Professor Pinar from the University of British Columbia gave a campus talk to teachers and students from the College of Education at the Tian Jiabing Building on March 26. The talk was hosted by Professor Zhang Wenjun, the chair of the Institute of Curriculum and Instruction.

    William F. Pinar is one of the most highly regarded education experts in North America. Known for his work in the area of curriculum theory, Pinar has been strongly associated with the reconceptualist movement in curriculum theory since the early 1970s. The reconceptualist movement was a response to crises in the curriculum field during that time.

    Believing that we are meeting another crisis right now, he chose a shocking title, “The End of Public Education in The United States” to show his worries about the deliberate destruction of public education. Pinar pointed out that the end of education in America was indicated by the plundering of public budgets by private companies. And with the privatization of schooling teachers have devolved into bureaucrats, checking students’ completion of online assignments. In universities, economists have replaced education professors as the experts in federally funded educational research.

    Professor Pinar provided details of these developments with the indignation demanded by professional ethics, and discussed related problems with the teachers and students from ZJU. After the lecture, they also shared opinions about issues of common concern, such as the relationship between the use of technology and the capitalization and bureaucratization of education.