Globalization

The Lodestone Rock to Curriculum

Globalization ripples through every fissure in society. People hear the word and envision
the unification of countries all over the globe. For people from the United States, images of
Epcot sail through their head to the cheery tune of "It's a Small World" a utopian fantasy. And
London was afire with the 2012 Summer Olympics, reinvigorating the images of competing
nations that celebrate each other's success; an image of world peace streamed through the
media beginning with a glorious opening ceremony. Yet the day after, a British parliament
official tweeted, "Thank God the athletes have arrived! Now we can move on from leftie multi-
cultural crap" (Voigt, 2012). He did correct himself, saying that it wasn't multiculturalism that he
was discussing, but the show, which only deepened the meaning of his words (Voigt, 2012). To
many, however, the Olympics still represent humanity embracing the diverse ethnicities and
cultures of the world, but the elaborate opening ceremony, which cost England millions of
pounds, exemplifies how globalization is not just a happy family ride through Epcot.
Globalization is more than the uniting of countries and cultures in a euphoric state of free trade
and competition framed by a new unraveled economy. In order to compete in the global market,
"each nation has had to pillage the whole world, in search not just of the best machines but also
of the most effective practices and institutions" (Unger, 2005, p. 50). As nations pillage the world
for a spot in the global economy, who is gaining and who is losing? Cosmopolitanism,
neoliberalism, world citizenship, standardization of curriculum, and high-stakes testing are all
currents of globalization that are creating a mystifying tide that is coursing through curriculum in
schools and is negating and obscuring knowledges, identities, and spiritualities.

Globalization, exclusion, elimination, exploitation, poverty, and inequality go hand in

hand. While the economy provides an enormous amount of profit (see Gates, Koch, and
Walton), that wealth is not distributed equitably, unless it is equitable to keep it in the hands of
the few. In fact, "the total wealth of the top 358 'global billionaires' equals the combined incomes
of 2.3 billion poor people (45 percent of the world's population)" (Bauman, 1998, p. 70).
However, these numbers are another form of invisibility. People hear the numbers and
consequently occlude the faces, spirits, and minds they are supposed to represent. A number
mystifies. We can separate our humanity from it, and it makes life shocking but easier for us.
The validity of numbers is a truth that rules education at the moment, as teachers stare at data
charts with orange and blue dots that, when clicked on, show a student's success or failure on a
standardized rest. Those dots and numbers are our shield from the lived and the felt. Numbers
often occlude needed analysis of reality for class inequality under the tyranny of numerical
empiricism; despite claims about the absolute validity of numerical values, numbers are not
people, and they are sans human value. The unequal dispersal of wealth demonstrates the
effects of the "worldwide restratification" where "what is free choice for some descends as cruel
fate upon others" (Bauman, 1998, p. 70). This restratification reveals how the union of the world
does not necessarily mean that everyone is included- -a fallacy of unification. On the contrary,
this union strengthens the elite while creating new oceans to separate the majority from that
global wealth and enjoyment. Those without cultural capital are bound to their locality without
freedom of movement. Education plays a key role in the acquisition of this cultural capital.
Common Core exemplifies this with a uniform curriculum that is supposed to ensure "college
and career readiness' for U.S. students.

The United States prides itself on its educated youth, supposedly the future leaders of
the free world. Ironically, "free" seems to be associated less with the revolutionary foundations
of our country as in liberty, and more with the "free market," which shifts U.S. schools from
being ideal spaces for critical discourse and democracy and establishes them even further as
sites for the training of tomorrow's workforce. Chomsky (2004) describes how the United States
professes to be a democratic ideal for the world, yet "a study of the World Bank points out that
the new orthodoxy represents a dramatic shift away from a pluralist, participatory ideal of politics
and towards an authoritarian and technocratic ideal" (p. 139). The United States, instead of
establishing public schools as democratic spheres that reflect its heritage, has increasingly
chosen to transform schools into factories of efficiency and standardization. Equality for all
students means holding them to curriculum standards that eventually mold students in their
image, instead of engaging them in a process of redefining knowledge and developing their own
critical perspectives. This is expressed implicitly and explicitly throughout the Com. mon Core
initiative, which aims to enforce standards "that will set the stage for U.S. education not just
beyond next year, but for the next decade, and they must ensure all American students are
prepared for the global economic workplace" (Common Core State Standards Initiative, 2010).
Since the end of the nineteenth century, as Kliebard (2004) argues, the United States has
positioned itself as a leader in creating schools of efficiency and standardization, and that
legacy continues with Common Core.

