A Balanced Personal, Hermeneutic, and Holistic Curriculum Response:

A Transactional Knowing Informed by a Subjective/Universal Ethic

James G. Henderson

Introduction

In light of the venerable Talmudic/Rabbinic heritage and with respect for Donald’s more

informal and personal way of writing, I’m using his stylistic approach to respond to this special

section’s organizing question: Is curriculum studies a Protestant project? I’m writing for an

academic journal in the way I talk and teach. I don’t often write this way, but I find it liberating.

That’s a point supporting Donald’s critique of abstraction, which I will be further addressing

later in this essay. I also want to acknowledge how much I enjoy grappling with provocative,

complex questions. I like the Socratic, hermeneutic challenges embedded in disciplined inquiry.

With reference to philosophy as a way of being, I embrace opportunities for open-minded

questioning, open-hearted conversation, and honest soul-searching. I resonate with Socrates’

humble, public confession that though he could never be a wise person, he could be a lover of

wisdom through the practice of inquiry, dialogue, and self-examination. I interpret hermeneutics

as practicing the arts of interpretation through a dialogical playfulness that has no precise

methodological foundation; and as I proceed, I’ll be continuously referring to my Socratic,

hermeneutic orientation.

Macdonald (1995) argues that “curriculum theory…is a form of hermeneutic theory.

Thus curriculum theory is an ever renewing attempt to interpret curricular reality and to develop

greater understanding” (p. 181). To make his point, Macdonald draws on van Manen (1980),

who writes, “Theorizing contributes to one’s resourcefulness by directing the orienting questions

toward the source itself; the source which gives life or spirit to (inspire) our pedagogic life” (p.

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183). A key purpose of this essay is to explore this inspirational source. I quote Macdonald and

van Manen because I respect them, not because I’m suffering from “citation fixation.” I’m using

the generic term ‘work’ to refer to a broad range of curriculum projects with differing degrees of

theoretical emphasis. The theory/practice distinction in curriculum is too simplistic; after all,

isn’t all theorizing a form of practice?

I stand by what I told Donald at the time he shared his story about the bureaucratic

constraints on his curriculum judgments at Arizona State University (ASU). I quickly responded

that I felt that the ASU administrator didn’t seem able to distinguish between the ‘letter’ and the

‘spirit’ of her educational support work. I’ve now had the opportunity to think much more

deeply about this letter/spirit distinction, particularly with reference to what I generally consider

to be good curriculum work in societies with democratic values and social contracts. I’m not

familiar with ASU’s educational mission statement; and for purposes of writing this essay, it

isn’t necessary for me to research this matter. However, since I’m a member of Kent State

University’s faculty, I do know the KSU mission statement, which explicitly refers to educating

students to “think critically” for purposes of “responsible citizenship…in the service of Ohio and

the global community.” Such an aim refers directly to respecting Ohio’s democratic constitution

and indirectly to practicing a world-wide democratic ethic. Since KSU and ASU are both public

educational institutions in the USA, I imagine that their mission statements are similar.

I also don’t know the ASU administrator’s literal responsibilities; however, that’s also

not necessary. My response to Donald can be simply explained. In my view, this individual and

her relevant administrative colleagues have important responsibilities tied to their institution’s

mission statement; and it seems to me that their deliberations, which culminated in a scheduling

decision, weren’t informed by such deep-seated educational values as advancing critical thinking

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and democratic citizenship. This, of course, is not surprising since as Ryan (2011) points out, a

key characteristic of our current “crisis of modernity” is the decoupling of fact and value. In our

current historical era, how many educators seriously consider the ethical implications of their

institution’s mission statement? How many educators think about the principles underlying their

daily practices?

I view Donald’s story as a useful springboard for exploring four fundamental principles

of curriculum in light of democratic interpretations of Socratic erōs and Pauline agapē. With a

caveat that I’ll shortly address, I’m comfortable with the notion of spirit. For me, it denotes

deeply inspired and informed actions embodied in passionate vocational callings and connotes

the infinite, mysterious reach and realm of an inclusive, all-embracing love. With reference to

Ricoeur’s (1978) argument for a hermeneutics that balances the critique of illusion with the

poetics of renewal, I appreciate Donald’s critical insights; however, I want to balance his critique

with an affirmation and celebration of what Ricoeur calls the “poetic power” of Jesus’ Parables:

“If we look at the Parables as…addressed first to our imagination rather than to our will, we shall

not be tempted to reduce them to…moralizing allegories. We will let their poetic power display

itself within us” (p. 245).

