Educational futures: Conflicting visions for Acirema “The Possible”

Abstract

The year is 2070, yes, the 50th anniversary of the Roaring Year 2020. The United States of Acirema (Williams, 1997) was dealing with political discord, a struggling economy, a pandemic, and social unrest. Schiro (2013) published a book titled Curriculum Theory: Conflicting Visions and Enduring Concerns, which focused on four curriculum ideologies/visions: scholar academic, social efficiency, learner centered, and social reconstruction. Aciremas became very adamant on the futures of education and society, and the country quickly became known as the Divided States of Acirema with citizens being divided by their beliefs/visions for education and society. The four visions are best understood through the lens of four former high school friends who each live in different states. To begin with, George treasures the cultural values and knowledge from the past, wants to end the political discord, and unite the United States of Acirema. In contrast, Wally is learning new skills based on society needs, which enables him to be marketable in a struggling economy and the age of artificial intelligence. Next, Covid, who is the narrator, loves his state and is able to learn and live based on his personal interests and beliefs; therefore, this allowed him to conduct an ethnographic study (Fetterman, 1998; Hammersley and Atkinson, 1995) during the pandemic with the goal of uniting Acirema. Last, Justice is committed to ending social unrest by focusing on equality in her state and improving society for all. As Schiro (2013) clearly states in his thesis, these ideologies have conflicting visions for educational futures and are struggling with the ideal of syncretism (Berner U, 2001; Ezenweke and Kanu, 2012). After taking the ideology survey (Schiro, 2013) and discovering your beliefs and values, Covid, the narrator, will ask you to join him by using the Public Values Model (Rogers, 2020) to create syncretism where we can all live together as the United States of Acirema.