Through recovery of an understanding of the topos, especially of
imaginary and physical landscape and our history within it, we may find a place
to begin the difficult work of reaching into and across the territories of difference,
And thus….write a topography for curriculum theory, one that begins at home but
journeys elsewhere.” Cynthia Chambers 1999
This will be
my third spring teaching Internationalization of Curriculum Studies, and I
decided that it was time to move this course from behind the iron curtain of
Blackboard Learn to inviting students to create personal blogs. A personal web space where one can situate
oneself, share ideas and interact with others beyond a specific border in many
ways performs the spirit of the field of Curriculum Studies.
Curriculum
Studies is an intellectually dynamic and ever changing field. For curriculum
scholars either here in Canada or abroad, situating and defining the broader
international field of curriculum studies and its development remains a historically
situated and contested “complicated conversation.” Therefore within the context
of this course our study of certain international educational issues will be
contradictory, contested, and sometimes paradoxical. As a result, each week we
will try to reconceptualize and complicate our historical, present, and future
understandings of the differences between various international educational
movements and interdisciplinary discourses, which in turn inform curriculum
studies.
Our
introductory readings are Cynthia Chambers (2006) “Where do I belong?” and Steven Talbert (2009) International Travel and Implication. After
completing the readings, as a class we are working to construct our online
biography on a blog. Thus our first online activity is to create an online
biography or profile after thinking about what the authors have to say about
the concept of travel in relation to their identity. Through this venue I am
hoping to open the question about what has been our "lived
experiences" of traveling either across Canada, to Canada, or other
countries around the globe? While I have asked students to write about what
passages from the readings provoke them to think about those lived experience,
I’ve shared mine below.
Where do I belong?
My mother and
father’s wedding at my Grandparent’s home in Brooklyn 1962
I’ve read the Chamber’s piece “Where Do I
Belong?” Canadian Curriculum as a Passport Home a number of times but it just
dawned on me during this reading that I was one of those people who experienced
travelling across the US/Canada border without a passport. I was a kid though so, at the time, I never
really noticed. Born in Brooklyn, NY and then moving to the suburbs of New
Jersey, I grew up as an American but every summer travelled to cottage country
north of Toronto until finally my Canadian father who had moved to the US
because my mother was homesick for her family. Having had enough of working in
NYC, he moved the family to Toronto.
While
it didn’t feel that way at the time, in many ways the timing was perfect
because at 16 years old I found myself in a Grade 10 History class where I
became fascinated with the teacher’s preoccupation with the topic of Canadian
identity. This seemed like such a strange topic to me, as American identity had
never been spoken about in my previous years of schooling; yet the pledge
allegiance and star spangled banner seemed to be part of my very being. That I
would later write my MA thesis on the how this struggle with defining a
Canadian identity had an impact on how regional Canadian literature, especially
texts set in rural settings, was undervalued was no coincidence. After my MA I
completed my B. Ed. and taught literature for about 10 years. Reading Chambers now, I see how central her
question, “Where Do I Belong?” might have been to my graduate research asking
about the significance of stories of place across the expansive nation.
Chambers’ questions opens up how such stories embody a curriculum of identity
that allows for the deep engagement with social and cultural
difference rather than the homogenizing American ethos.
My mom with her
parents at their pizzeria in Brooklyn
In
retrospect, it would appear that I have been travelling the path to curriculum
studies, which I now find myself teaching, for some time precisely because it
looks at how home is the place where, as Chambers notes, “the past is
continually in the present.” This always complicates where we are now. Following Chambers, I have turned to using
life writing as a form of inquiry to look at my family history in relation to
the larger history of immigration and how we continue to live that
history. What are the everyday lived
moments of a geneology that involves immigration and how do we return to it in
our daily living. For me, some of these everyday lived moments include a story about my
grandfather’s immigration from Italy and my mother’s persistent sense of
cultural self-loathing of being Italian and not “truly” American.
I hope you too will find the field of
curriculum studies offers you a space to explore the self reflexive space of
your lived history in the context of genealogy, migrancy and transnationalism.