Curriculum Circus: Juggling Curriculum, Science, and The Arts

Education should open the door to better lives and better jobs. The fact is that it does not. In part, there are many causes including rigidity, political interference, and the separation between disciplines that we teach without context and without dialogue with our students. Specifically, I think that we should use education as a way to help students make better choices and have a better life. One way we can do it is by reconciling science with the other disciplines. And that is what is at the heart of curriculum studies. There is a pervasive belief that the Western ideology of knowledge is neutral, and therefore must be good for all peoples in all cases. As a result education here in the West has not changed to address the needs of citizens in the 21st century. We have become a global community, and outsourcing our ideas has met with disastrous consequences. I believe that we have a societal obligation to help our fellow citizens navigate within an increasingly complex world. Curriculum Circus uses the many metaphors of the circus to defend a polymerization of arts and science, a return to their common history. I start with the reconceptualization of William Pinar arguing for a “marriage of two cultures: the scientific and the artistic and humanistic” (W. F. Pinar, 1975/ 2000, p. xv). I then addres