ABSTRACT
The book questions the appropriateness of the shift towards curricular centralism. Furthermore, it questions the appropriateness of the resulting curricula for the societies that they are presumably designed to serve. It does this principally by pointing to the heterogeneous populations of Europe and the USA. The many different cultures of Europe represent different knowledge and value systems that in many cases are radically different from, or even oppositional to, those embodied in national curricula. For people in such groups the content of school and university knowledge is less easily taken for granted since it represents a threat to their culture, even to their very survival as a group.
