Toward Cosmopolitan Sensibilities in US Curriculum Studies: A Synoptic Rendering of the Franciscan Tradition in Mexico

Authors

  • James C. Jupp Georgia Southern University

Abstract

This essay articulates the notion of cosmopolitan sensibilities in curriculum studies through a synoptic rendering of the Franciscan educational tradition in 16th century Mexico. Recovered by Mexican intellectuals preceding but especially in the wake of the Mexican Revolution, the Franciscan tradition provides one of several “origin narratives” for the ideology of mestizaje central to Mexican national identity of the present. The Franciscan tradition, represented in biographical sketches of Pedro de Gante, Toribio de Motolinía, and Vasco de Quiroga, articulated a lived pedagogy emphasizing a historicized Catholic ethics of liberation problematically fraught with paternalism. As an example of cosmopolitan sensibilities in curriculum studies, the Franciscan tradition signals but one tradition currently eclipsed in curriculum discourses and refinements that drives at a discussion of Hispanophone educational and cultural criticism.


Author Biography

James C. Jupp, Georgia Southern University

James C. Jupp works as Assistant Professor of Curriculum and Pedagogy at Georgia Southern University in the Department of Teaching and Learning. He worked in rural and inner-city Title I settings for eighteen years before accepting a position working with teachers, administrators, and researchers at the university level. A veteran public school teacher in diverse rural poor and inner-city Title I schools, his first line of research focuses on committed White teachers’ understandings of race, class, language and difference pedagogy. Drawing on his experiences as teacher, he is the author of "Becoming Teachers of Inner-city Students," a piece which adds to discussions of White teachers recently published in Urban Education.  Additionally, drawing on his experiences living and studying in Spanish language traditions in Mexico and Texas, his second line of research develops cosmopolitan sensibilities in education. Emerging from his concerns for understanding cultural differences in education, cosmopolitan sensibilities argue for carefully historicized understandings of cultural difference presented in the article in this volume.

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Published

2013-06-18

Issue

Section

Disruption and Difficult Return: Monumental Fissures