Street sign of Lucy Diggs Slowe Way, Howard University. Credit: Justin D. Knight/Howard University.

Sandra Leaton Gray and David Scott.

On 22 October 2021, Howard University honoured the American educator Lucy Diggs Slowe by naming a street after her at 2455 4^th St NW, Washington DC. The designation ceremony was led by Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Howard alumna herself. Phylicia Rashad, Dean of the Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts, asked the question: “What was that impetus, what was that spirit inside that young woman? This faith and confidence and belief in herself? … What I am really excited about is discovering that same spirit within our young women on this campus today. And bringing them to that realisation within themselves of who they are in spirit. Confident. Aware. Capable. Strong. Intelligent. Prepared to inspire the next generation, the next generation, the next generation. Because this is what we do, this is how we are, and this is how we stay.” (more…)

Six women curriculum theorists, clockwise from top left: Maria Montessori, Lucy Diggs Slowe, Susan Isaacs, Susan Haack, Martha Nussbaum, Maxine Greene (Credit: public domain; Alpha Kappa Alpha; IOE Institute Archives; zooterkin; Robin Holland; Ryan Brenizer, all Wikimedia Commons)

Sandra Leaton Gray and David Scott.

At David’s retirement party, after all the toasts and speeches, we started discussing something that represents a still accumulating problem in the field of curriculum studies: how is it that so many of the seminal works relating to curriculum theory focus exclusively on the contributions of men, given that there are many such female theorists (and professional educators are more likely to be women)? To that end, recently we have been giving a great deal of thought to different formations and interpretations of feminism, as a way of gaining new insights into the field. (more…)