ABSTRACT
This counter-move is based on a very proper reading of power relations in the curriculum. Not only this, it is based on simple pedagogical common sense: that students learn what they want to learn and that what they want to learn is very much defined by what is relevant to their own particular cultural context. The traditional academic curriculum was simply a mechanism for defining certain students as failures. It appeared to be equitable because it was comprehensive. But, in a subtle and pernicious way, it condemned particular social groups to exclusion by virtue of its discriminatory cultural presupposition that the Anglo, male culture of competitive academic success is universally superior.
