ABSTRACT
As a modern invention, the curriculum has always contended with what to teach young students. This chapter maintains that current academic discussions on post-factual society ignore historical ideas and models that were decisive for developing public education as a democratic project. Discussions overlook European liberal traditions for developing state-regulated systems, in particular the Prussian model of the Rechtsstaat claiming the rule of the law and the French Napoleonic model of the principe de légalité. Within a curriculum perspective, the Rechtstaat model structures content into a grammar of schooling shaped by educational reasoning and thereby a language called Didaktik. The Napoleonic model is more concerned with citizens’ rights and the scientific architecture of the curriculum that enables humans to become educated citizens through their careers as students. Historically and empirically, national curricula in Europe and elsewhere combine these models. The first part of the chapter presents the traditions and models. Then, the chapter discusses how experts receive and translate the models for discussing how to handle problems in a post-factual society. Against this backdrop, the chapter calls for a renewed look at the grammar of schooling, which helps provide historically nuanced discussions.
