Macdonald, James

James Macdonald (19251983) was one of the most important U.S. curriculum theorists of the 20th century. He taught initially at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and subsequently at the University of North CarolinaGreensboro, until his death. Macdonald never published a book, but his work can be found in disparate places, including numerous monographs, booklets, and out-of-the-way journals (such as the Journal of Vocational Education). After his death, Macdonald's son Bradley J. Macdonald published Theory as a Prayerful Act: The Collected Essays of James B. Macdonald, a gathering of some of Macdonald's most seminal works. His work may also be found in William Pinar's Curriculum Theorizing: The Reconceptualists and Contemporary Curriculum Discourses.

Most notable among the many features of Macdonald's work was his willingness to bring in wide-ranging resources having nothing to do with education to develop our ability to see in new and fruitful ways. Illustrative of such breadth was Macdonald's use of the work of the preeminent 20th-century philosopher, inheritor, and extender of the critical theory tradition, Jürgen Habermas; the educational thinking of the eminent mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead; the anthropological insights of Edward T. Hall; and the psychological theorizing of David Bakan. Although we now take for granted bringing in new [Page 551]sources to enrich our thinking, it was Macdonald (along with, notably, Dwayne Huebner and Ted Aoki) who introduced this way of working to curriculum studies.

As wide-ranging as Macdonald's sources were, the focus of his work was always consistent in exploring the blockages to and the hope for liberation as the goal of education. He was concerned with the project of finding oneself as a human being and working out the destiny of being human. The Bradley Macdonald collection illustrates that in Macdonald's early essays Macdonald was concerned with what it meant to be a human being and how school life might contribute to, unintentionally interfere with or actively inhibit, the development of the person. As his thinking developed, he became increasingly concerned with the individual and with her or his mediation of experience. He brought in Habermas to explore blockages to communication and to understanding the processes of curriculum deliberation and design through an examination of various value bases for education practice, a Freirian perspective to further critique curriculum development processes, focused on both what worldviews are being promoted and who is involved in the decision making, and he brought in Whitehead to offer an alternative to instrumental thinking through Whitehead's stage-developmental notion, moving from a romantic naïveté in relation to knowledge, a focus on the technical aspects of knowing, eventuating, hopefully, in a new synthesis Whitehead termed generalization, all as models for thinking about [Page 552]curriculum. As his thinking developed, he moved further and further away from alignment with any one school of thought. Exemplary of this move is arguably his most important essay, “The Transcendental Developmental Ideology of Curriculum Development.” In this essay, Macdonald leaves behind the technical-rational (Ralph Tyler) and the political radical (critical theory and critical pedagogy), proposing a new way of thinking about human development focused upon play, spirituality, and cybernetics, leading toward a transcending of ordinary human experience into new realms of human possibilities. In an essay published posthumously (cowritten with David Purpel), Macdonald and Purpel continue a critique of curriculum thinking, again rejecting the schools of thought of both Tyler and his many followers with technological solutions to schooling, and the critical left with a focus, according to MacDonald and Purpel, on questionable political and cultural ends. Their problem with the Tyler school is not with the method itself, but rather that it is used for the wrong ends. In this essay, they focus on establishing platforms, attending to the signs of transcendent reality (such as play, awe, and humor), being aware of evil, making the human aspiration for affirmation and hope central to curriculum thinking, and having liberation as the goal of education.

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