Historical Understanding, Futures Literacy, and Curriculum as Public Matters by den Heyer, Kent;

Short description:

Through innovative concepts such as KINships (knowledge?ignorance?privilege relations), curriculum as encounter, and becoming ?story smart,? it outlines a path beyond both standardized schooling and decontextualized ?best practices? toward learning organized around ethical inquiry, Treaty relationships, and preferable collective futures.

Long description:

This book asks a deceptively simple question: What is education for? Drawing on curriculum theory, history and social studies research, education philosophy, Indigenous scholarship, and futures studies, it argues that schooling too often socializes students into inherited ways of knowing while neglecting education?s deeper democratic purpose: enabling youth to make judgments about their nation-state and cultural inheritances and to distinguish between their probable and preferable futures. Engaging with timely debates in education, such as the emergence of AI, the author makes the case for a pedagogical approach centred on the use of ?throughline questions,? which ask students to connect subject matter to future thinking and critically examine their own role in shaping social worlds. Through innovative concepts such as KINships (knowledge?ignorance?privilege relations), curriculum as encounter, and becoming ?story smart,? the book outlines a path beyond both standardized schooling and decontextualized ?best practices? toward learning organized around ethical inquiry, Treaty relationships, and preferable collective futures.

Recommended reading for educators and researchers with interests in democratic education, curriculum design, and educational philosophy and civic education.

Table of Contents:

Chapter 1 In what ways do KINships shape what we can/not bear to know? Commitments, KINships, and an ethics of learning Chapter 2: In what ways do we not belong to ourselves alone? Events and Source Codes Chapter 3 When does schooling become educational? Education Aims, Paradigms, and the Work of Becoming Chapter 4 In what ways do ?event?-ful encounters educate? Badiou, Socratic Education, and Learning in Relation with Indigenous Traditions Chapter 5:?? When AI Can Answer, What Remains to Be Taught? Throughline Questions and Civic Possibilities in Schools Chapter 6: Whose stories future our lives? Narrative Thinking, Historical Perspectives, and Scenarios in Social Studies Chapter 7 In what ways might we travel well through learning?s bear territory? KINships, Terror Management, and Thriving in the Educational Encounter