Implications of Postmodern Curriculum Theory for the Education of the Talented

Postmodern curriculum theory provides a framework for educators of the gifted and talented to critique the assumptions of the field from within the field. Five overar-ching themes derived from postmodern literature are discussed. These are presence, origin, unity, denial of transcendence, and constitutive otherness. Five issues are subsumed beneath the themes. These are issues of discourse, the body, the canon, gender, and power and class. Modern visions of education as characterized by the Tylerian ratio-nale, behavioral lesson plans, context-free objectives, competitive and external evaluation, dualistic models that separate teacher and student, meaning and context, subjective persons and objec-tive knowledge, body and spirit, learning and environment, and models of linear progress through value-neutral information trans-mission are no longer acceptable in the postmodern era. —Patrick Slattery (1995b, p. 612)— A postmodern world will involve postmodern persons, with a post-modern spirituality, on the one hand, and a postmodern society, ultimately a postmodern global order, on the other. Going beyond the modern world will involve transcending its individualism, anthropocentrism, patriarchy, mechanization, economism, con-sumerism, nationalism, and militarism. Constructive postmodern thought provides support for the ecology, peace, feminist, and other emancipatory movements of our time, while stressing that the inclusive emancipation must be from modernity itself