Donald draws on Freud, Marx, and Lévi-Strauss to critique the hegemony of

Protestantism and “an Hellenically influenced Christianity” in the brief introductory essay he

wrote for this special section, and Ricoeur corroborates Donald’s succinct points. Ricoeur’s

(1978) critical focus is on what he calls the problem of “false-consciousness,” which he

examines through the works of Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud. For Ricoeur, this falseness is due to

epistemological and ethical errors caused by “illusion…as a cultural structure, a dimension of

our social discourse.” In effect, Ricoeur’s critique is parallel to Cuddihy’s critique as outlined by

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Donald. However, by drawing on Nietzsche, Ricoeur adds an important critical insight. The

problems of illusion embedded in Protestantism and Hellenic Rationalism are, in part, due to a

“weak will.” Ricoeur (1978) explains: “The Nietzschean genealogy of morals must, I believe, be

understood as a certain hermeneutics of our will—the willing will that Nietzsche tried to look for

behind the ‘willed’ will in its limited objectives” (p. 216). As a curriculum studies scholar, it’s

this Nietzschean “willing will”—enacted through a democratic erōs and agapē—that interests

me.

Four Fundamental Principles of Curriculum

I regularly teach a graduate course that introduces educators to the underlying principles

of good curriculum work in societies with democratic aspirations. The course, which is entitled

Fundamentals of Curriculum, is guided by the concept of teaching for a holistic understanding

that links subject, self and social learning. There’s a strong emphasis on critically thinking about

the integral, vital relationship between educational courses of action and democratic ways of

being. On the eve of World War II—in the context of America’s upcoming fight with German

Fascism, Japanese Imperialism, and Soviet Communism—Dewey writes, “We [Americans] have

advanced far enough to say that democracy is a way of life. We have yet to realize that it is a

way of personal life and one which provides a moral standard for personal conduct” (Dewey,

1939/1989, p. 101). This Deweyan interpretation of morality is a key normative referent in the

course.

Charles de Montesquieu (1689-1755) was a leading Enlightenment philosopher in

France, and the authors of the United States’ constitution carefully studied his published works.

This is globally relevant since the USA’s constitution has inspired and informed democratic

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constitutions around the world. In his examination of the ‘spirit’ underlying the ‘letter’ of the

law in democratic republics, Montesquieu (1748/1952) writes,

If the people in general have a principle, their constituent parts [such as

education]…will have one also. The [principle]…of education will therefore be

different in each species of government: in monarchies, they will have honor for

their object; in [democratic] republics, virtue; in despotic governments, fear. …A

love of the republic in a democracy is a love of the democracy; as the latter is that

of equality. (pp. 13, 19)

Though Montesquieu recognized the vital importance of education in advancing the spirit

of democratic laws, the details of virtuous, equitable education were left implicit, unexplained

and, therefore, underplayed in public educational policy and leadership. This limitation creates

profound hidden and null curriculum problems for societies with democratic aspirations. In

short, there’s a pervasive, hegemonic avoidance and ignorance on how to educate for

responsible, democratic living.

The Fundamentals of Curriculum course addresses these hidden and null curriculum

problems by focusing on building capacities to enact and embody virtuous, equitable education

through disciplined study and practice. This capacity-building approach is informed by

Garrison’s (1997) explication of Dewey’s democratic reconstruction of Socratic erōs. Garrison

(1997) writes that he wants, “to efface the remote, abstract, and elitist sense given to philosophy

by Plato when he spoke of ‘philosopher kings.’ With Dewey, I insist that there is no theory-

versus-practice dualism, all reasoning is practical reasoning, and everyone should be a lover of

wisdom” (p. 2). My pedagogical work with my graduate students in Fundamentals focuses on

this Deweyan love of practical wisdom. In effect, I’m treating the experienced teachers in this

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course as lead professionals for democratic education. With a nod to Nietzsche, I tell them that

I’m not interested in compliant, unthinking semi-professionals.

