ABSTRACT
The school curriculum is a social artefact, conceived of and made for deliberate human purposes. It is therefore a supreme paradox that in many accounts of schooling the written curriculum, this most manifest of social constructions, has been treated as a given. Moreover the problem has been compounded by the fact that it has often been treated as a neutral given embedded in an otherwise meaningful and complex situation. Yet in our own schooling we know very well that while we loved some subjects, topics or lessons, we hated others. Some we learnt easily and willingly, others we rejected whole-heartedly. Sometimes the variable was the teacher, or the time, or the room, or us, but often it was the form or content of the curriculum itself. Of course beyond such individualistic responses there were, and are, significant collective responses to curriculum, and again when patterns can be discerned it suggests this is far from a ‘neutral’ factor.
