The Individual and Society

All learning begins with the learner. What children know and what they want to learn are not just constraints on what can be taught; they are the very foundation for learning. Deweyís description of the four primary interests of the child are still appropriate starting points: ìthe interest in conversation, or communication; in inquiry, or finding out things; in making things, or construction; and in artistic expression--we may say they are the natural resources, the uninvested capital, upon the exercise of which depends the active growth of the child (Dewey, 1915, p. 47).

But, as Dewey recognized, schooling is not just about the individual. It is the coming together of the childís interests with those of the society. The disciplines we study in school represent centuries of collective thought as well as the interests of the larger community in maintaining itself by communicating its knowledge and values to the next generation. Schooling also represents the intersection of a complex set of social and political forces--the needs of the workplace, democratic as well as authoritarian values, and the need to protect as well as manage children.

Through the interplays of the individual and the community, schooling and society, desires for liberation and desires for control, needs for knowledge and needs for skills, humanistic and scientific world views, and more, we develop curricula. Represented by textbooks, with knowledge neatly compartmentalized and questions at the end of each chapter, there is often little direct evidence of the complex forces that shaped their creation.