The course begins with class discussions and inquiry learning activities on the interplay

of the three fundamental principles of liberal study, equity critique, and currere agency as guided

by a fourth fundamental principle of democratic practical wisdom. My pedagogical referent for

liberal study is a synthesis of the Western heritage of liberal studies, the European heritage of

Hegelian Bildung/Didaktik, and the North American heritage of general education. My

pedagogical referent for currere agency is Pinar’s method of currere as informed by Maxine

Greene’s insights into the existential subtexts of teaching-learning relationships, Janet Miller’s

work on teacher voice, and my own work on teachers’ holistic journeys of understanding.

There’s a critical question I like to ask: how can teachers foster 3S understanding— referring to

teaching for academic and/or technical Subject understandings that are embedded in democratic

Self and Social understandings—if they are not personally cultivating such holistic

understanding?

I tell the graduate students that they have the freedom to tell their personal meaning-

making stories. In fact, I let them know that I view their narratives as the most important

assignment in the course and one that cannot be graded. In Greene’s existential terms, how

could I possibly evaluate the life journey of another human? I didn’t talk to ‘God’ last night. I

tell students that I don’t live in that dogmatic cosmos, so I don’t pretend to have an overview on

what constitutes quality journeys of understanding. I tell them that grades fall on the literal side

of curriculum work, while their personal essays address the underlying, willful spirit of

interpreting the Latin noun, curriculum, as the Latin gerund, currere. And the currere that

interests me are passionate, existential, democratic, and holistic ventures!

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 My pedagogical referent for democratic practical wisdom is Dewey and Bentley’s (1949)

transactional epistemology. I want students to acquire a beginning understanding of why Dewey

felt, in the twilight of his academic career and life, that transactional knowing was a more precise

referent for what he meant by educative experience. Ryan (2011) notes that, after much

deliberative conversation, “Dewey and Bentley opt to replace ‘experience’ with the bold word…

‘cosmos of fact’…[referring to] a transactional interpretation of fact—that what is known as fact

is inseparable from how we determine it to be so” (pp. 50-51).

In an earlier publication, Dewey (1910/1933) argues that we humans can be liberated

from the limitations of habit and custom through the practice of reflective inquiry: “Genuine

freedom, in short, is intellectual…. To cultivate unhindered, unreflective external activity is to

foster enslavement, for it leaves the person at the mercy of appetite, sense, and circumstance” (p.

90). I want students to understand that liberating reflective inquiry is grounded in a transactional

“circuit of valuation,” as explained by Ryan (2011): “I must ask myself whether what I like,

desire, or value really is likeable, desirable, or valuable. To determine this requires a test

reflecting not just my present likes and dislikes, but the long-term interests of everyone affected

by such action, including myself” (p. 66). Due to its focus on enduring values for all, I tell

students that the practice of this circuit of valuation is a powerful way to enact a love of

democratic practical wisdom—a Deweyan erōs.

As part of this class discussion, I want students to comprehend Aristotle’s argument in

Nicomachean Ethics that practical wisdom is pivotal for staying centered on the “golden mean”

of a virtuous life and for the happiness and flourishing that results from this balanced way of

being. Aristotle (2011) writes: “He who is a good deliberator simply is skilled in aiming, in

accord with calculation, at what is best for a human being in things attainable through action” (p.

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124). Aristotle’s insight is reinforced by Socrates’ understanding of philosophy as the practice

of a love of wisdom. Kekes (1995) explains that Socrates “held that [the]…virtues are related to

each other more intimately than parts are related to a whole…, although ‘wisdom is the greatest

of the parts’…because no action can be virtuous unless it is based on the knowledge moral

wisdom gives” (pp. 32, 37). With reference to this love-of-wisdom insight, I ask students to

envision the four fundamental principles of good curriculum work as a balancing of liberal study,

equity critique, and currere agency through practical wisdom.

After studying these four fundamental curriculum principles, students are asked to think

of themselves as lead learners for a critically-informed, study-based curriculum development that

is prompted by three embedded reflective inquiries informed by four deliberative conversations

(Henderson et al., 2015). The three reflective inquiries address contextually-based problems of

teaching, embodying, and collegially studying 3S understanding. The four deliberative

conversations address relevant issues of management-to-wisdom critique and negotiation,

educational equity, democratic interdependence, and mythopoetic inspiration.

