Reconsidering Schwab's "Practicals": A response to Peter Hlebowitsh's "Generational Ideas in Curriculum: A Historical Triangulation"

This article explores the place of Ralph Tyler and Joseph Schwab in the history of curriculum studies, and educational theory more broadly. I argue that most analyses of both Schwab's and Tyler's work are built not on their own life-projects and writings, but developed from blinkered readings of a narrow range of their writings selected to meet the needs of contemporary ideological debates. When we see the work of both Schwab and Tyler within their own terms, we see them seeking to redirect educational studies away from the "theoretical" project that had its origins in the 19th-century university and toward education's "craft" tradition. In Schwab's case, he sought to do this in a way that fully engaged educational research and scholarship with the practical and deliberative forms of thought associated with curriculum development, in a way that promised sustained effects on schooling.