Standardization and Efficiency Through Curriculum and Pedagogy

The standardized curriculum in schools does not allow them to function as agoras for critical
global and multicultural discourses; instead they are designed for the education training of the
masses, like an assembly line in a car fac tory, in which a certain knowledge is legitimated, the
"official knowledge" (Apple, 1993). The institution of mass education (cf. Meyer, Ramirez, &
Soysal, 1992) works well in education today with the establishment of a curriculum based on
scientific efficiency and research devoid of the public ques. tioning for whom and for what we
are efficiently schooling children. Although not specific to Common Core, Kliebard's (2004)
assertions are still valid in terms of how "the feverish and uncritical fashioning of tests in terms
of the existing curriculum and in the name of efficiency has undoubtedly served to fasten upon
the schools an archaic program of instruction and a false theory of the nature of learning" (p.
158). These tests are designed to measure a certain type of curriculum knowledge that is a
product and tool of the hegemonic bloc. Curriculum reforms demonstrate how this has become
an era of quality control with standards that children and teachers must meet. In 2010, the U.S.
Department of Education released A Blueprint for Reform: The Reautho-rization of the
Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which highlights some of the reframing of curriculum
and illustrates the federal government's plan. President Barack Obama opens the document
with a letter stating: "A world-class education is also a moral imperative--the key to securing a
more equal, fair, and just society" (U.S. DOE, 2010, p. 1). But, what will this moral imperative for
world-class education consist of, and what motivates it, according to the U.S. Department of
Education? It is accurate to say that we want equity in education, but do we want it more than
rigor, which appears 16 times in the document versus the 8 times that equality and the 2 times
that equity are used? This is just the frosting on the confectionary delight of the curriculum for
tomorrow; standard is mentioned 48 times in 38 pages, appearing alongside words such as
rigor, proficiency, common, content, upgraded, and innovative. But what about equality,
fairness, or justice? In these curriculum reforms, rigor means students are tested and molded,
leading often, if not always, to the
"rigor mortis" of education. Curriculum reforms for standardization are framed by the belief that
by "setting a high bar," society is preparing youth for the workforce, which will in turn strengthen
and improve the U.S. economy, that is, Common Core.

Tienken (2011) disputes this and first points to the inequity found within the standards,
which force everyone to achieve at the same level, thus ensuring that not everyone will receive
what they need and that "certain groups of students, those that do not fit into the new system,
will lose out. They will be labeled not proficient or in need of something, when perhaps they just
need more choices, more pathways, and more diversity of curricula" (p. 13). Tienken has a
point, but it is essential to remember that a market of "choices" does not mean any more equity;
rather, it can lead to a "choiceless choice" (Marcuse, cited in Macedo, Dendrinos, & Gounari,
2003, p. 127).
Also, Tienken (2011) addresses the claim that a universal curriculum will ensure economic
success, asserting that "perhaps it's not universal curriculum standards that make the
difference. Maybe it's a comprehensive social system that provides a quality social safety net for
children and mothers that has the greatest influence on ultimate education outcomes. The data
point in that direction" (p. 10). In addition, McCluskey (2010) analyzed several studies and found
an indefinite or nonexistent connection between national standards and economic success,
noting that "four OECD members outperformed the United States, six did worse, and all but the
United States and Australia had national standards" (p. 8). However, besides lacking positive
effects, the high-stakes testing seen in these national examinations can nar. row and
homogenize the curriculum. For instance, after analyzing 49 qualitative studies on the effects of
multiple-choice testing on curriculum, Au (2007) found that curriculum was narrowed, and
"content is increasingly taught in isolated pieces and often learned only within the context of the
tests themselves" (p. 264). Table I demonstrates how content contraction and teacher-centered
pedagogy occurred in 70.3% of studies and was also the most frequent theme pairing (Au,
2007, p. 264). The effects of standards can be seen at the individual level of the teacher and
student through curriculum, but also more broadly through the school system.
Lipman, in her book High Stakes Education: Inequality, Globalization, and Urban School Reform
(2004), looks at the Chicago Academic Standards (CAS) and Curriculum Frameworks (CFS)
and notes the effects on pedagogy and, con-sequently, student learning. Lipman states: "the
technical rationality undergirding the establishment of these standards encourages teachers to
focus on specific skills and information rather than rich content" (p. 48). The "frame-works" and
"objectives" that are supposed to help create foolproof teaching are in fact promoting the
technicalization of language and expression through objective- and skills-driven teaching and
learning. We need to push beyond the fact that curriculum is contracting and pedagogy is
increasingly teacher/ trainer centered. How and why are schools selecting the materials and
techniques for implementing the standardized curriculum and assessments? Many buy training
programs, textbooks, educational and curriculum resources, soft-ware, and so forth, to ensure
that students score well on tests. These companies and programs, "through their interactions
with school and district offices ... act as carriers of broader cultural norms that frequently
reinforce the very practices that reform designs aim to change" (Burch, 2007, p. 86). This
establishment of cultural norms means that students who do not fit into these parameters are
rejected from the discourse of schools, which alienates the psy-chological, cultural, racial, and
spiritual identities of students and teachers.
As teachers and administrators adapt and change to fit these policies and stan-dards, they are
legitimating certain types of knowledge and stifling authentic learning opportunities. As Osberg
and Biesta (2008) explain, "in creating learning environments (curricula) that aim to achieve
certain educational outcomes educators are, in effect, expected to ensure that only 'legitimate'
meanings emerge in the classroom" (p. 315). The process of training students and legitimating
standardized knowledge prevents students and teachers from engaging in discussions during
which meanings are analyzed and knowledge is questioned. Schools today are, to borrow from
Edward Bernay, "regimenting the public mind" and reframing commonsense so that the
"engineering of consent (is considered] the very essence of democratic practice" (as cited in
Chomsky, 2004, p. 137). Educational reforms may be reacting to globalization through
standardization of curriculum. This reaction is in fact reproductive and productive, creating a
hegemony that normalizes curricular standardization and sees globalization as the universal
panacea- a state of acceptance. However, other educational leaders and researchers would like
to see schools transformed into more than assembly lines and instead have students interact
and understand diverse views as citizens of the world. "Citizens of the world." What critical
transformative educators need to remember is that the world is a hegemonic narrowing of
perception, silencing the worlds within this "world." World citizenship and education for
cosmopolitanism need to be critically analyzed considering their juxtaposition with
standardization of curriculum.
Chartering Curriculum for Cosmopolitanism and World Citizenship

