Curriculum, Spirituality, and Human Rights towards a Just Public Education examines the integration of spirituality—not religion—into U.S. public education and curriculum. The volume challenges celebratory ‘curricularized’ forms of human rights and frames spirituality as a counter-hegemonic human right. Drawing on autobiography as inquiry, Rogério Venturini unpacks his spiritual struggles—‘from within’—and experiences as a progressive spiritual person and educator. The volume examines the subjectivity and objectivity of spirituality, exploring the lethal social impact triggered by the absence of spirituality at the table of the so-called curriculum conversations.
This volume places the struggle for spirituality in our field as a political struggle and challenges the epistimicidal nature of such conversations. Venturini draws on critical, anti-colonial, and decolonial frameworks and argues for an epistemological move towards an itinerant curriculum theory, one that responds to the world’s endless epistemological diversity and difference by assuming a non-derivative non-abyssal approach.
Rogério C. Venturini is a critical pedagogue, social activist, and spiritual servant leader, teaching and working closely with oppressed communities in South Coast, Massachusetts. He has a Ph.D. in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies.
Foreword: Should There Be a Place for the Spirit in Public Education?
Todd Price
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction: On Curriculum and Spirituality: Itinerant Curriculum Theory and the Struggle for Non-Derivative Curriculum ‘Langue’ and ‘Parole’
João M. Paraskeva
1 The Inevitable Unfinished Transcendent
2 Towards a Plus Que Parfait Imparfait Theory
3 ‘Conscientização’ and ‘Consciencism’: A Spiritual Call
4 Critical Prophetic Pragmatism
5 Confronting the ‘Chamber of Horrors’
6 The Monumentality of a Prosperous Divisive Curriculum Reason
7 Itinerant Curriculum Theory: Towards a Non-Derivative Curriculum ‘Langue’ and ‘Parole’
1 The Truth about My Schooling: “A Struggle to Fly Inside a Bottle”
1 Let Me Begin from the Beginning, as “in the Beginning Was the Word”
2 A Subtractive Culture of Learning
3 Contradictory Education
2 Identity Matters: On (Whose) Spirituality!
1 Introduction
2 Defining Spirituality: A Possible Impossibility?
3 Coherence—Really—Matters: “Morality” and “Honesty”
4 Within and beyond Life “as Is”
5 The Ordinary: A Global Context
6 “Consciencism” and “Conscientizaçã o”: A Spiritual Call
7 Whose Identity!
3 A Conservative Neoliberalism or Neoliberal Conservatism?
1 Introduction
2 The Absence of Authentic Leadership: Framing Dropouts
3 On Neoliberalism
4 Everything But Spirituality and the Humanities
5 Reflection on Whose Knowledge!
4 Coloniality and the Pedagogies of Neoliberalism
1 On Coloniality
2 A Sociology of Absences
3 The Decolonial Turn: Towards an Itinerant Curriculum Theory
5 A Conclusion: Spirituality as a Counter-Hegemonic Human Right
References
All interested in the importance of spirituality in public education. All of those that see spirituality as a human rights issue.