The Imaginary Reality of the Dominant Tradition Unveiled

Blyth F. Weber

Many American colleges and universities rely upon a curriculum that undermines the essence of education: to inquire, to question, to challenge, and to explore. Resonating through each tenet is the significance of the curriculum and the epistemology sustaining it as together they determine what students know and how they know it. This paper seeks to explain the limitations a curriculum based on the white, western, capitalist, patriarchal, hierarchical culture places on students' development.

Introduction

How do humans know? This question has preoccupied philosophers, sociologists, psychologists, anthropologists, and educators throughout time. Understanding and explaining humans’ ways of knowing is complicated because social forces that are contextually dependent shape the reality humans know. Americans have designated education as the primary social institution responsible for determining the reality students know and how they know it. Consequently, the curriculum and pedagogical methodology are carefully determined and, historically, have been based on the dominant white, western, capitalist, patriarchal, hierarchical culture; that is, the curriculum and method of instruction have propagated mainstream cultural norms.

While the curriculum and how students come to know have preoccupied academe since Socrates, beyond adding or dropping courses, the curriculum has experienced little revision as the dominant cultural values continue to undergird it. However, if the core mission of education--to inquire, to question, to challenge, and to explore (Minnich, 1994)--is respected, then a prescribed educational system based on the dominant tradition undermines the purpose of education and demands transformation. And the principle values of education are the very tools to transform the curriculum and the epistemology that sustains it, protecting the academy from becoming a prison in which guards dictate students’ reality. Through curriculum transformation education can unveil to students the imaginary "Reality" of the dominant culture and the existence of many realities.

The nation’s colleges and universities must open their doors to transformative agents in order to avoid an oppressive educational system. Inquiring, questioning, challenging, and exploring are these agents embodying the essence of education. The conceptual framework for this article relies upon these four agents in examining the multifaceted nature of curriculum transformation. The first section will inquire into the curriculum’s role in the raison d'être of education. An understanding of the purpose of education will afford the necessary background to question many epistemological assumptions of American higher education. The second half of this article will examine the process of curriculum transformation in more detail. First, challenging the add-on practices adopted by many colleges and universities, then exploring agents for transformation.

Education is a transformative process, as it is about inquiring, questioning, challenging, and exploring. As such, it cannot merely propagate the "dominant meaning system" (Minnich, 1990). Rather, education’s purpose is to encourage students to dissect and critically evaluate the world around them, to facilitate students’ attempts to know reality, and to reveal that knowing reality is an endless process of reframing the world around them. The curriculum provides a useful framework in which information is introduced to and discussed with students in their search for a meaningful existence. Such a framework provides logic to the information students encounter, and sets the stage for the story the school or teacher wants to tell. Consequently, it can be a prescriptive framework determined by the dominant culture that tells the story of one "Reality" or it can be an authentic framework that recognizes multiple realities, unveiling to students a comprehensive and expansive view of the past that will enable their understanding of the present and future (Butler, 1991a).

Unfortunately, educational institutions in the United States are agents of socialization presenting students with a "one-sided conversation" (Mura, 1992, p. 19), a curriculum controlled by white, western, capitalist, patriarchal, hierarchical culture that has historically excluded women and people of color. The education these institutions offer maintains cultural norms rather than catalyzing growth (Butler, 1991c, p. 12). And after years of seeing the dominant culture’s images depicted, students come to know these images as "Reality."

Students, however, can discern that this reality is imaginary if we return to education its tranformative quality, made possible through curriculum transformation. The curriculum contextualizes knowledge and, traditionally, has done so while respecting the perspectives and values of white, western men. The curriculum must be transformed in order to de-universalize these values and to humanize the education process, unveiling to students that what they perceive as real are merely images of the dominant culture:

It must become necessary for all of us to feel this is our world. And that we are here to stay and that anything that is here is ours to take and to use in our image. And watch that ‘our’—make it as big as you can—it ain’t got nothing to do with that barred room. The ‘our’ must include everybody you have to include in order for you to survive. (Johnson, 1992, p. 509)

Students will only know reality as "our" reality through curriculum transformation--inquiring, questioning, challenging and exploring. These hallmarks of education assist students in expanding their minds, seeing the images of the dominant culture for what they are, and awakening students to a reality that is both subjectively and objectively defined.

