Revising the Agenda for a Democratic Curriculum

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Abstract
This article argues that current socio-educational theorizing licenses a further restriction of opportunities for socially significant educational interventions. Recent major reports on education in South Australia identify technological change as decisive. Moreover, their emphasis upon its supposedly abstract character leads to a narrowly technocratic assessment of its ‘increasing complexities’ and ‘more pervasive influence’. This leads to a push to re-centralize curricular control, notably in those high-status areas nominated as necessary for national scientific and economic development. My analysis also reveals that this official sponsorship of tighter central (i.e. departmental) controls has a strong politico-economic basis because ‘necessary efficiencies' are emphasized at this time of increasing fiscal difficulties. Furthermore, I document the existence of a more narrowly technical emphasis in teacher education, and contend that this will increasingly foster a ‘silent’ acceptance of departmental control of the curriculum by teachers-to-be. I cite recent empirical evidence on teaching practices and attitudes in Australian schools to indicate that the re-centralization of curricular control would formalize—and, of course, extend—what is already the case. Furthermore, I demonstrate the general significance of these basic assumptions about the curriculum and its practices through an analysis of their probable impact upon typical conditions of teaching and upon ‘progressive’ policy initiatives (notably the Victorian Ministerial Papers). I examine at length the broader socio-cultural implications of centralist and technicist curricular assumptions. I conclude by outlining oppositional strategies: these are characterized by broadly based socio-educational interventions and an alternative formulation of what constitutes ‘really useful knowledge’ in ‘an advanced technological society’.

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