesses. 2 5

And at a finer level of detail, there are even suggestions for how
teachers should manage classrooms:

2'1 J. Schwab, 'The Practical: A Language for Curriculumn.' in Science, Cur-

riculum, and Liberal Education, ed. i. Westbury and N. L. Wilkof (Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1978). p. 289.
22
j J,. Schwah, iEducation and the State: Leaming Conimunity," in The Great
Ideas Today, ed. R. M. Hutchins and M. J. Adler (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica,
1976), p. 254.
231bid,, pp. 270-271.
36 Rethinking Scbwab. CUrniculum Theorizing as a Visionary Activity

Lesson materials are distributed as in the ordinary school, but there is some-
thing different about the distribution. It is not a duplicate sheet or duplicate
device to each child. It is a packet at each table. The children open it up
and look the contents over. 24

Altogether, we are a very long way from the apparently "hands-

off' strategy that emerges from the 'Practical" papers. The reason is
that, in his championship of 'conmmunity," Schwab supports a lorng list
of aims that includes key tenrs such as "collaboration,"* "service,"
"sympathy," "friendship," and "sensitivity to the moral force of ideas. "25
The resonance of these terms indicates a cast of mind far removed
from that espoused by proponents of curriculum making based on
objectives. The Schwab we meet here is someone with a clear moral
vision of what schooling should be about and, consequently, an
equally clear conception of the limits within which choice of cur-
riculum should be made.

RETHINKING TI-IE "PRACTICAL" PAPERS

If now we come back to the "Practical" papers with these dis-
coveries in mind, an alternative interpretation of what Schwab was
about suggests itself. Here, too, though the agenda is much less visi-
ble, we are in the presence of a visionary and morally based program
of school reform. The putting aside of "theory" does not, as Jackson
suggests, signal a retreat to a "problem-centered, as opposed to a
vision-centered conception of curriculum" that has "nothing to set it
in motion beyond the recognition of an immediate difficulty or the
expectation that such difficulties are bound to occur."2 6 On the con-
trary, the move to the "practical" enables vision to play its part, be-
cause we are no longer hobbled by the ambiguities of the theoretic.
Just as the contradictions of the ambiguous meanings of "learning
community" disappear when we move from the realm of the theo-
retic to the realm of the "practical," so, too, do other contradictions,
such as that between individual aspirations and societal constraints.
Only under conditions like these can visionary impulses be seen as
imperatives for action, and Schwab's concern is not for the articula-
tion of ideals, but for their pursuit, which can come about only
through action. We begin to see that his espousal of "the practical,"
far from being a sell-out to a pragmatic, problem-centered approach
to curriculum problems, can represent a, principled choice of a philo-
sophic conception of the relationship of theory to practice that en-
24
'bid., p. 260.
251bid., pp. 256-257.
26
p. W. jackson, ed., Handbook ofCurriculum Research (New York: Macmil-
lan, 1992), p. 31.
WNllkim .4 Reid

ables curriculum making to become the responsibility of a "moral

community." In. fact, Schwab's proposals. as expressed in "The Prac-
tical 4i,, for curriculum groups led by curriculun chairs are 'at once
the reflection of, and the means of sustaining a vision of commu-
nitv. lust as the resolution of probliems within the problematic
molde, as Schwab's Chicago colleague Richard McKeon puts it. turns
..on the processes by which men come to agree on a conclusion or
to acqluiesce in a course of action.' 29 so the education of the individ-
ual has meaning only insofar as it involves internalization, through
practical experience. of community-understood, in Schwab's wordss.
to consist of propensities toward action and feeling, and to be con-
cerned Nwith the relations of persons.-3'(

SCHWAB AkND RECONCEPU.TALISM

It seems to be no accident, then, that the consternation pro-
voked by Schwab's vigorous rejection of scientific theory as the basis
of curriculum work should have been the prelude to the reconcep-
tualist movement of the 1970s, wvhich enthusiastically promoted is-
sues of aesthetics. moralitv, and spirituality as its core., and embraced
the cause of groups whose place in the community was denied
through discrimination on the basis of class, race, or gender.31 Was
this not closely akin to the agenda that Schwab himself would have
set out, if that had been his project in his 'Practical" papers? And
should he not, then. be seen as some kind of proto-reconceptualist?
if a reconceptualist is someone w-ho has a wider conception of
curriculumrn than how to engage in the rational planning of school
programs, then Schwab certainly qualifies. But then so do many of
his predecessors-Dewey. Rousseau, Comenius, Plato. There has
never been a imne in recorded history when some thinkers were not
applying their minds to visionary om even mystical conceptions of
teaching and learning. But if a reconceptualist is someone who ad-
vocates revolution, who emphasizes personal development over the
pursuit of societal goals, or who shuns anv stance that can be seen
as in any wN-ay conservative" in favor of those vwhich, in the words of

2J. J Schw-ab. "The Practical 4. Something for (urriculunm Professors ic Do."

