ABSTRACT
Summary: Educational policy-makers in Africa claim to want a curriculum which is both flexible enough to draw previously under-represented minorities into school and yet sufficiendy uniform to reinforce national institutions and development. Curricula developed so far strongly favour uniformity at the expense of flexibility. Practical reasons for this imbalance are cited: the high cost of producing and approving diversified instructional materials, the scarcity of appropriate personnel to design them, their complicating effects on teacher training, staff deployment, and the drafting of selective examinations. Political constraints on flexible curricula are then discussed: the study of regional languages and history threatens national unity, enhanced awareness of regional economic inequalities threatens the vested interests of national elites; there is resistance to the imported Western notion of minorities within a policy having ‘rights’ to schooling and to an adapted curriculum. Thirdly, it is argued that the dominant view of curriculum in Africa is so prescriptive and utilitarian in terms of intended pupil outcomes and assumptions about under-qualified teachers that it inevitably resists any move towards flexibility and innovation. Finally, it is suggested that renewed debate on the learning process and schooling could lead to a compromise between standardization and flexibility which is (a) realistic about the teachers involved, (b) free from the charge of being merely a Western import, and (c) congruent with the wider sociopolitical process of nation-building.
