ABSTRACT
Education is deeply implicated in the politics of culture. Its curriculum is never simply a neutral assemblage of knowledge, somehow appearing in the texts and classrooms of a nation. It is always part of a selective tradition, and is someone’s selection, some group’s vision of legitimate knowledge. It is produced out of the cultural, political, and economic conflicts, tensions, and compromises that organize and disorganize a society. As I argue in Ideology and Curriculum (Apple 1990) and Official Knowledge (Apple 1993), the decision to define some groups’ knowledge as the most legitimate, as official, while other groups’ knowledge hardly sees the light of day, says something extremely important about who has power in a society.
