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Curriculum design as humanistic technology

1987; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 19; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/0022027870190204

1366-5839

David Pratt,

Teacher Education and Leadership Studies

When Theseus descended into the labyrinth, he took with him a sword and a ball of thread. His mission was to vanquish the Minotaur, half-man and half-bull, the progeny of Queen Pasiphae’s illicit passion for the snow-white bull that Poseidon had sent from the sea to King Minos. Minos, King of Crete, to hide the shame brought upon himself by his reluctance to sacrifice the bull to Poseidon, had his chief architect, Daedalus, build the labyrinth under the royal palace at Knossos. Every year a dozen young men and women were sacrificed to the Minotaur, whose subterranean bellowing could be heard like an earthquake throughout the island of Crete. Prince Theseus volunteered for the sacrificial contingent from Athens, determined to rid the region of this menace. His lover, Ariadne, the daughter of Minos, provided him with the means to do so: to kill the Minotaur-a sword forged by Daedalus himself, a short, sharp, pointed weapon, made for assault, for stabbing and cutting; and to find his way back out of the labyrinth -a ball of ,woollen thread. Theseus was successful in his mission, killing the Minotaur, escaping with Ariadne as an earthquake destroyed Knossos, and eventually returning to Athens to become king. The Greek story-tellers understood the power of symbols. They recognized that living requires two complementary kinds of resource: technical weapons for aggressive resolution of immediate obstacles, as well as the gentle means of guidance to ultimate goals. The myths of the Greeks, like all of their arts, integrated values and technique, art and science, the mind and the heart. We live, by contrast, in a fragmented, specialized and polarized culture. Educational thought is one arena in which different ideologies collide. What are the possibilities for the reconciliation of polarities in education, and specifically in what Westbury once called the ‘incurably schismatic’ field of curriculum?’