Radical Caucus of Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development

The Radical Caucus of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) constituted an informal network of members who met periodically between 1970 and 1976. The intent of the group, numbering more than 100 ASCD members, was to radicalize the organization and its membership through staged “counter convention” events at the national ASCD conferences. Radical Caucus coordinators included Steven Mann, William Pildar, and Richard Kunkel, who organized planning meetings and prepared periodic newsletters and mailings. Topics of importance to the membership included the issue of student rights (and whether constitutional rights could be extended to students without drastic changes in the educational structure and school curriculum) and class analysis in relation to educational reform. The issue of student rights was seen as a way to ascertain ASCD leadership and whether the organization would be willing to publicly censure any school system that did not tolerate students' freedom of speech and right to assemble. The Radical Caucus also attended to women's, racial, and men's issues as well as to matters of “internal consciousness-raising” (defined as exploring one's relationship to ethnic minorities, examining the extent to which individuals are political educators, and questioning why individuals associate with the Radical Caucus). A 4-day forum, sponsored by the Caucus, on class analysis and education was staged at the 1975 ASCD Conference.

Through informal discussion and newsletter correspondence, the Radical Caucus viewed itself in opposition to ASCD and specifically objected to the then-popular “humanizing education” movement, which was viewed as obscuring the administrative structures and bureaucratic commitments on which objectionable current practices were based. The group considered how it would interact with ASCD leadership and decided to define itself as a pressure group and to generate resolutions and requests to ASCD central administration, participate actively in organizational committees, and maintain a visible presence at the annual conventions, consisting of setting up information booths and selecting specific sessions as “potential worthwhile targets” to attack as a way of raising levels of consciousness.

In relation to the ASCD practice of maintaining a broad constituency of professional educators, the Radical Caucus concluded that its efforts should be oriented toward (a) building a limited yet politically active constituency of professional and non-professional educators, (b) developing public policy positions that serve to identify educators who accept traditional educational practices, and (c) enacting political strategies to challenge the power and jurisdiction of ASCD and established school systems. The Albuquerque Connection newsletter reported that the group agreed to work closer with the Women's Caucus and the Black Caucus of ASCD. The activities of all three caucuses have not been examined and call for further study by today's curriculum historians.