Triple Takes on Curricular Worlds

Foreword

I assure you, reader, that this book will make you think differently about your own curricular world(s). This foreword is meant only to spark interest, not to steal fire. So I will try not to steal fire. Rather I write this foreword to help readers get ready to look forward, not to fore-cast. Here I would like to foretell (for forewords are about telling about the book one is about to read) readers that Triple Takes on Curricular Worlds is a brilliant and ground-breaking book that will knock your socks off. This is a book that is un-for-gettable. If readers, however, are looking for a for-mula for curriculum, they are barking up the wrong tree. This book is an intellectual exploration of what it means to live in curricular worlds from the perspective of three women who work in radically different kinds of intellectual institutions. What an interesting book. Indeed. What I like about this book is that these authors have interesting ideas about words. Words such as boundaries, disgrace, distance, fear, forgiveness, light and mothers inform their curricular worlds. Readers will do a double take on each triple take as they are delighted, shocked, saddened, and made joyful by the seriousness and—yet—the playfulness of the text-at-hand. Read and read again the concepts that web together this text, reader. You will be delighted. The woven fabric of the three voices touch on issues relevant not only to scholars of curriculum but to scholars and students across the disciplines as well. Autobiography, politics, medicine, literature , philosophy and religion, as they relate to curricular worlds, enliven and embolden the text in provocative ways. Curricular worlds are the sites that both teachers and students inhabit, yet the authors suggest that teachers and students must rethink their habits and undo them, to think differently and more metaphorically about issues such as difference and alterity. vii Foreword MARLA MORRIS Each section of the book is indeed a triple play as the bases are loaded with rich, metaphoric, and deep insight. Mary Aswell Doll, Delese Wear, and Martha Whitaker write deliciously about the possibilities of the progressive educative dream. These writers continue Dewey’s call for progressive thinking that allows students and teachers to become public intellectuals as they explore their own curricular worlds against the backdrop of the sociopolitical landscape. Readers, get fired up and get ready to steal the bases for the home run! Triple Takes is the home run of curriculum scholarship. FOREWORD viii ...