The reality current college students know is largely dictated by the dominant culture. But, how do they know these images as real? To answer this question it is necessary to examine some of the epistemological errors (Minnich, 1990) undermining higher education’s mission—to inquire, to question, to challenge, and to explore. There are five such errors sustaining the dominant culture’s hold on reality: objective reasoning, faulty generalizations, circular reasoning, mystified concepts, and partial knowledge.

Elizabeth Kamark Minnich discovered the remaining four errors essential to the preeminence of this paradigm. Her book, Transforming the Curriculum, embodies the core values of education. It is a radical critique of the dominant tradition infiltrating the curriculum at the nation’s colleges and universities. She unveils the exclusivity of dominant culture and the tools used to sustain its dominance and the reality students know (1990). The epistemological errors she discusses are at odds with the egalitarian ideals often espoused by the dominant tradition and institutions of higher learning (Minnich, 1990). In reality, these institutions maintain the white, western, capitalist, patriarchal, hierarchical cultural norms because the epistemology undergirding the curriculum is the basis for the dominant tradition.

Circular reasoning. Circular reasoning is value-laden reasoning and an affront to objectivity. I alluded to such reasoning in the former section discussing colleges’ and universities’ tendency to see the world through the lens of white middle-class men. However, circular reasoning goes further in that it asserts what is "good" (Minnich, 1990), but in a non-sensible way. "Our reasoning is circular when we end up where we began without recognizing, or admitting, that is what we have done" (1990, p. 82). For example, it is argued women and people of color have little to add to the canon as they played a minor role in shaping social foundations that provide the infrastructure for American society. Arguments that this is not the case, supported by historical evidence, are insignificant; this statement is not open to contradiction. It is a prescriptive statement, standardized and deceptively neutral (Minnich, 1990).

Ludwig Wittgenstein’s analysis of the standard meter illuminates the power this reasoning has in controlling the reality students know: "The standard meter is not a meter because it cannot be judged to be or not to be one, being itself the source and only warrant of what it means to be a meter" (1990, p. 87). For students, white western man and his values become good, standard and neutral while women and people of color become others or extras. Students then unknowingly perpetuate oppressive cultural norms rather than questioning, challenging and exploring them.

Mystified concepts. These concepts are the basic assumptions that result from objective reasoning, faulty generalization and circular reasoning. While opaque and ambiguous, they reveal the power of the dominant tradition (Minnich, 1990). At many colleges and universities, excellence is often mentioned in discussions about the curriculum and academic mission. However it is important to examine how such a concept is discussed. For example, Minnich (1990) reveals that excellence is a concept many conservative traditionalists use when defending the curriculum. These individuals fear the likes of a more expansive and inclusive curriculum and supportive pedagogy, claiming that such is irrational and an assault on excellence. These standards of excellence and rationality are communicated to students and become the basic assumptions upon which students build their knowledge base and impression of reality.

Partial knowledge. While this is the fifth epistemological error, it is also a consequence of the areas formerly discussed. This knowledge is partial in two senses: "It makes the part the whole, and that whole is partial to the interests of those thus enshrined at the defining, controlling center" (Minnich, 1990, p. 148). Consequently, students come to know a reality that is false, as it is a reality of a particular—the dominant culture.

