The Crisis of Curriculum Change

Let me now move on to a more recent world movement and then, I think, you will begin to see why I have been providing this historical introduction. A New World movement in the school curriculum began in the 1960s and 1970s. This was powered by, in the United States, a desire for the ‘great society’ and, in many Western countries, by a desire to create more inclusive curriculum to bring in the many groups and classes that had been excluded by previous settlements of public schooling. Hence, new curricula were defined in the 1960s and new interdisciplinary patterns of work generated. Normally, the attempt was associated with a more comprehensive system of schooling, which broke down the selective boundaries which had been erected over past centuries. Comprehensive schools and more comprehensive curricula went hand-in-hand. As in the previous world movement at the end of the 19th Century, the attempt was to democratise schooling and provide genuine education for a mass clientele.

But, as also with the previous world movement, a counter reaction to restratify and redirect schooling began in the 1980s under the title of ‘Back to Basics’. Once again, the attempt was to internalise the discussion about the social and political purposes of schooling and to restratify clienteles. This time a dual approach was adopted. Firstly, the reassertion of the traditional school subjects which, as we have seen, had done their work so successfully in the period following 1910 and, secondly, a move to confine the discussion of schooling within the site of each school. The discussion then could be confined both within subjects and within each individual school site. Thereby, once again, any general discussion about restructuring the purposes of schooling could be confined. It is here that one begins to confront the crisis of change in the postmodern period. For if change is confined within these sites, then the change itself is confined in ways that cannot challenge the basic structures of schooling. Hence, change activity works in fact to conserve the status quo. This is the paradox of progressivism that we currently confront.

Let me look at these two strategies in turn. Firstly, the reassertion of traditional school subjects. This movement has taken different forms in different countries. In the United States, it has taken the form of a broadly based ‘back to basics’ movement, sponsored by the New Right which attained power with Reagan’s election in 1980. In other countries, it has taken a more nationalistic flavour with the enshrinement of ‘national curriculum’ guidelines. This has been the case in countries as geographically far apart as the United Kingdom and New Zealand. In the former case, the similarity between the original world movement, establishing school subjects in the late nineteenth century and the more recent national curriculum guidelines, can be clearly seen in the following chart:

1904	1988
English	English
Mathematics	Mathematics
Science	Science
History	History
Geography	Geography
Physical Exercise	Physical Education
Drawing	Art
Foreign Language	Modern Foreign Language
Manual Work
Domestic Subjects	Technology
(Music added soon afterwards)	Music