ABSTRACT
Social realism's 'curriculum problem' is that it has been unable to go beyond making the case 'for knowledge' in order to convincingly state what knowledge should make up the subjects of the school curriculum. The chapter examines a recent attempt to engage with this 'curriculum problem' - Michael Young and David Lambert's 2014 book Knowledge and the Future School. It explores the question of school knowledge through brief examinations of two subjects in the English school curriculum - music and geography. School music offers an important prism through which to explore the question of school knowledge, not least because debates about 'whose music' encapsulate the very idea of powerful knowledge. In the post-war period in England, the question of whose music has been posed with increased urgency at times of rapid social and cultural change. Economic and social changes in the decades after the Second World War led to significant developments in 'academic' and school versions of the subject.