Cosmopolitanism and world citizenship have become an important part of the discussion
surrounding education, particularly through the curriculum. The concept of being citizens of the
world is contained in the cosmopolitan belief that maintains that individuals are part of "a
common humanity or world order rather than to a set of particular customs or traditions ... that
peace among nation-states is possible only if they transcend their parochial identities and
interests in the name of a global state or consciousness" (Trepanier & Habib, 2011, p. 1). This is
merely a base definition of cosmopolitanism, and many interpretations have been crafted, such
as patriotic cosmopolitanism (Appiah, 1997), insurgent cosmopolitanism (Santos, 2006), critical
cosmopolitanism (Delanty, 2006), and others.

However, what is critical within all these conceptions is the fact that even
counterhegemony faces the danger of becoming hegemonic. Whenever we challenge the
hegemonic bloc, we must remember that counterhegemony is framed in the language of the
original hegemony. The concept can break from the counterhegemony of the ideology. This
point is crucial. Also, what is left out of counterhegemony and hegemony should be seen in light
of Gramsci's (1971) words that "If it is true that every language contains the elements of a
conception of the world and of a culture, it could also be true that from anyone's language one
can assess the greater or lesser complexity of his conception of the world" (p. 325).
Counterhegemony has the potential to be seized by the hegemonic bloc, pulled away from its
ideology, and remade through consent into hegemony. When looking at a global public, global
consensus, global fights, and global rights, we must remember that language can magnify or
minimize the public's conception of reality.
Although world citizenship seems to be the new catchphrase, is it citizens or loyalists
that are being sought? A global public, a global perspective, a global citizen, a global mind....
But who delimits the meaning of global? For instance, Starkey (2012) notes the need in world
citizenship education to "transmit normative principles, particularly commitments to democracy
as the means of providing governance in diverse societies" (p. 23). The con cept of "transmitting
normative principles," especially in terms of democracy, seems to have strong U.S., or Western,
undertones. Although I believe in democracy, my definition may differ from the "normative
principle." which would become the standard for world citizenship. Accordingly would educa tion
not be extended from national enculturation to global? Anderson Gold (2001) also stated that
*the cosmopolitan citizen is one who views herself as a citizen of a world community based on
common human values'" (cited in Starkey, 2012, p. 25). This leads into a discussion of what
common human values are and who defines them. Starkey (2012) notes how the Council of
Europe supports the role of universal human rights in citizenship education and how
"citizenship education is a space where normative expectations can be learnt and the
possibilities offered by utopian imagining can be explored through democratic dialogue" (p. 32).
In addition, in developing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the drafters from
the United Nations General Assembly "set themselves up as the guardians of the global
conscience ... a collective conscience that extends to the whole of humanity" (Starkey, 2012, p.
26). Starkey (2012) asserts that these universal human rights offer an alternative to utilitarian
philosophy, which ignores those who are in the minority or are enemies of the state (p. 27). The
UDHR outlines these rights, but who gave them the power to decide? Who is actually defining
these principles? Who is above these principles?

