ABSTRACT
If Webb and Vulliamy et al.’s (1997) observation that teachers’ personal and professional beliefs threaten to break apart under the weight of outside intervention proves prophetic, this will not signal the end of ideological influence on education. It will mean that government-sponsored ideologies will prosper, and since governments (even left-wing ones) are instinctively traditionalist in beliefs, such an outcome could easily reverse the real progress in the democratizing of classrooms which has been discernible in primary education over many years. Such misfortune should not happen, because teachers can look to their own beliefs, not those of governments, to sustain them. And what is characteristic of child-centred beliefs is that their caring, humanitarian ethic is an engine of real power: it inspires teachers of young children with an emotional resource enabling them to continue with work which is, often, arduous and demotivating. In so far as the ideology continues to survive in schools, it will evolve, as it must, in ways which mutually invigorate both ‘child-centredness’ and the ongoing development of the English/Welsh National Curriculum.
