ABSTRACT
Adopting a familiar analysis of educational and other practical enterprises in terms of four formal constituent features of aims, methods, content and evaluation or assessment, debates about the curriculum might be regarded as revolving largely or exclusively around questions of content. A little thought, however, should be sufficient to show that this is a narrow and superficial conception, and most educational philosophers, theorists and policy makers worth their salt – from the time of Plato onwards – have clearly recognised that any adequate view of the curriculum must take into account not only what is to be learned, but also why and how it is to be learned, and how that learning stands to be evaluated. In short, conceptions of the curriculum are tantamount to attempts to answer the basic question of what it is to be educated per se.
