Explorations On American Post-modernism Curriculum Theories

The core of education reform is the curriculum reform. Generalizing the development of our curriculum, from the discussion of potential curriculum to the implementing of activity curriculum and the development of school-based curriculum, surely we have done great endeavors on the aspects of concrete operation and techniques, but less explorations on the key education issues. We also took many emergent and compromised measures, but less forward and long-distance designing. This phenomenon manifests the standards and visions of curriculum knowledge decide the quality and trend of curriculum reform. When the developer and executor have no opportunities to get correct and advanced nutrition of curriculum knowledge, their education may possibly becomes the useless work and the school will gradually fall into another kind of remedy education.Dr. Doll use science. particularly' physics and astronomy, as an organizing frame, it is possible to categorize the history of Western thoughts into three mega-paradigms: pre-modern, modern. and post-modem. In this frame, the pre-modem covers the span of time from recorded Western history to the scientific and industry revolutions of the seventeenth and eighteenth century. During this duration exists the cosmological harmony included ecology, epistemology, and metaphysical sense of balance or proportion. Modem set out from industry revolution to the beginning of the 2O~ century, namely the completion of industry and modernization. Worshiping science and supreme rationale is the typical culture features of this stage. Post-modern directly points to the middle and late part of the 20th century. This is also the stage for the representative of US to gradually enter information society. The culture field is penetrated uncertainty, eclectic and multi-culture post-modernism. The arrival of post-modernism is concerned with a series drastic shift happened in the western countries after the world war two, such as the progress of science, the soaring development of economy, the political reform, the culture shift, the decline of the major viewpoints of value, the inner philosophical debates and academic crisis. It's the popular philosophy of the late part of 20th century and a fresh cultural thought. Furthermore, its influence is penetrating every corner of western countries. From the beginning of 70s, especially 80s, American curriculum field has utilized the post-modernism thoughts and methods to systematically criticize and rethink essentialism, structurism, eternalism, especially the Tyler rationale. By using the new field of vision and new viewpoints of values to4grasp the essence of curriculum and construct the new conceptual system.In autumn of 1999, I was sent to college of Education of Louisiana State University to study the American Post-modernism curriculum theory. There I know two prominent post-modernism curricuium Professors, Dr. Doll and professor Pinar. During the days when we studied together, I found that their great passions for life, teaching, exploring the new knowledge, fostering the growth of students endowed their post-modernism theory with a living force and creativity.Doll thinks today's curriculum theories base on the cognitive views of Newton's traditional simplicity, stableness, eternity and he assumes that education curriculum and the development of human beings are stable, close and equilibrium. This is contrary to the fact that education is a opening and forming process and it is under the constant changing condition from equilibrium to in-equilibrium and finally to equilibrium again. Doll detailed analyzes and criticizes the modernism curriculum theory and thinks that closeness simplicity and accumulating is the malady of modernism curriculum. On the contrary, post-modernism curriculum should be open, complicated and transformable. Openness is regarded the curriculum as the open system, transforming and interfering are necessary. They are the good chance and source of the system to conduct the self-organization; the complexity means the...