ABSTRACT
It is held by anthropologists (67. p. 45) that resistance to change is proportional to the amount of change required in the receiving system. Individuals tend to resist most strongly at the point where the pressures of change are greatest; they come to see change as a threat and will, therefore, react defensively, often by using former practices more secretly, or by modifying the new practices in such a way that they are made increasingly to resemble the old. Combined curriculum courses and many forms of interdisciplinary study tend, after a time at all levels, to revert to the more conventional and the more familiar. Joint degree courses, which at first sight appear on paper to be highly imaginative and novel, frequently end in the subjects being taught in hermetically sealed containers. The author recalls very vividly interviewing a university
graduate in a 'joint honours' course in history and philosophy on his application for a post-graduate teacher-training course. When asked what sort of links were made in his university course between history and philosophy, his immediate response was 'None at all'. That he had made some links himself was quite clear in discussion, but it was equally clear that, at university department level, there had been considerable resistance to anything approaching the nature of interdisciplinary study.