Working as a Public Intellectual

Before addressing Donald’s concerns about the problems of abstraction and anti-

Semitism underlying the use of ‘spirit’ terminology, I want to first return to his story about

administrative rigidity at ASU. As I mentioned earlier in this essay, my immediate letter/spirit

response was based on what seemed to me to be a limitation with the ASU administrators’

deliberations. It appears to me that their decision-making was not informed by the underlying,

principles of their institution’s mission. I feel this problem is, in part, due to the current

professional socialization of educators in the United States and throughout the world.

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 To address this problem in a specific, concrete way, I’d look for an opportunity to have a

conversation with the ASU administrators about the collegial, lead-learning, study agenda that

I’ve introduced. The point of the dialogue wouldn’t be to convince them to undertake the study

of these seven interrelated topics, since they may be too busy for such an engagement, but to

simply appreciate the deep sense of professional responsibility that underlies this

reconceptualized curriculum development approach. I’d want them to consider the possibility

that accountability doesn’t have to be tied exclusively to numbers and rules—that

‘accountability’ is more powerfully interpreted as a commitment to the professional

responsibilities of disciplined curriculum studies. In short, I’d invite them to distinguish between

study-based responsibility and standardized, regulatory accountability as explained by Noddings

(2013):

Basic to accountability in any profession is the expectation that a practitioner

should be able to account for, to justify, his or her professional decision and acts.

Notice that this is very different from being held accountable for the outcome

itself. …Responsibility is a much more powerful concept for teachers. (p. 8)

Though these ASU administrators may not be interested in such a critical dialogue, nor of

its implications for their own continuing professional growth, I’ve had such conversations with

the two key KSU administrators in my professional life: my Teaching, Learning, and Curriculum

Studies (TLC) School Director, Alexa Sandmann, and my College of Education, Health, and

Human Services (EHHS) Associate Dean for Graduate Programs, Catherine Hackney. My

dialogue with these two administrators has been in the context of my work as the coordinator of

KSU’s Curriculum & Instruction (C&I) M.Ed. Program. As program coordinator, I’ve been

working as a lead learner with my C&I colleagues on activities that are designed to deepen their

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understanding of the C&I M.Ed. mission statement with its emphasis on the practice of

transformative curriculum leadership.

It’s outside the scope of this essay to provide a detailed description of the ways in

which Drs. Sandmann and Hackney have supported my lead-learning work; however, I

do want to provide two pertinent illustrations. Though Drs. Sandmann and Hackney

don’t have the time to study the seven lead-learning topics I’ve just introduced, they do

recognize the value of this disciplined study. They comprehend the distinction between

curriculum management, instructional leadership, and curriculum leadership in higher

education, and they appreciate the lead-learning interpretation of transformative

curriculum leadership that I’ve created. They realize that I’m advancing a sophisticated

form of curriculum problem solving.

Dr. Sandmann is a literacy and middle childhood education scholar who

recognizes that teacher educators can benefit from understanding how to advance ‘3S’

pedagogy through curriculum leadership. She agrees that teacher educators should think

of themselves as public intellectuals with particular academic specializations.

Consequently, she purchased copies of Reconceptualizing Curriculum Development

(RCD) for the TLC school library as a way of encouraging the C&I teacher education

faculty to read the text. As a leadership studies scholar, Dr. Hackney recognizes that all

educators—not just teacher educators—could benefit from reading the RCD text.

Consequently, I asked her if she’d be interested in writing a supportive essay for the RCD

text as an experienced preK-12 and Higher Education administrator. She agreed and

composed an essay entitled, “Generative Leadership: Protecting the Good Work.”

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 Ultimately, I’d like to point out to a wide range of preK-12 and higher education

curriculum stakeholders—teachers, teacher educators, administrative leaders, policy

leaders, etc.—that Montesquieu’s insights into the spirit of democratic laws provides a

principled basis for educational professionalism and artistry. Montesquieu’s work is still

a relevant historical resource for thinking about Dewey’s (1934) call for “a common

faith” in aspiring democratic societies. Using this religious term foregrounds the

theological subtext of complicated curriculum conversations and serves as a good segue

for addressing Donald’s concerns about the abstraction and anti-Semitism that is

embedded in my letter/spirit distinction. I’m not responding to Donald as a religious

official but as a committed public intellectual.

