Moribund Curriculum Field, The

Declared first by Joseph Schwab in 1969 and reiterated by Dwayne Huebner in 1975, this assessment of the state of the field points up the intensity of the crisis it underwent following the 1957 launching of the first man-made satellite, Sputnik, by the USSR. General agreement exists that Schwab's 1969 pronouncement coincided with the emergence of a paradigm shift in curriculum studies, usually referred to as a reconceptualization or renaissance of the field. The effect was to change the field's focus from curriculum development to a scholarly effort to understand curriculum from a wide variety of perspectives. The degree of influence Schwab exerted on that shift, however, has been disputed.

Following Sputnik, amidst grand rhetoric of concern for education's role in the national security, the federal government allocated massive amounts of federal funds for curriculum reform through such legislation as the 1958 National Defense Education Act and the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act. A fundamental reorientation of curriculum research occurred as the monies went mainly to discipline-based scholars, especially those in math, sciences, and foreign languages. The focus of improvement shifted to individual school subjects rather than to various theories of curricular program design. In addition, philanthropic organizations such as the Ford Foundation awarded grants for educational research to social scientists outside schools of education, thrusting the work of curriculum professors further to the margins. All of this came on the heels of a series of critiques of public schools and education professors by arts and sciences scholars during the 1950s. In addition to these external pressures, discontent had already been building within the field in regard to the venerated Tyler Rationale as an adequate basis for thinking about curriculum work. All of these circumstances helped drive the field into the state that Schwab referred to as moribund.

Although Schwab believed the condition to be one that occurs within all fields periodically, he diagnosed the problem in this case as an unhealthy reliance upon the theoretic, in an Aristotelian sense, evidenced in part by the post-Sputnik emphasis upon the technical, behavioristic research paradigm. As additional symptoms he also noted several types of flight, including a flight to experts in other fields for solutions to problems, very likely a reference to the post-Sputnik transfer of curriculum responsibilities to subject matter specialists and educational psychologists.

To restore vitality to the field, he prescribed a new approach, focused on the practical, but not averse to theory. To the contrary, he believed a strong theoretical background was necessary to select and craft various theoretical perspectives to unique problem situations. He envisioned school-based teams engaged in deliberation, identifying and exploring solutions to curricular dilemmas. The emphasis would be on gradual curriculum improvement, as opposed to the broad-based school or social change that had been sought by many progressives. Teams would be composed of school faculty, subject matter specialists, and social scientists and would be chaired by a curriculum specialist. The role of curriculum professors would be to prepare the curriculum specialist in the practical skills of persuasion and deliberation and the scholarly skills of accessing and utilizing the latest research on curricular practices, the behavioral sciences, and academic subjects in the school curricular program. For their role, Schwab advised curriculum professors to become more intellectual; to read broadly on U.S. government, life, and society; and to take up the mantle of the critical essayist, commenting on current issues as they related to education.

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