ABSTRACT
Human beings, it is widely recognized, have the facility to live in multiple realities. The most prominent, it has been claimed, is the reality of everyday life, the privileged position of which ‘… entitles it to the designation of paramount reality’ (Berger and Luckman, 1966, p. 35, my emphasis). One might assume that children share this general human capacity, and that to them everyday life is likewise central. Of this life, the classroom occupies a substantial part. This chapter is concerned with whether, for young children, the curricular world of the classroom coincides with their realities beyond it, and with how ideologies of curriculum and teaching, including those underpinning National Curriculum English, as it has evolved through the years of the Dearing Review, sustain the links or drives wedges between them.
