Officially yesterday, everyone I know even casually has now shared with me a video of Sir Ken Robinson or some very similar TED video. The sharing always includes, either directly or implicitly, the suggestion that the ideas in these videos have sprung fully formed from Robinson or others as if no one in education has ever uttered them (or even thought about them for more than a second).
Concurrent with those experiences, I have found that expressing a challenge to Common Core State Standards (CCSS) prompts a parallel set of reactions: (a) CCSS advocates quickly claim that any challenge misses the great promise in CCSS, and (b) essentialists respond with the "basic skills" mantra that dates back hundreds of years and made E. D. Hirsch wealthy.
Two important points come out of these experiences:
(1) Curriculum theory is a rich and vibrant field that has paralleled the history of universal public education in the U.S., but most scholars identify the 1890s as the genesis of serious curricular concerns related to the promise of public schooling.
(2) In an era designated as "evidence-based education reform" (a tenet of No Child Left
