ABSTRACT
How, ideally, ought the policy-maker to be educated? How, in particular, might a curriculum for educational decision-makers be conceived? The following attempt to answer these questions offers not a detailed blueprint but a set of basic guidelines, of central conceptions and attitudes that should, in my view, permeate a curriculum for makers of policy. Nor is this attempt concerned with formal courses of study to prepare policy-makers. The curriculum metaphor extends more widely to processes of learning that should go on throughout educational policy formulation, execution, and evaluation. And the metaphor applies, further, not just to the individual policy-maker but to all those whose attitudes and ideas affect the making of policy. To think of curriculum is useful if it helps us to answer the general question: What basic conceptions ought to inform the policy process?
