THE CURRICULUM FROM THE FIELD'S EDUCATION PERSPECTIVE

counterpoint to hegemonic curricular policies

Abstract

The following paper reflects upon the Rural Education curriculum, contrasting the original concept of this pedagogical field with its diametrical opposite imposed as the hegemonic project that guides and regulates public education and its curriculums. The hegemonic project predefines standard contents and practices to mold subjects unquestioningly into members of the established order, while Rural Education employs an emancipatory and transformative perspective oriented towards assisting its subjects to identify themselves as actors of history capable of transforming the world. An examination of these perspectives’ ample diversions raises some interesting questions reflected on this text: What are the concepts and intents that guide the conception of this curriculum and guide these hegemonic curricular politics? How does the Rural Education field construe the concepts of knowledge and curriculum? In order to provide answers for these questions, we established as our goal to reflect upon the Rural Education field as a counter-hegemonic educational project and to characterize its notion of curriculum. Our reflections on Rural Education focus on the following themes: a mediation for emancipation and counter-hegemony; the curriculum, power relations and hegemony and, finally, the Rural Education curriculum as an instrument of counter-hegemony. These themes are further exemplified by the accompanying curriculum experiences and pedagogical praxis employed by rural schools aligned with the principles of Rural Education.