This discussion reveals that the nation’s colleges and universities expose students to an epistemology based on errors that is antithetical to the mission of education. It prescribes students’ identity and limits their intellectual and social growth. However, these epistemological errors—objective reasoning, faulty generalization, circular reasoning, mystified concepts, and partial knowledge—must be included in curriculum transformation discussions as they provide a critical evaluation of the methods of analysis that afford the dominant tradition (Alessio, 1996). Otherwise, the face of the curriculum will change but how students know will remain the same, perpetuating the dominance of white, western, capitalist, patriarchal, hierarchical culture.

As alluded to in the last section, curriculum transformation is not solely about including voices that have been historically excluded. Such an add-on philosophy merely sustains the dominant tradition (Butler, 1990a; Goodstein, 1994; Hillis, 1993; Helle, 1994; Minnich, 1990; Yarborough, 1992). The nation’s colleges and universities fail to understand their role in maintaining the status quo through the "sprinkling of multicultural courses" they offer in their course catalogues (Hill, 1991, p. 45). This does not indicate a lack of concern among these institutions; rather, it demonstrates the difficulty of challenging the epistemological errors undergirding the dominant tradition. In fact, Levine and Cureton reveal that this is an important issue for 72% of college and university deans and vice-presidents at four-year institutions and for 40% at two-year institutions (1992, p. 29). Recognizing the tendency to address multiculturalism from an "‘add and stir’" mentality (Minnich, 1990, p. 27), colleges and universities must better understand why the original concentrate cannot be so easily diluted.

This concentrate—dominant culture—is reinforced by solely adding multicultural courses and the perspectives of groups historically excluded from the curriculum. For example:

When we do not say "white men’s literature" and we do say "Black women’s literature," we are reflecting and perpetuating a kind of knowledge in which white men’s literature is seen as literature itself, the inclusive term, the norm, and the ideal. (Minnich, 1990, p. 43)

Such a practice sustains the circular reasoning that maintains the dominant tradition. Recognizing its hold on the center, it perpetuates marginalization of those historically excluded (Hill, 1991). While their voices may be heard, those at the center drown them out. Students then know their existence and history as "other" than that of the dominant tradition.

Examination of the add-on practice from an organizational perspective as well reveals its inappropriateness in transforming the curriculum and returning to education its mission. While colleges and universities are educational institutions, each is organizationally unique in its division of disciplines, colleges and departments. Their appearance as Patrick Hill describes is "relativistic" (1991, p. 43). That is, each major or division is its own world, limiting students to the reality it defines, becoming a "‘windowless box’" of sorts (Hill, p. 43). By adding multicultural courses and women’s studies courses to the curriculum, colleges and universities simply create more windowless boxes and perpetuate the "‘ethos of self-containment’" (Hill, p. 43). This ethos exists as academic departments and disciplines remain self-contained and complacent in their coexistence with one another, failing to recognize the richness that accompanies interdisciplinary and collaborative efforts.

Recognizing that education is about inquiring, questioning, challenging, and exploring, an add-on philosophy, while sincere in its intention, is not transformative. It fails to address the epistemological errors sustaining the dominant tradition’s hold on the curriculum and, organizationally, it perpetuates an environment that is hostile to these educational tenets. Colleges and universities must go further than offering students exotic and ethnic delights cafeteria-style (Helle, 1994). Transformation demands displacing criteria and redefining categories (Butler, 1991b), that is, examining epistemologically the curriculum’s role in determining the reality students know.

As we begin to explore the agents of change necessary for curriculum transformation, it is appropriate to begin with Marilyn Frye’s bird cage metaphor (1992). If an observer looks myopically at only one wire of a birdcage, he/she might question why the bird does not fly away as none of the other wires exist from his/her perspective. However, if he/she takes a step back, looking macroscopically at the cage, it becomes clear why the bird cannot fly away. The dominant tradition and the images depicted by who and what is included in the curriculum and how it is presented must be challenged in order to prevent colleges’ and universities’ myopic view of reality as that of white, western, capitalist, patriarchal, hierarchical culture. The academy’s fixed gaze on a single wire, dominant culture, prevents students from discerning an expansive and comprehensive view of the past and present. Students know not through inquiring, questioning, challenging, and exploring, but through their socialization and acceptance of the one wire as reality. How do we avoid an education in which images are perceived as real? What agents will transform the curriculum, moving students toward an existence in which reality is subjectively and objectively defined?