A Transactional Knowing Informed by a Subjective/Universal Ethic

Ryan (2015) introduces two key distinctions in Dewey’s transactional pragmatism:

“Dewey doesn’t speak of realities in terms of inquiries, but as terms in inquiries—the bolder

claim that inquiry is not merely revelatory of reality, but somehow constitutive of it” (p. 15). For

Dewey, having knowledge is qualitatively different from engaging in a knowing/known process.

The former is an artifact of a non-reflective experience embedded in habit and/or custom, while

the latter “marks a reflective discrimination from such [non-reflective] experience in response to

a specific [inquiry] need or purpose” (p.15).

This reflective inquiry is hermeneutically grounded in what Ryan characterizes as

Dewey’s postulate of immediate empiricism: “What is is what is experienced as” (p. 16). In

short, Dewey is advancing the disciplined practice of interpretive, creative, experimental,

learning-through-experience activities as the basis for human knowing. The often-stated

curriculum question—What knowledge is of most worth?—can be rephrased in light of Dewey’s

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transactional knowing as follows: With reference to the enduring pragmatic consequences of

the knowns that are the objectives/objects of knowings, what knowing/knowns processes are of

most worth?

Because I resonate with Dewey’s transactional pragmatism, I interpret disciplined

curriculum work as involving not only Pinar’s (2007) “verticality” and “horizontality” but a

pragmatic “diagonality” (Henderson & Kesson, 2009) that cuts across vertical and horizontal

engagements. This diagonality is a willful, personal journey of transactional knowing resulting

in holistic, democratic knowns. It is a particular application of Ryan’s (2011) “circuit of

valuation,” as introduced earlier in this essay and summarized as follows:

In the transactional view, the circuit of inquiry helps produce values as readily as

it determines objective facts. Moral deliberation over a problem does not directly

yield a value, but rather a value candidate that can be tested like any other

hypothesis. (p. 65)

Badiou’s (2001) sense of “ethical fidelity” informs this pragmatic diagonality with its

three reflective inquiry and four deliberative conversation prompts. Writing as an agnostic

philosopher, not a true-believing Christian, Badiou (2003) argues that Saint Paul is an exemplar

of an ethical fidelity possessing subjective and universal dimensions. The subjective dimension

refers to the particulars of Paul’s faith, while the universal dimension touches on the affective,

aesthetic inspirations of Jesus’ teachings—the lessons of a Jewish teacher who preached a love

for all, including the Jews’ Roman oppressors. Badiou (2003) explains:

Faith is the declared thought of a possible power of thought. It is not yet this

power as such. As Paul forcefully puts it, ‘…faith works only through love’ (Gal.

5.6). It is from this point of view that, for the Christian subject, love underwrites

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 the return of a law that, although nonliteral, nonetheless functions as principle and

consistency for the subjective energy initiated by the declaration of faith. For the

new man, love is fulfillment of the break he accomplishes with the law; it is a law

of the break of the law, law of the truth of the law…, a content that, through love,

is reduced to a single maxim, on pain of relapsing into death, because it is entirely

subordinated to the subjectification by faith: … ‘You shall love your neighbor as

yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the

law (Rom. 13.8-10).’ (pp. 88-89)

Badiou (2003) summarizes his critical analysis of Pauline agapē with what he calls the “theorem

[that] what grants power to a truth, and determines subjective fidelity, is the universal address of

the relation to self [that is] instituted by the event…” (p. 90). In Paul’s case, the event is the

birth and death of Jesus with its attending faith; and the universal address is the inspiration to

practice a compassionate love for all humanity.

In parallel fashion, the diagonality I’m introducing is based on the faith that educators

can cultivate the personal power of holistic, democratic understanding through recursive

knowing/known processes prompted by selected reflective inquiries and deliberative

conversations. I’ve faith that teacher can engage in journeys of 3S understanding in order to be

well-positioned to foster their students’ 3S understandings. The universal address of this faith is

the inspired practice of 3S teaching-learning reciprocity. Adapting Paul’s agapē language, I

want teachers to be able to do onto their students what they are doing onto themselves as

disciplined, holistic learners in a society with democratic aspirations. I want teachers to embody

and enact democratic virtues in their particular subjective ways while inspiring, facilitating, and

encouraging their students to follow this same noble path.

