Currere mappa?

As I continue thinking about curriculum mapping (CM) this week, I'm wondering about the analogies and metaphors used to define and explore CM, what do the etymologies of the words "curriculum" and "map" offer to our understanding of the concept of curriculum mapping?

Whenever I want to get inside the meaning of a word, I always go back to its origins. Often, the richest metaphors of meaning come from the words, from which today's language is originally derived. So, here we go.

From www.etymonline.com:

CURRICULUM
from Modern Latin transferred use of classical Latin curriculum "a running, course, career" (also "a fast chariot, racing car"), from currere "to run, move quickly" (same origins as current)

MAP
shortening of Middle English mapemounde "map of the world" (late 14c.), from Medieval Latin mappa mundi "map of the world," first element from Latin mappa "napkin, cloth" (on which maps were drawn). The verb map is first attested 1580s; "to put (something) on the map".

It's fascinating to consider these two etymologies, especially when one considers them together. When people think of curriculum, yes, we think of a course, but a course of study. The idea of a race course, reminds me of the time crunch so many teachers feel when trying to fit a course of study into a 9-month school year. But it also makes me wonder if we can understand a fast-moving course of study as the journey that we take as a classroom community, no matter what the content. I feel like we forget that it's not the content of curriculum that is moving through the year - we are. We're the ones moving through the experiences of life, constructing an understanding of the world as we interact with each other, with text, and with our observations. This is, indeed, a fast-moving process, hard to capture in the moment, and yet, perhaps the very essence of our schooling experience.

How fitting, then, that map comes from the cloth, on which our geographical understanding of the world was recorded and depicted. The first maps were not constructed with the purpose of determining what course of travel was to be taken, but to record the courses of discovery that had already been taken. Lewis and Clark, for example, mapped their route and their surroundings as they went, because they had no idea what the Louisiana Territory held. I wonder if teachers can consider themselves in a similar position: instead of mapping a route through known territory, mapping what they notice and encounter in places they haven't been before.

Combined, the origins of curriculum mapping might be currere mappa. To run on a cloth. Hmm, not entirely satisfying. But what if we thought of it as a clue to humans' early cognizance of representing one's journey to the world? What if "running on a cloth" meant reflecting on our journey by abstractly - symbolically - watching ourselves run the course of our lives in a way that allows us to make sense of where we're running to, where we're running from, and what surroundings we interact with in the process? All of this seems to support the idea that curriculum mapping is not the mapping of a journey-to-be, but of a journey as it continues to unfold, day by day, experience by experience.