The Third Curriculum—from a Christian Perspective

According to Michel Serres, and those who support his views about education, the truly educated person is one who has been exposed to the so-called Third Curriculum. This conviction is evaluated from the vantage point of a Christian view of reality, education, and the curriculum. The author concludes that while Third-Curriculum thinking appears to be innovative and creative, its two central tenets of interdisciplinarity and dialogical thinking are not quite so new. He also concludes that the Third-Curriculum theory is still too vague, inconsistent, and programmatic to be seriously considered for implementation in schools. Its postmodern refusal to acknowledge the divine, law-subjected orderliness of creation as well as its tendency to reduce the God-given diversity in reality to only one or two aspects of reality are contrary to convictions underlying the Christian view of the curriculum and curriculum design.