ABSTRACT
To discuss the character of James B. Macdonald's pedagogy is a difficult task for me: not only was I not a student of his in the traditional sense, but! was also his son. What this means is that I never actually knew him in the traditional teacher role, as one who engages in a practice in which there are structural situations of learning, reading, writing, thinking, and dialogue. That is not to say that this role didn't seep into our relationship, for it did. But it does mean that my experience with him as "teacher" was always overlaid by the fact that I was his son, someone who was related to him in an intimate way, biologically, socially, and culturally. Indeed, the fact that he was my father means that attempting to define his pedagogical style becomes even more difficult: it was, still is, and will always be, too intimate, not in the sense of emotionally close (and thus possibly traumatic) but rather in terms of being hidden within the recesses of my being as a "tacit dimension" (or even more relevantly, a "hidden curriculum"). As my father was wont to urge curriculum thinkers and workers, this task of uncovering the tacit dimension to our lives-be it associated with schooling or our personal lives-should be foremost in our projects. It is my hope that the foregoing process of personal discovery, one that must be unique, has a public dimension as well.
