For me, a great pleasure in rereading Apple's Ideology and Curriculum is to realize how new his ideas were when he first published them.  In 1985 or 86, when I first read Ideology and Curriculum, I was just struggling to understand.  Now, I am able to situate his ideas both ideologically and historically. Indeed, one of the most significant practices that he introduces is the practice of situating!  As we discussed last week, we don't just situate, we situate ideas, practices, historical events.  And these are not just placed in time; rather they are situated historically, politically, culturally, economically, socially, ethically...  Which ideas or practices are best to situate are the ones, as Apple informs, that we take for granted or the ones that seem unquestionable.  Apple refers to these as "common sense assumptions" or just common sense. Apple writes, "Such critical scholarship would lay bare the political, social, ethical and economic interests and commitments that are uncritically accepted as 'the way life really is' in our day-to-day life as educators" (1979, p. 14).

Last week in our wonderful and difficult discussions of curriculum we discussed how many of the most challenging students in our classes come from families that just don't care or who do not value education.  As I was reflecting on our readings and discussions I thought that here might be an instance of the very unquestionable of the taken for granted of the common sense assumption.  So I thought we should dig a little deeper, pedagogically, politically, culturally, economically.  To this end, I identified four stations.  Please visit each station and before moving on to the next station, please write a comment or a reply to a comment.