Cur-rnicutlurn 1nqiirg 13, 3 i 983): 239'265.
-a'NWillian, A. Reid. Curriculum. Communitv, and Liberal Education: A Re-
sponse to The Practical 4i. Cirrictlumnt Inquiry 14. 1 (1984J: 105.
2
jRichard McKeon. Philosophy and Action.' Fthics 52 (January 1952): 85
ej. Schwab, "Education and the State. Learning Comm unlty," in Tbe Gre(a
Ideas Todia, ed. R. M. Hutchins and M. J. Adller tChicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica,
19-76 ), p. 2-?6.
`N'illiam F. Pinar, WVilliamn. M. Remnolds. Patrick Siattery. and Peter M. Taub-
man. bnde?stamihn,g Currictlhi (New- York: Peter Lang. 1995).
38 38Rethinking Schuab: Curriculum Tbeorizing as a Visionary Activiti

Pinar and his collaborators, "challenge and subvert not onlv the cen-
tral themes, organizing metaphors, and discursive strategies consti-
tuting Western thought and informing the Enlightenment project, but
all that is modernism itself,"3 2 then Schwab was emphatically not a
proto-reconceptualist. His whole stance was built around the neces-
sity of working within existing cultural traditions. This is not to say
that he was not in favor of change-as we have seen, his vision of
community demands a radical rethinking of the nature of schools-
but any project of change would, in his view, have to be undertaken
in a manner that respected existing beliefs and traditions.
Here we confront another side of Schwab's character: his sense
of tradition and respect for the past, which stemmed from his intense
involvement with the classical-which is not to say well-known-
texts of Western thought. We might suspect from his appearance in
a volume of the Great Books series that he had this kind of interest,
and that association with Robert Hutchins at Chicago would reinforce
it. But the range of his reading was vast. Again, this is not something
that immediately strikes us as we read the "Practical" papers. These
are notable, indeed, for their lack of references. In the course of al-
most 100 pages of the first three "Practical" papers, as they appear in
the 1978 edited volume, there are only 20 citations of works other
than Schwab's own. One reaction to this might be to suppose that
he seldom consulted texts. A more realistic one, in my view, is that
if he had tried to cite all the texts to which he was indebted. there
would have been little room for his own writing. It would be hard
to come up with any source that he did not know about. When, in
my efforts to understand his ideas on liberal education, I proposed
parallels with an obscure book by William Whewell published in
1845,33 it turned out that he not only had an intimate knowledge of
Whewell's work, but also that of other English thinkers of the period
that I had never heard of. He was, moreover, an avid reader of fic-
tion and suggested to me that I should read George Eliot's 1872
novel Middlemarch. And here, too, I found interesting connections
with his espousal of community. As a recent commentator explains,
despite Eliot's natural impulse to reject convention,
[flamily and community remained [for Eliot] the best place for nurturing the
individual moral self. Social change must come gradually and only after a
thousand individuals had slightly widened their perceptions of how to live,
bending the shape of public life to suit its new will ... George Eliot's he-

32
Ibid., P. 450.
33William Whewell, Of a Liberal Education in General and uwith Particular
Reference to the Leading Studies of the University of Cambridge (London: Parker,
1845).
William A Reicl

roes and heroines mav struggle against their small-minded communities.

but in the course of their lives thev learn that true heroism entails giving
up the glor of conflict. Reconciliation with what previously seemed petty
is the way that leads to moral growth. Romola. fleeing from her unfaithful
husband, Tito, is tumed around in the road by Savonarola and sent back
to achieve some kind. of reconciliation . .. Dorothea's fantasies of great-
ness end up in the low-key usefiulness of becoming an MP's Wife.34

Schwab. like Eliot, was. in many wavs, a writer looking for radical
change; but also like Eliot. Schwab had a vision of the future that
was rooted in respect for what has been built up over the centuries,
rather than suspicion or even rejection of well-established traditions
of thought.

CONCLUSION
Thus it appears that Schwab played a pivotal role in the history
of the curriculum field in the 20th century-though not the one to
wnich he would have aspired. In one of his purposes he seems to
have succeeded. The message that curriculum could not be a branch
of scientific theory, concerned with providing answvers to theoretic
questions. has been taken to heart, at least by those who produce
the literature of the field-though one has to wonder to what extent
this espousal of science was, in any event, a transient phenomenon.
HIowever, the positive message that lay behind the negative one-
that curriculum should be about fostering the kind of liberal educa-
tion that creates and is created by a moral communitv-went un-
heard, and the vacuum has been filled bv theoretical positions based
on neo-.Marxism and `postmodern" individual self-fulfillment that
Schwab would certainlv not have approved of. Marxism represented,
for him, a license for the dialectically initiated to Impose their own
vision of how a society should be constituted in place of a vision
that emerges from the conjoint deliberations of all its members; and
notions of an individuality that can be thought of separately from the
nurture of a whole society with a history and traditions seemed to
him, like the enterprise of a "scientific" theory of curriculum, to be
both logically and morally mistaken.
But perhaps the reception of the first "Practical" paper in 1969
had more to do with the Zeitgeist than with the power or weakness
of Schwab's own arguments. One of the most significant features of
that paper is the implicit assumption that the curriculum field has
grown to the point that it can be construed as a set of schools rather

