The Unbearable Lightness of Curriculum: Essays in Curriculum Theory: The Selected Works of Madeleine R. Grumet

The title of this collection of Madeleine Grumet’s key writings, The Unbearable Lightness of Curriculum, captures what she takes to be the anxiety and ambivalence that accompany our visions of what is possible in our lives and the lives of our children. Her work explores the tension that pervades curriculum, drenched in the material and cultural realities of our lives, yet aiming toward the horizon of what might be possible. The essays are organized in three sections. Situated Subjectivity, The Art of Curriculum, Subjectivity and its Discontents. The introduction to each section frames its issues in the situation from which they sprang, both acknowledging the relation of situation and subjectivity expressed in their writing, and, using this opportunity to bring in the politics of education as Grumet experienced them as a professor and as a dean of schools of education.