Conversations of respect. The first transformative agent to consider is that of means. How can colleges and universities challenge the dominant tradition and its epistemological underpinnings? Any attempt to answer this question must begin with "conversations of respect" (Hill, 1991, p. 42). These conversations are the essence of democratic pluralism, a democracy that values the world's diversity (1991), as should the curriculum at colleges and universities. ?

In genuinely respectful conversations, each disciplinary participant is aware at the outset of the incapacity of his/her own discipline (and, ideally, of him/herself) to answer the question that is being asked. Each participant is aware of his/her partiality and of the needs of the other. One criterion of the genuineness of the subsequent con-versations is the transformation of each participant's understanding or definition of the question—perhaps even a transformation of self-understanding. (Hill, p. 43)

Recognizing that conversations of respect move beyond tolerance and assume participants are co-learners, they allow for transformation. Consequently, they are essential to curriculum transformation as such conversations deny the universality of the dominant culture and recognize the subjective and objective nature of reality. Acknowledging the transformative quality of education, conversations of respect are an appropriate means to facilitate this process of change.

I am because we are. We are because I am. A second transformative agent, a philosophical tenet antithetical to western individualism, supports conversations of respect: "‘I am because we are. We are because I am’" (Butler, 1991a, p. 31; Butler, 1991b, p. 75). The result of such a tenet undergirding curriculum talks is continual dialogical movement "from thesis and antitheses to synthesis, thesis, and antithesis; to coexisting thesis and antithesis; to an ultimate, possible, but not a necessary or imposed synthesis" (Butler, 1991a, p. 31). That is, this movement encourages a critical pedagogy that demands stepping back from the bird cage in order to envision "an egalitarian world based on communal relationships within humanity" (Butler, p. 76). Such a tenet de-centers the dominant tradition and affirms that it is "our" word, transforming the curriculum into one that is more inclusive and based in critical pedagogy.

Self-reflexivity. A third transformative agent is self-reflexivity. In other words, thinking acknowledges we are always both the subject and object of the reality we know (Minnich, 1990; Olguin, 1991). Such thinking not only recognizes the naturalness of subjectivity, it affirms its value. However, it warns us to critique the dominant tradition and to see it as collective subjectivity. Again, this critique must include methodology in addition to content. That is, the theories by which we know must be able to critique themselves, recognizing that explaining the world is a "social activity" (Olguin, 1991, p. 163). Again, similar to the former transformative agents discussed, self-reflexivity is humanizing because it rejects that reality is objectively defined as one wire. The wholeness of the cage is acknowledged as well as the uniqueness each observer brings to their observation of the birdcage.

The expansion of the mind is the natural result of an education grounded in inquiring, questioning, challenging and exploring. The curriculum and the epistemology sustaining it determine whether this education is prescriptive or transformative. At many of the nation's colleges and universities education is socialization into the mainstream, a prescribed existence. The reality students know is one of images depicted by the dominant culture, by an epistemology based in this culture. Consequently, students are unable to inquire into this reality’s authenticity, question its legitimacy, challenge its representation, and explore its limitations.

In order to awaken students to an existence that depicts realities in which students recognize they are both subjects and objects, curriculum transformation is necessary. This transformation is based in conversations of respect, communalism, and self-reflexivity, and only after this transformation can we return to education its core mission--to inquire, to question, to challenge, and to explore.

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Blyth F. Weber graduated from Austin College in 1995 with a bachelor's degree in Psychology and Philosophy. Blyth is a second-year student in the HESA program and serves as Graduate Assistant in the Office of the Vice President for Student Affairs.