Summary
"A Curriculum of Agape is a self-help book, love story, and practical guide for anyone who is interested in becoming a teacher or for those looking to rekindle their relationship with the profession. Through vulnerability and honesty, Dr. Johnson connects to her reader and shares her experiences as a veteran teacher, examining how attitudes, institutions, and structures have infl uenced the teaching profession. Dr. Johnson reminds us that teaching and learning is an emotional and professional calling, where a curriculum centered on love will help us achieve more equity and belonging in our classrooms and communities."
—Dr. Breanne Hicks Cultivator for Interdisciplinary Studies and English Teacher, Saint Mary’s Hall, San Antonio, TX
"This book should be in the hands of every teacher and educational leader in the field. Dr. Johnson layers the complexity of equity, inclusion, and restorative justice practices, with the development of student identity in a way that is accessible to educators."
—Dr. Paula Johnson Chief Equity and Diversity Officer Judson Independent School District, San Antonio, TX
Excerpt
Table Of Contents
- Cover
- Title
- Copyright
- About the author
- About the book
- This eBook can be cited
- Contents
- Foreword
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction-How I Arrived at Agape
- Part I. Theorizing Love
- Chapter 1. Agape Love in Theory
- Chapter 2. Love Is Not Immature
- Part II. To Know Them Is to Love Them
- Chapter 3. And How Are the Children?
- Chapter 4. Terms of Endearment
- Chapter 5. One Knee Doesn’t Bring Up a Child
- Part III. Meet Them Where They Are
- Chapter 6. Understanding Equity
- Chapter 7. Social and Academic Belonging
- Chapter 8. Cultural Belonging—“Sawubona: I See You”
- Chapter 9. Interpreting Their Behavior
- Part IV. Forgive and Forget
- Chapter 10. Love Forgives All
- Conclusion
- Glossary
- References
- Notes on Contributors
- Index
Foreword
These are troubling times in the history of school curriculum in the United States and around the world. As Apple reminded us, classroom curriculum does not exist within a socio-political vacuum.1 It is always connected to the current socio-political climate of any given society. The murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, in 2020 and most recently the beating to death of Tyre Nichols by Memphis police, sparked a renewed call for a deeper dialogue about issues of institutional inequities and oppression in the United States. Schools are one of the avenues to enable such a dialogue. In this volume, Stacy Johnson demonstrates various ways in which schools can help ameliorate these institutional inequities. The volume calls for dialogues through school curriculum. For many years, progressive scholars advocated for school curriculum that can bring increasing awareness of the troubling history of racial discrimination and the oppression of minoritized communities in the U.S. Yet, this effort also brought an increased opposition of classroom curriculum that is inclusive and critical to humanize all students.
Specifically, attempts by progressive curriculum scholars to introduce classroom textbooks that recognize and represent all identities, histories, including current social struggles, have been fiercely opposed by a segment of neo- conservative legislators, governors, and their constituencies. For instance, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida has outlawed the teaching of Critical Race Theory in classrooms; Governor, Sarah Huckabee of Arkansas, has outlawed the use of the Latinx identity in classroom curriculum. Brain Lopez reports that Texas (the state in which I live) has banned more books than any other state, specifically targeting those that represent the LGBTQ+ and Black and Brown communities.2 For these neo-conservative critics, a curriculum that represents all different groups is indoctrination. What is even more troubling is not simply the banning of inclusive curriculum textbooks, but the denial to acknowledge the long overdue curriculum of love, which Stacy Johnson eloquently discusses in this volume.
A Curriculum of Agape: Reimaging Love in the Classroom couldn’t have appeared at better time when our classroom curriculum is overly focused on standards and testing. The notions of love as curriculum that are discussed in this volume represent ideas beyond standards and testing and beyond the traditional Eurocentric curriculum that the gatekeepers fight to retain. This volume makes a renewed call for equity, diversity, and inclusion in classroom curriculum. The book is a critical attempt to remind teachers and those involved in our public schools to actively humanize all students, and, much more importantly, to include their identities in the curriculum.
