Becoming-Curriculum in Maria Speth’s Mr. Bachmann and His Class

Abstract

Mr. Bachmann and His Class delineates a sixth-grade class composed of child immigrants with a retiring teacher Dieter Bachmann in Germany. Although the protagonist of the film is the multicultural city where the school is located, the intimate portrait of Bachmann and his sixth-grade students in the documentary reveals Sellers’ becoming-curriculum. This paper examines the concept of becoming and Sellers’ becoming-curriculum and identifies how Bachmann’s classroom embodies becoming-curriculum from three perspectives: rhizome, lines of flight, and multiplicity. Like the three conceptions, Bachmann’s learning and teaching activity does not have a predetermined design or process nor a specific educational goal or outcome. He always encourages his students to improvise and embraces children’s ideas, thus leading to endless possibilities in the classroom. Becoming-curriculum is inexplicable, but Bachmann provides an explicit and valuable practice of becoming-curriculum.