ABSTRACT
In the previous chapter we discussed Hirst's thesis of the forms of knowledge as being the kind of account required by Bernstein's application of the Durkheimian principle of organic solidarity to required changes in the organisation of the curriculum. Such a model of curriculum change, as a causal model, we argued to be invalid as an account of the reasons for human action. Pressure for reformulation in rule-following terms we saw, however, had come from within the model itself, which was found to require the Chomskyan competence/performance distinction. In this chapter, therefore, we shall be considering Chomsky's rule-following model and some philosophical objections to it. In particular, as a model for understanding curriculum, we shall be considering what both Hirst and Hamlyn regard as a more satisfactory, later Wittgensteinian alternative to Chomsky's work as a framework for curriculum judgements. Then, finally, we shall conclude our account with our grounds for why Chomsky and the later Wittgenstein are not the representatives of such conflicting theses as Hirst and Hamlyn assume. In the course of this concluding argument, we shall, through a particular analysis of particular substantive and categorial concepts, be making a far more detailed application of family-resemblance analysis to the forms of knowledge as semantic universals than the general account of such an analysis already given (above, pp. 77-87).
