The Crisis of Curriculum Change

Some scholars have recently argued that the system was, from its early days, built to ensure stability and to mystify and conceal the power relations that underpin all curriculum-making. For instance, speaking of Germany specifically, and Europe generally, Haft and Hopmann have argued that:

Societies like ours are class societies, organised to provide for an uneven distribution of the resources needed for self-determination of one’s way of life, and thus one’s chances of education. Since such resources cannot be increased at will, every decision about distribution means taking from one and giving to another. Consequently, social struggle is on the national as well as on the international agenda. Problems arise whenever the losers refuse to give in. Thus, from the viewpoint of the dominant forces in the distribution fight, it is necessary to organise the distribution in a way that it can ensure consensus by a majority, or at least not effectively be challenged.

The same holds for state-run curriculum making: The distribution of knowledge is socially secure as long as it is accepted as a rule, or at least not effectively challenged, however unequal it may be (Haft and Hopmann, 1990, p. 159).

And further that:

curriculum making is the mode of producing curricula which makes sure that the structure of the social process conceals the underlying power relations, or at least prevents their being effectively interfered with.

This concealment is not as easy as it sounds. Simply keeping quiet will not do, unless Orwell’s nightmare comes true with complete control of the social distribution of knowledge. Moreover, to keep quiet all of those contributing to the existing structure of distribution would have to agree - something which is very unlikely in a society like ours. Hence, what is needed is an elaborate system able to provide legitimation of the desired distribution. At its best, such a system can itself produce or organise the legitimation it needs. Frictions that may occur during the process of legitimation must not affect the underlying balance of power, but have to be neutralised in other areas (making them appear as technical problems of, for instance, the structure of knowledge or the method of teaching) (Haft and Hopmann, 1990, p. 160).

In scrutinising the emergence of their own system in Germany from the first Prussian Normal plan of 1816, they note that the division of syllabi, according to school level and school type, further entailed divisions into timetables, examination and promotion regulations, instructions concerning textbooks etc. In its final version, these divisions are augmented by the overall syllabus which is reduced to a subject-based catalogue of goals and contents. Haft and Hopmann argue that:

For the administration, the practical returns of this differentiation of the curricular framework serve a double purpose. First, the separation of syllabus editing from decisions about structural as well as educational principles from pressure which would otherwise arise from the curricular discourse where basic structures of knowledge distribution are touched upon. Proposals to change that distribution by curriculum reform can thus almost always be rejected with reference to other levels of regulation (such as laws, examination rules, or timetables). The exclusion of fundamental school organisation and subject canon questions has become so self-evident for syllabus authors that today suggestions to treat such questions in the curriculum commissions are met with incomprehensibility. On the other hand, all attempts to eliminate once initiated differentiation, e.g. to have structural and subject planning questions solved by one and the same commission, have failed and thus proved the necessity of compartmentalisation.

The second advantage of continuing differentiation lies in its creation of a clear framework of reasoning for the planning of distinct sections of subject matter. Thus, there is no discussion at all about the purpose of schooling as a whole, but narrowly defined issues, such as whether optics should be taught in the seventh or in the ninth grade, or which type of literature should dominate in tenth grade lessons. Such detailed questions are obviously questions for experts, and not for the general public. Tying syllabus work to subjects opens up ways of justification, which are hardly possible at a more comprehensive level. As for the rest, the subject constraints in syllabus work are reflected in paralleled differentiations in school administration, teacher training, and employment, and thus create a consistent network of cross-reference elements in which all curricula quarrels can be taken care of (Haft and Hopmann, 1990, p. 162).