In many ways, A Curriculum of Agape reinforces the call for inclusive curriculum and teaching for the common good. Curriculum for the common good, as I have argued elsewhere, promotes democratic goals and seeks to empower all citizens who participate in it.3 Teaching for the common good is exemplified by dedicated teachers who provide students with learning experiences that promote a democratic way of life.4 Similarly, Stacy Johnson’s volume has demonstrated beyond a doubt that teachers who are afforded a space to teach curriculum characterized by love can in fact teach for the common good. In such a curriculum, there is a great potential for all diverse students to learn about their communities, the roles they play in their communities, and to think about ways in which they could engage with one another for the purpose of communal growth, which fosters co-existence with others.
This volume must be read by all teachers and education stakeholders who are committed to transforming our curriculum. It offers critical and potential solutions for humanizing curriculum so that all students in classrooms will be valued and respected as human beings. The volume helps the reader understand the significance of curriculum that is not devoid of love. It is also a vivid reminder of the struggles faced by minoritized communities who have been otherized by our social institutions, as we have witnessed in the banning of books that represent all students’ identities in the curriculum, including the teaching of truth about the history of inequities. One of the important questions this volume pushes the reader to wrestle with is: How can we incorporate and use critical curriculum, a loving curriculum, to rethink the notions of equity and diversity in US classrooms? I believe the reader will agree with me that this volume brings a glimmer of hope as curriculum must take a leadership role in building stronger, democratic communities.
Preface
“… [I]f they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.” (Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom)
Reportedly, among Buddha’s final words to society was the charge to be our own light—to use our intelligence and life experiences to awaken to truth and mediate our path.1 How is it that a society which professes to value academic preparation also under-prepares, under-resources, and under-pays its primary assets—educators? The depth of disrespect for the role of education and educators is captured in the long standing phrase, popularized by George Bernard Shaw in his 1903 play, Man and Superman, “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.”2 Educators are the load bearing beams of society, more appropriately characterized by Aristotle: “Those who know, do. Those that understand, teach.” The COVID-19 pandemic has brought an already stretched U.S. educational infrastructure to its knees and has provided an unavoidable moment of critical reflection, encouraging us all to reimagine our understanding of today’s student and our social persistence on lovelessness as it impacts the role of education and educators.
This trauma upon the American educational system is further complicated by political jockeying, laying bare the caste system that has traditionally abandoned Black, brown and impoverished students to marginalization through inequitable academic preparation. Our current condition, as several U.S. states are on the precipice of outlawing antiracist, anticolonial classroom dialogues within public spaces, is an autobiographical one in which the future of education hangs in the balance of a historical curricular identity of censorship that remains prevalent on both the sociopolitical left and the right.3 Race is censored, spiritual identity is separated, critical thought is excised, culture is canceled, and love is circumvented. In this darkness we grope for effectual resolutions to poor learning outcomes for marginalized student populations through novel approaches—Culturally Responsive Pedagogy, Multicultural Education, Growth Mindset, Social Emotional Learning (SEL)—avoiding one key dialogue that ought to enlighten them all, reimagining a curriculum that is centered in love—unconditional love.4
Details
- Pages
- XX, 190
- Year
- 2024
- ISBN (PDF)
- 9781636673585
- ISBN (ePUB)
- 9781636673592
- ISBN (Softcover)
- 9781636673578
- DOI
- 10.3726/b21317
- Language
- English
- Publication date
- 2024 (January)
- Keywords
- Reimagining Love in the Classroom Stacy C. Johnson Curriculum Pedagogy Equity Inclusion Teaching Instruction anticolonial love A Curriculum of Agape
- Published
- New York, Berlin, Bruxelles, Chennai, Lausanne, Oxford, 2024. XX, 190 pp.