The universal rights are supposed to encompass the world, yet the UDHR website has
the capability of translating it into only six languages compared to the thousands of existing
languages, and an audio does not appear to be available for the blind. However, in contrast,
Google offers a translation of the page into over 60 languages. This leads us back to the
question of who is the voice behind these words and their translations. Also, the UDHR
embraces
"the claim that universal respect for human rights will constitute 'the foun dation of freedom,
justice and peace in the world' (Starkey, 2012, p. 28).

The UDHR prescribes human rights for the world, but do these articles really ensure "freedom,
justice, and peace in the world"? The United Nations often seems to be at best a pacifier in the
mouth of a starving baby and at worst a gag. It travels the world under the banner of world
peace and justice, but peace and justice for whom? Who becomes invisible under the watchful
eyes of the United Nations, and who is exposed? World peace would mean a world without
conflict, but imagining a world without conflict means the training of minds to be quiet and to
accept reality as it is, and perhaps ignoring what's lived and real. As John Steinbeck wrote in
The Grapes of Wrath, "Fear the time when the bombs stop falling while bombers live for every
bomb is proof that the spirit has not died" (Steinbeck, 1939/1992, p. 206). If people and cultures
do not clash, then where is the diversity in the world? Peace means security and safety. Who
will truly be silenced by peace: justice or injustice, liberty or oppression? The need to fight for
our beliefs must not be stripped from human existence, or else we stand at the abyss of global
totalitarianism.
The idea of training minds for peace filters down to the education proposed by UNESCO (2007),
where citizenship education "aims to train the critical mind" (as cited in Garratt & Piper, 2011, p.
81). The idea of training a "critical mind" is an oxymoron unless considered in the same context
as training a critical reader, which is a familiar terminology for many U.S. teach-ers. Education
reform currently has translated critical into meaning the narrowing of the human mind to
perceive only what is critical or important for the test. In UNESCO's case, critical may be
translated as that which fulfills their mission for justice and world peace. The UN promotes the
idea of world consensus, but the UN's assertions should be considered in light of the "com-
plicity in the hegemony of Western ideology in creating an imagined consensus concerning the
concept of 'humanity'" (Camicia & Franklin, 2011, p. 314). Cosmopolitanism and world
citizenship are concepts that can hold immense power, and what needs to be examined is who
holds that power.
The danger of "dominant discourses" crafting the "universal idea of human-ity" seems to be
perilous to knowledges through curriculum, both written and hidden. Further, Parmenter (2011)
discusses how so many texts are not translated into English, and "monolingual English
researchers need to be aware of and open to the existence of other research paradigms, other
knowledges and ways of knowing, and their own position in being able to dominate the creation
and perpetuation of global discourse" (pp. 377-378). This contributes to the discussion of
world/global citizenship and universal human rights, as far as the exclusion of those whom
these terms describe but fail to acknowledge and value for their own beliefs. The exclusion of
voices from these discourses is further explained by Parmenter (2011): "This is not even a
question of power relationships between the researchers and researched. It is a question of
remembering that the vast majority of people in the world are never included in either category"
(p. 378). The linguistic exclusion and occlusion can be seen not only in the translation of texts
but also in the translation of worlds. This can be understood by its absence in research, but also
through the curriculum and pedagogy for students and teachers.

