For over 70 years, Ralph W. Tyler’s Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction has been the subject of considerable debate among curriculum scholars. This article offers a different reading of the Tyler rationale, juxtaposed with Foucault’s Discipline and Punish. The author suggests that Tyler’s rationale shares many of the carceral logics described by Foucault in his genealogy of disciplinary power. This reappraisal of the Tyler rationale is significant in the current education policy environment. Tyler’s emphasis on the attainment of assessable predetermined objectives has helped institutionalize punitive accountability regimes and may assist revanchist political actors in manufacturing moral panics around issues of gender, sexuality, racial history, and civics education. The logics of Tyler’s curriculum protocol have been institutionalized as common sense in kindergarten through 12th grade and university education and are antithetical to crucial deliberation over the pressing existential issues we all face, including autocratic threats to education itself.
