Subjunctive spaces of curriculum: on the importance of eccentric knowledge

When education forsakes the middle for the ends or the beginnings, it is deadly. (Grumet, 1995, p. 17)

In her response to the question of “what is basic” to education, Madeleine Grumet argues that most schooling practices have forgotten that learning that matters to anyone is rooted in history, context, and practice. It has no real starting points or finishing lines but, rather, is always and already in the middle—in spaces amid past and future, fixed knowledge and emergent interpretation, expectation and hope.