Critical Education of Imaginations, Spiritualities, and Counter-Dominant Epistemologies

Curriculum reform needs to be examined in light of the neoliberal domination of educational

discourse. There is not just a physical domination of power in society, which we often associate
with the military and law enforcement; there is also mental domination through the cultural
norms that have been previously expressed in the language of UNDHR, Common Core, and
standardized testing the current language of education in our society that is distributed through
homogenized curriculum. These establish a linguistic framework that silences those who are not
categorized by hegemonic views, and they result in an epistemicide (Santos, 2007, p. 424).
Through epistemicide, knowledges are destroyed and scientific knowledge is amassed and
strengthened, leading to the hegemonic bloc's control of knowledge while muting and
concealing the cacophonous past with a legitimized tableau To this Paraskeva (2011) adds that
"the struggle against epistemicides not only reveals multiple ways to pursue other forms of
knowledge, besides those under the Western scientific epistemological umbrella, but also
confirms that the dominant stream of modern science is a reductive, function paradigm project
edified by white males" (p. 166). Although speaking of the politics of identity in relation to the
curricular issues within multiculturalism, Pinar's (1992) questions are important to consider: "If
we understand ourselves as conceived by others, the question, Who am I? becomes, Whose
am I?" (p. 232). It is with these questions in mind that we should consider what Paraskeva
(2011) coined the Itinerant Curriculum Theory (ICT), which "will challenge one of the
fundamental characteristics of abyssal thinking: the impossibility of co-presence of the two sides
of the lines; it will challenge the culture politics of denial, that produce radical absence, the
absence of humanity, the modern sub-humanity" (Sousa Santos, 2009, p. 30; quoted in
Paraskeva, 2011, p. 188). Schools are currently engaged in epistemicides instead of fighting
against them. The advent of Common Core, Race to the Top, and PARCC has funneled
language and knowledge into a monocular tunnel that closes out (an)other knowledge and aims
to make students and teachers serve the purposes of neoliberalism. Although students and
teachers resist these forces, they also produce and reproduce them, often unknowingly, but
sometimes because of the symphony of fear trilling through schools in which the curriculum is
the smirking conductor. Cosmopolitanism and world citizenship need to be critically examined
so that we are calling "for the democratization of knowledges that is a commitment to an
emancipatory, non-relativistic, cosmopolitan ecology of knowledges" (Paraskeva, 2011, P. 154).
The homogenization of knowledge and transfusion of this to students' minds and souls negates
creativity and individualism. We must struggle for emancipation from a standardized curriculum
that exists within and beyond schools, because our educational system is not confined to the
schoolroom, nor is curriculum contained within a text.

Conclusion

Understanding the knitted intricacies of globalization, which I first encountered in

education as a district-wide goal adjoined with personalization-these two goals now seems to be
oxymoronic in my mind_ has been deepened through the standardized curricular stitches and
purls for students and teach-ers. While at a small conference in New Hampshire in April 2013, I
attended a symposium on globalization that drew approximately 13 teachers from 10 different
countries who were part of a program funded by the International Leaders in Education Program
(ILEP) at the College of Saint Rose in Albany, New York. Coincidentally, they were all teachers
of English, so they spoke the language fluently, and their focus appeared to be on technology
and studying U.S. pedagogical practices. All seemed to be impressed with the United States,
and a participant commented that there is a "knowledge explosion in this end of the world... they
[American students] know so much." This is the hegemony of English: participants returned
home, perhaps thinking about all the things that their students didn't know or couldn't say.
Students across the globe know so much, but because it doesn't conform to the hegemony and
epistemologies favored by the Western world, thus it is delegitimized. Martusewicz, Edmunson,
and Lupinacci (2011) quote Bowers: "An analysis of globalization of modernist thinking and the
associated patterns of hyper-consumption and commodification that have led to the exploitation
of the Southern Hemisphere by the North for natural and human resources" (p. 9). It is not only
commodification of resources, but also the commodification of human capital and knowledge as
well as the hyper-consumption of the "American" way or Western thinking.

