The (In)Efficient Curriculum: An Overview of How Canadian Education Has Historically Failed to Welcome Black Refugee Students
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25071/1916-4467.40447Keywords:
anti-Black racism, Black refugee students, colonization, curriculum studies, philosophy of educationAbstract
For at least a century, educators have sought to define what education should look like, its purposes, content and approach, and how it could be delivered in the most efficient way. However, when looking at some of the most pre-eminent approaches in the history of curriculum studies, it is possible to observe how each of those “efficient” methods have not been able to welcome the uniqueness of Black refugee students. Despite claims of “diversity celebration”, when educators do not challenge and resist White structures and assumptions, even the most “efficient” curriculum falls short of being responsive to the Other, serving, rather, as another disguise to racism, which has long structured Canadian education. I argue that rather than an efficient ready-made set of rules, education must be conceptualized as an act of unconditional openness to the unknown Other, however uncomfortable and “inefficient” that may sound.
References
Addams, J. (2017). The public school and the immigrant child. In D. J. Flinders & S. J. Thornton (Eds.), The curriculum studies reader (5th ed., pp. 55-57). Routledge. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315125541-7
Apple, M. (1978). On analyzing hegemony. Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 1(1), 10-27.
Apple, M. (2006). Educating the “right” way: Markets, standards, God, and inequality. Routledge.
Apple, M. (2014). Official knowledge: Democratic education in a conservative age. Routledge.
Apple, M., & King, N. (1977). What do schools teach? Curriculum Inquiry, 6(4), 341-358. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/03626784.1977.11075550
Banks, J. (1993). Multicultural education: Historical development, dimensions, and practice. Review of Research in Education, 19(1), 3-49. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3102/0091732X019001003
Bobbitt, F. (2017). Scientific method in curriculum-making. In D. J. Flinders & S. J. Thornton (Eds.), The curriculum studies reader (5th ed., pp. 11-18). Routledge.
Britzman, D. (1998). Lost subjects, contested objects: Toward a psychoanalytic inquiry of learning. State University of New York Press.
Canadian Council for Refugees. (2010). Refugees and immigrants: A glossary. https://ccrweb.ca/en/glossary#:~:text=Refugee%20%E2%80%93%20a%20person%20who%20is,and%20is%20widely%20accepted%20internationally
Crenshaw, K. (1989). Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A Black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum, (1), 139-167.
Delgado, R., & Stefancic, J. (2017). Critical race theory: An introduction (3rd ed.). New York University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1ggjjn3
Derrida, J. (2000a). Of hospitality. Stanford University Press.
Derrida, J. (2000b). HOSTIPITALITY. Angelaki: Journal of Theoretical Humanities, 5(3), 3-18. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09697250020034706
Derrida, J. (2007). A certain impossible possibility of saying the event. Critical Inquiry, 33(2), 441-461. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/511506
Dewey, J. (1902). The child and the curriculum. University of Chicago Press.
Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and education. Free Press.
Dewey, J. (1964). John Dewey on education: Selected writings. University of Chicago Press.
Dewey, J. (2011). Democracy and education. Simon & Brown.
DiAngelo, R. (2018). White fragility: Why it's so hard for white people to talk about racism. Beacon Press.
Donald, D. (2012). Forts, colonial frontier logics, and Aboriginal-Canadian relations: Imagining decolonizing educational philosophies in Canadian contexts. In A. Abdi (Ed.), Decolonizing philosophies of education (pp. 91-111). Sense. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6091-687-8_7
Eisner, E. (2017). Educational objectives—Help or hindrance? In D. J. Flinders & S. J. Thornton (Eds.), The curriculum studies reader (5th ed., pp. 129-135). Routledge.
Fagan, M. (2013). Ethics and politics after poststructuralism: Levinas, Derrida and Nancy. Edinburgh University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9780748685134.001.0001
Fallace, T., & Fantozzi, V. (2017). Was there really a social efficiency doctrine? The uses and abuses of an idea in educational history. In D. J. Flinders & S. J. Thornton (Eds.), The curriculum studies reader (5th ed., pp. 83-97). Routledge.
Flinders, D. J., & Thornton, S. J. (2017). Looking back: A prologue to curriculum studies. In D. J. Flinders & S. J. Thornton (Eds.), The curriculum studies reader (5th ed., pp. 1-9). Routledge.
Flinders, D. J., & Thornton, S. J. (Eds.). (2017). The curriculum studies reader (5th ed.). Routledge.
Freire, P. (2017). The adulty literacy process as cultural action for freedom. In D. J. Flinders & S. J. Thornton (Eds.), The curriculum studies reader (5th ed., pp. 177-192). Routledge.
Freire, P. (2018). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Bloomsbury Academic. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429269400-8
Freud, S. (2012). A general introduction to psychoanalysis. Wordsworth.
