The worldliness of a cosmopolitan education : passionate lives in public service / William F. Pinar.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Pinar, William F.

Series:

Studies in curriculum theory

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Critical pedagogy.

Education--Curricula--Social aspects.

Education.

Cosmopolitanism.

Addams, Jane, 1860-1935.

Addams, Jane.

Bragg, Laura M. (Laura Mary), 1881-1978.

Bragg, Laura M.

Pasolini, Pier Paolo, 1922-1975.

Pasolini, Pier Paolo.

Education--Curricula.

Physical Description:

xiv, 221 pages ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

New York : Routledge, 2009.

Summary:

Pinar positions himself against three pressing problems of the profession:

the crime of collectivism that identity politics commits,

the devaluation of academic knowledge by the programmatic preoccupations of teacher education, and

the effacement of educational experience by standardized testing.

A cosmopolitan curriculum, Pinar argues, juxtaposes the abstract and the concrete, the collective and the individual, history and biography, politics and art, public service and private passion. Such a curriculum provides passages between the subjective and the social and, in so doing, engenders that worldliness a cosmopolitan education invites.

Such worldliness is vividly discernible in the lives of three heroic individuals: Jane Addams (1860-1935), Laura Bragg (1881-1978), and Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975). What these disparate individuals demonstrate, Pinar argues, is the centrality of subjectivity in the cultivation of cosmopolitanism. Subjectivity takes form in the world, and the world is itself reconstructed by subjectivity's engagement with it.

The key curricular question - what knowledge is of most worth? - is posed by individuals existing at specific historical moments, in particular places, confronted by, infused with, reality that is itself ever shifting, in part as a consequence of one's engagement with it. Reality requires subjectivity: it is subjectivity that enables reality to speak.

In this intriguing, thought-provoking, nuanced volume, Pinar makes a crucial contribution to curriculum studies, providing answers to key curricular questions concerning the inextricably interwoven relations among intellectual rigor, scholarly erudition, and intense but variegated engagement with the world.

Contents:

"The problem of my life and flesh"

On the agony and ecstasy of the particular

Only the sign is for sale

A declaration of independence

Jane Addams: a "person of marked individuality"

Religion, love, and democracy in Laura Bragg's boxes

Pier Paolo Pasolini: a most "excellent pedagogist".

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780415995504

0415995507

9780415995511

0415995515

9780203878699

0203878698

OCLC:

263977980