One must reflect on the assertion that American students "know so much" because it
isn't really that they know so much. It's just that they have been trained to know what is valued
or favored in a globalized economy and have been readied for the neoliberal marketplace. One
cannot merely gaze at U.S. children and schools as perfect examples. Although there is so
much there that seems like a "peaceful," happy world, it's actually just placated chil. dren who
are being molded into the "workers of the world," neither citizens nor creators. Rhetoric spouts
equity for all and presses for the creation of twenty-first-century learners who are prepared to be
global competitors, not citizens. Further, what U.S. democratic reality is being viewed? IREX
participants referenced visiting Albany schools and described how there were three teachers in
a room with nine kids, which even within special education isan amazing teacher-to-student
ratio. Also, on average, according to the U.S. Bureau of the Census (2011), Albany has a
median income of $57, 715 and a poverty rate of 12.8%. The population is 13% Black, 5%
Hispanic, 5% Asian, and 77% White, non-Hispanic. Were ILEP participants seeing the complete
picture of the U.S. school system? Was the College of Saint Rose chosen as, perhaps, a narrow
translation of the "English" world? Wacquant (2009) claims that the United States "has become
the beacon country of all humanity, the sole society in history endowed with the material and
symbolic means to con. cert its historical particularities into a transhistorical ideal and then to
make that ideal come true by transforming reality everywhere in its image" (p. 247). A beacon
indeed. But what is behind that blinding bright light? I heard ILEP participants speak about
practices, such as "formative assessments," that they would take back to their classrooms and
colleagues. But although one participant remarked that they were "Going out to schools not only
to learn but also to share our knowledge," I did not hear them reference any instance of a U.S.
teacher learning from them or whether they were even allowed to teach a class. It seemed that
they were there as observers: a curriculum of imitation. This analysis coincides with ILEP's
project statement to further develop expertise in their subject areas, enhance their teaching
skills, and increase their knowledge about the United States .... ILEP teachers participate in an
academic program at U.S. universities that includes coursework and intensive training in
teaching methodologies, curriculum development, and the use of technology for education ...
includes a field experience at a U.S. secondary school to actively immerse participants in the
American classroom environment. (ILEP, 2013) Whose knowledge is valued? Whose world is
silenced? This program doesn't seem to focus on engaging in a dialogue about education with
these participants, but rather immersing them in one world for the submersion of another.
Finally, the last participant, a young woman from Egypt, took a different direction in the
discussion from that of her colleagues and spoke about how we are "forced to teach for
globalization." The veracity of her statement cannot be overlooked. In teaching for globalization,
we are forced into standardization and control of knowledge. Students' (and teachers')
imaginations are not taken into consideration; we are focused on assuring the quality of the
products in meeting consumer standards. In response to her words, 1 claimed that we need to
be critical of how globalization homogenizes identities, and how those at the top have the capital
to move about the world as they would like, while the rest of the world is trapped within their
locality. Globalization through technology creates a digital world where people can easily
control global markets and live in a physical space fueled by the human capital of those living in
and trapped in another country that their business is in. A huge gap exists between those who
have the ability to move and the freedom to live the way they want to, and those who are
struggling to survive. Globalization becomes a tool of suppression: suppression of human rights
and suppression of language. Neoliberalism is the momentum driving globalization and, in terms
of the education system, the connection between neoliberalism and colonial. ism is apparent.
The curriculum is the colonizer's language that the subjects, students and teachers alike, must
mimic as the colony; the school functions in the imperial realm of neoliberalism. Initiatives such
as IREX/ILEP, Common Core, and UNESCO manifest the power of globalization to silence
languages and epistemologies and restructure them in ways that challenge common sense. As
Macedo and colleagues (2003) wrote, "In general, movements that claim to promote ethnic,
linguistic, and cultural integrity attempt, in real. ity, to impose cultural domination through
linguistic domination, under the guise of an assimilative and let's-live-all-together-happily model.
This process invariably becomes a form of stealing one's language, which is like stealing one's
history, one's culture, one's own life" (p. 37). This is the Epcot model in which the swirls and
whirls of cultures are dizzying and enchanting, where the rhetoric transforms realities into
memories and into abysses, but the real is still lived, even when it isn't perceived.
Globalization may be making the world smaller for some, but it is also removing it from the
reach of others. Education and curriculum are also being drawn into it, echoing Camicia and
Franklin's (2011) words that "dominant discourses create and maintain a kind of gravitational
pull on marginal dis-courses, a pull that seeks standardization, assimilation and efficiency" (p.
313).
These dominant discourses fueled by globalization and inequity act as a lode. stone rock for
education and the curriculum, which has, perhaps, like Ajib's ship in The Arabian Nights- been
forced to crash. Now, in the face of the epistemicide carried out through media and state
polices, the question remains for us: How do we rebuild education to create a global agora for
the emergence of students' voices, knowledges, and beliefs? The first step is to reexamine what
is taught within our schools and to note the gaps that exist there. In view of the absences and
the standardization of discourses currently seen through curriculum and educational policies,
there needs to be a curriculumcide to help stop the epistemicide that is occurring. We need to
look beyond the curriculum of students and that of the curriculum used on teachers as well.
Curriculum should create a space wherein languages, cultures, knowledge, and spiritualities are
engaged—instead of silenced—though a curriculum that seems to speak through one unified
“global” voice.