Revolutionary Curriculum?

At Teachers College of Columbia University, I got to know quite a few educators who were working toward advanced degrees. Most of them were just extremely earnest about their vocation. They embraced Dewey and the idea that public education was the cornerstone of a democratic society. As far as they were concerned, there was no higher calling than teaching, God bless them.

A number of them had a bit of a radical bent. They saw public schools as factories that churned out docile and willing workers, and their dream was to devise a transformative and liberating curriculum. I would try to point out in discussions that our public schools frequently didn’t even deliver the promised docile worker and that we probably shouldn’t expect much more than that.
That said, I was fascinated by these radicals and wondered how they ever imagined that the political and business interests that controlled schooling would allow any kind of revolutionary teaching. I can’t think of a single constituency with a stake in public education, other than the students compelled to attend schools, that would buy into a curriculum that purported to produce anything other than docile workers and subjects of the state.

If school age children are to be introduced to revolutionary ideas, it will not be the state that makes the introduction. These ideas will come in through some subversive bits of popular culture, and schools will probably devote some time to stamping them out or to coopting them.