Freud, S. (2018). The ego and the id. Dover. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429481550-11
Gorski, P. (2019). Avoiding racial equity detours. Educational Leadership, 76(6), 56-61.
Grumet, M. (1989). Generations: Reconceptualist curriculum theory and teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 40(1), 13-17. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/002248718904000104
Heron, B. (2007). Desire for development: Whiteness, gender, and the helping imperative. Wilfrid Laurier University Press.
hooks, B. (2015). Black looks: Race and representation. Routledge. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315743226
James, C. (2009) Re/representation of race and racism in the multicultural discourse of Canada. In A. Abdi & L. Shultz (Eds.), Educating for human rights and global citizenship (pp. 97-112). State University of New York Press.
Kliebard, H. (1968). The curriculum field in retrospect. In P. Witt (Ed.), Technology and the curriculum (pp. 69-84). Teachers College Press.
Kumashiro, K. (2000). Toward a theory of anti-oppressive education. Review of Educational Research, 70(1), 25-53. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543070001025
Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). Toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy. American Educational Research Journal, 32(3), 465-491. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3102/00028312032003465
Ladson-Billings, G. (1998). Just what is critical race theory and what's it doing in a nice field like education? International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 11(1), 7-24. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/095183998236863
Ladson-Billings, G. (1999). Preparing teachers for diverse student populations: A critical race theory perspective. Review of Research in Education, 24, 211-247. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/1167271
Lemisko, L., & Clausen, K. (2006). Connections, contrarieties, and convolutions: Curriculum and pedagogic reform in Alberta and Ontario, 1930-1955. Canadian Journal of Education, 29(4), 1097-1126. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/20054212
Leonardo, Z. (2009). Race, whiteness, and education. Routledge. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203880371
Levinas, E. (1972). Humanisme de l’autre homme [Humanism of the other]. Le Livre de Poche.
Levinas, E. (1982). Éthique et infini [Ethics and infinity]. Le Livre de Poche.
Maynard, R. (2017). Policing Black lives: State violence in Canada from slavery to the present. Fernwood.
Mbembe, A. (2017). Critique of black reason. Duke University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv125jgv8
Noddings, N. (1984). Caring: A feminine approach to ethics and moral education. University of California Press.
Ogbu, J. (1982). Cultural discontinuities and schooling. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 13(4), 290-307. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/aeq.1982.13.4.05x1505w
Pinar, W. (2017). The reconceptualization of curriculum studies. In D. J. Flinders & S. J. Thornton (Eds.), The curriculum studies reader (5th ed., pp. 167-175). Routledge.
Popham, W. J. (2017). Objectives. In D. J. Flinders & S. J. Thornton (Eds.), The curriculum studies reader (5th ed., pp. 115-128). Routledge. (Original work published in 1972)
Rousseau, J. J. (1979). Emile, or, on education. Basic Books.
Ruitenberg, C. (2011). Hospitality and subjectification: On seeing children and youth as respondents. Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures, 3(2), 133-140. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/jeu.2011.0012
Ruitenberg, C. (2016). Unlocking the world: Education in an ethic of hospitality. Routledge. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315631349
Smith, D. (2003). Curriculum and teaching face globalization. In W. Pinar (Ed.), International handbook of curriculum research (pp. 35-51). Lawrence Erlbaum.
Statistics Canada. (2017). Immigration and ethnocultural diversity: Key results from the 2016 Census. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/171025/dq171025b-eng.htm
Stewart, J. (2011). Supporting refugee children: Strategies for educators. University of Toronto Press.
Tecle, S., & James, C. (2014). Refugee students in Canadian schools: Educational issues and challenges. In C. Brewer & M. McCabe (Eds.), Immigrant and refugee students in Canada (pp. 147-160). Brush Education.
Todd, S. (2003). Learning from the Other: Levinas, psychoanalysis, and ethical possibilities in education. State University of New York Press.
Tuck, E., & Gaztambide-Fernández, R. A. (2013). Curriculum, replacement, and settler futurity. Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 29(1), 72-89.
Tyler, R. (2017). Basic principles of curriculum and instruction. In D. J. Flinders & S. J. Thornton (Eds.), The curriculum studies reader (5th ed., pp. 73-82). Routledge.
Walcott, R., & Abdillahi, I. (2019). BlackLife: Post-BLM and the struggle for freedom. ARP Books.
Watkins, W. (2017). Black curriculum orientations: A preliminary inquiry. In D. J. Flinders & S. J. Thornton (Eds.), The curriculum studies reader (5th ed., pp. 219-234). Routledge.
Wilson, A. (2016, December 6). Coming in to Indigenous sovereignty: Relationality and resurgence [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/XkQo_yr4A_w
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2021 Rebeca Heringer 
Copyright for work published in JCACS belongs to the authors. All work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.
