ABSTRACT
At a more consciously political level, liberal social democracy represents one of the most powerful ideologies in contemporary British urban education. Legitimated at both government and local authority level, its prescription for positive discrimination in favour of deprived areas and for the creation of urban community schools and community curricula, seen to be the means for generating active and responsible local democracy, have had a wide appeal. The ideology of child centredness is most associated with the colleges of education as institutional contexts. In its emphasis upon the regenerating possibilities, especially for urban schools, of a child-centred, open and active pedagogy. The ‘classless’ institution - the comprehensive school -remains in inner-city areas the school of the urban working class; the more extensive curriculum remains a curriculum in which most children fail; teacher autonomy is real for some and unreal for others.