34Kathrvn Hughes. George Eliot The Last Victorian (London: Fourth Estate,
1998). D. '8.
40 Rethinking Schwab: Curriculum 7Theorizing as a Visionary Activity

than a collection of individuals, as it had appeared up to the 1950s.35

Schwab's principal-though nameless-antagonists in his 1969
School Review paper are those for whom curriculum work that is not
scientific (in the most limited sense of that word) is simply "horta-
tory" 3( 6-- we might label them as the "hard science" group. They have
many disciplinary backgrounds but are united by a belief that cur-
riculum propositions have to be "provable" and that progress is pos-
sible only through data-based research. 3 7 But there are also the
schools or factions that represent flights, though these, according to
circumstance, may appear, in Schwab's own words. as "fruitful" or
"irresponsible." The ones that are inevitably irresponsible, he says,
are those that pursue flight to the sidelines and those that engage
in "perseveration." The first group would be the "commentators"-
those with much to say about the game but no intention of muddy-
ing their boots on the field of play; whereas the second would be
the "neo-dominants," those "whose lives are made possible by con-
tinuing restatement of the Tyler rationale."13 8
Strangely, for one who promoted the particular over the general
or the universal, it is in his move fromn argument based on individu-
als to argument based on ill-defined schools or factions that Schwab
seems to have been most in tune with the direction that curriculum
theory was to take in the post-1970 period. Enrollment of students in
curriculum courses increased., but scope for the involvement of cur-
riculum specialists in active projects of reform diminished, as curricu-
lum becanme focused on the achievement test programs of states and
school districts rather than on the reformist movements that federal
agencies had supported in the 660s. Thus, curriculum scholars needed
to find a role in programs within colleges of education, which were
attracting growing enrollinents but were increasingly perceived as
marginal to the mission of the universities. Toward the end of the cen-
tury, factionalism was to triumph, with many groups building an iden-
tity around key texts and leaders, forming "special interest groups"
and producing their own 'in-house journals," so that today consider-
ation of the value of contributions to the curriculum field tends to
begin with the question., "Well, what school does she belong to?" A
few- of Schwvab's "neo-dominants" continue to pursue their counter-
cyclical activities, while the major focus is on "neo-Marxist," "recon-

35
lnsofar as labels were applied (e.g., "TC group"), they tended to refer to lo-
cations or projects rather than theoretical allegiance.
36i. Westburv and N. J. Wilkof, eds., Science. CGrriculumr and Liberal Educa-
tion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), p. 300.
3
7Ibid.
38
Ibid., pp. 304-305.
Wiilliam A. Reid 441

ceptualist.' and 'postmodemrn groups-most of which he would no

doubt have seen as exponents of the 'flight to the sidelines," Missing
from his principled attack on the theorists of curriculum was a sense
of the field as driven by structural and ideological imperatives-the
role of the universities, the role of the schools. the demands of the
economy, the loss of faith in political agencies-rather than by its own
internal logic. This was. perhaps, hardly surprising in someone whose
academic life was spent in the rarified atmosphere of the University
of Chicago.39
Schwab's School Review paper, we may conclude, did indeed
mark a turning point in the history of the curriculum field, if not in
the way he would have hoped. The apparently cautious. low-key
Schwab, who can be seen as immersed in the minutiae of curriculum
debates, and who looks back to the Tylerian reformers of the '30s and
'40s, is complemented bv a rather different character who is deeply
concerned with the moral implications of curriculum making and
looks forward to a time when cunriculum theorizing will be about
leaps of imagination and the pursuit of visions. But, as befits one who
was close to old-world traditions, passion is muted, and the aspiration
to keep the discourse of the field within strict philosophical parame-
ters is strong. The movement he foreshadowed turned out to be very
different. 'The new "reconceptualist" age was equally dismissive of sci-
entific paradigms but much more readv to cast off the shackles of
tradition and let: a hundred flowers bloom. Ironically, Schwab's de-
molition of the project of turning curriculum theorizing into the pro-
duction of scientific paradigms led not to a concern with reinstating
the Enlightenment project of working out the meaning of liberal
education within a "learning community." as he might have wished.
but to a prolonged and continuing fascination with the implications
of postmodern and neo-Marxist scenarios, deeply foreign to a mind
steeped in the classical and medieval traditions of Western thought.

WILLIAM A. REID is Visiting Professor of Curriculum and Instruction. College

of Education. The Universiry of Texas a! Austin. Austin, TX 78712. His permanent
address is Senklev Cottage. St. Chloe Green, Amberleyv Stroud. Glos. GL5 SAP. LK;
phone: 01453-873380: e-mail: 10f616.2421 @compuserVe.com.

39See William A. Reid, "The Voice of 'The Practical': Schwab as Correspon-

dent." Jlournlalo'urnculum Studies (july-August 1999): 38539'
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

TITLE: Rethinking Schwab: curriculum theorizing as a visionary

activity
SOURCE: Journal of Curriculum and Supervision 17 no1 Fall 2001
WN: 0128802453003

The magazine publisher is the copyright holder of this article and it

is reproduced with permission. Further reproduction of this article in
violation of the copyright is prohibited.

Copyright 1982-2001 The H.W. Wilson Company. All rights reserved.