Curriculum & Privilege /Inequality

1. Curriculum & Privilege /Inequality • Curriculum Reminder • Curriculum & privilege/inequality • Identities – review of ‘who we are’ • Foregrounding Schools • Site: Formal Curriculum • Group Work • Site: Lived Curriculum • Storytelling • Site: Curriculum as Narrative

2. ECS 210 – initial definition of curriculum The objectives and goals that teachers strive to teach their students. These objectives and goals largely come from government (standardized tests, written curriculum documents) and change over time. Underlying these goals is a general expectation of growth‑ emotional, intellectual – that encompasses a student’s whole being. There is also an informal curriculum that is based on the lived experiences of students. Turn to a partner and have a brief conversation about how you would change this definition given all the things that we have talked about.

3. Curriculum & Inequality/Privilege • Structural Inequality/Privilege • School Infrastructure • Funding • Hunger • Formal Curriculum/Hidden Curriculum • Myths, Stereotypes, Silences • Participating in the commonsense • The Production of Identities

4. Privilege & Inequality:Who are we? Racialization • Whiteness • Privilege • Masculinity • Heteronormativity ------------------ • Race • Social Class • Gender • Sexual Orientation ---------------

5. Privilege & Inequality:Who are we? • Each of these identities is socially constructed • Dominant Self depends on an ‘other’ • Dominant term is ‘unmarked’ • In each case – dominance is partly dependent upon this hiddenness • Dominant term does not need to understand • No real choice • Science/dominant knowledge has shaped our understanding of these identities • Identities are multiple and work together / against each other in complex ways • Identities • Race • Class • Gender • Sexuality • Abilities

6. Foregrounding Schools Schools are identity forming institutions. Inequalities (and privileges) are attached to particular social identities. Schools become necessary sites to struggle against these inequalities. This struggle is part of the history of schooling…

7. Site: Formal Curriculum • Official Documents: • The Renewed Social Studies Curriculum • Depth versus Breadth • Outcomes & Indicators Grade 8 Social Studies • Gather in Groups of 3-4 • Elect one leader to come and get your work folder.

8. As a group • Read through the outcomes and indicators for your grade level – get a general sense of the themes for that grade level. Choose 1 -2 Outcomes and Indicators and consider the following: • How might this curriculum document support teaching in ways that are anti-oppressive? How might it support teaching in ways that are oppressive? Make sure that you think about some of the commonsense ways that your students might take up the outcome/indicators. What might not be taken up – in the document, in the classroom, in the community? Where is whiteness, middle-classness, masculinity or heteronormativity assumed? • On the Index Card – Record one example of how your outcome/indicator might be taught in an anti-oppressive way. Record one example of how your outcome/indicator might be taught in an oppressive way.

9. Site: Lived Curriculum EFDN Story What might it mean if the production of privilege and inequality was connected to who we are as teachers? What identities will our teaching promote? What identities will our teaching foreclose? What might it mean that even our best practices are also potentially oppressive?

10. Site: Curriculum as Narrative • Kumashiro: • ‘letting go of knowledge’ ; • the troubling of knowledge by recognizing the production of the ‘queer’. • For Wednesday: Come to class with the following writing: • 1. Rewrite our class definition of curriculum so that it better reflects your emerging sense of the idea. • 2. Where is the place for ‘crisis’ and especially ‘learning through crisis’ and troubling knowledge in your definition of curriculum?