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 In broader cultural, historical terms, I want teachers to engage in a holistic teaching-

learning reciprocity and generosity that can be characterized as the subjective/universality of 3S

understanding. I want teachers to practice a pedagogy that has the aim of cultivating a

particular ‘power of the people.’ Ryan (2011) explains the broad, global significance of this

curriculum and teaching commitment:

Education is still fixed on rote memorization and standardized tests rather than the

synoptic problem solving that worked so well in Dewey’s Chicago school. …We

[must] think about the unresolved crisis of modernity: the prospect of self-

annihilation should we fail to integrate a humane view of science and technology

with an experimental approach to values. We can’t work together until we begin

to see together—not some preconceived what, some universal good, but a

common how that is experimental, inclusive, and pluralistic. (p. 76)

The pragmatic diagonality that I want to advance is a specific application of this common how

with its underlying faith and love.

Over the past four years, I’ve introduced this diagonality to a diverse, experienced group

of Ohio teachers in the context of KSU’s Teacher Leader Endorsement Program (TLEP). As the

lead author of the RCD text, I invited three of the TLEP graduates to contribute a narrative

montage to the book. All three teachers had created lead-learning plans that they initiated during

an internship and then continued to enact upon graduating from the TLEP. My graduate

assistant, Jennifer Schneider, and I worked with these three teachers over seven months to

compose the narrative montage, which ultimately resulted in four distinct expressive outcomes:

opening statements of professional willfulness, curriculum platform contemplations, currere

conversations, and study inspirations.

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 Space doesn’t allow for an in-depth discussion of their narrative montage; however, I do

want to provide a brief snapshot of their lead-learning voices, recognizing that words alone don’t

capture the spirit of their work. When the RCD text first appeared in print, I invited all three

teacher leaders to present selected pieces of their narrative montage to a graduate class of

twenty-one teachers. During their presentations, the classroom was so silent that you could hear

a pin drop; and there were tears in the eyes of some of the teachers. A special, sacred mood had

taken over the class. The following brief excerpts from the opening personal statements in their

narrative montage provide a brief snapshot of what they shared during a sixty-minute

presentation:

Susan: “I have the confidence, wisdom, and skills to find the wiggle room within

the wiggle room. It’s right to be on the side of my students, to empower them to

work together to think for themselves. Likewise, I am thinking for myself in my

teaching and not following a choreography that someone else has written for me.”

Konni: “Our students should be the center of our classroom discussions and

shouldn’t need to raise their hands to get our permission to enter the conversation.

Students have to be given the chance to do the 3S themselves to understand it, just

like teachers do.”

Jennifer: “We teacher with calling for holistic pedagogy must take risks in order

to grow. We need to let ourselves blossom, becoming living expressions of our

craft” (Griest, Schneider, School, & Stagliano, 2015, pp. 139-140).

Conclusion

I find much common ground between my lead-learning interpretation of curriculum

development and Donald’s Talmudic interpretation of the practical in curriculum work, and I

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appreciate Donald’s openness to “divinely delivered” words. In the future, I’m interested in

further integrating the diagonality that I have just introduced with Pinar’s (2012)

autobiographical, allegorical interpretation of currere. I want curriculum workers to engage in

educational practices that are interpretive, creative, experimental, and subjective/universal. I see

this as a vital ‘spirit’ underlying good curriculum work, and I look forward to my continuing

conversation with Donald on this matter.

My curriculum scholarship is grounded in particular democratic interpretations of

Socratic erōs and Pauline agapē, and I view Donald’s critique as providing insights into why the

faith and love that I am celebrating and modelling through a particular lead-learning practice is

under such duress. I’m committed to embracing the ‘baby’ of holistic, democratic faiths while

discarding the ‘bathwater’ of disempowering, dogmatic faiths, and I celebrate all of humanity’s

inspiring teachers with universal messages, including Buddha, Laozi, Confucius, Rabbi Hillel,

and Rumi (Armstrong, 2006). Turning back to Donald’s critique, are there versions of Christian

faith that are working against my transformative curriculum leadership advocacy? If so, how do

I and my like-minded colleagues establish critical distance from such versions while exploiting

the wiggle room that is available? I eagerly await Donald’s further critical insights into this

important historical, hegemonic matter.

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