ABSTRACT
The 1960s and 1970s have seen a vast number of curriculum projects. Each successive report which has been published has indicated yet another aspect of the curriculum which deserves and requires further attention, so much so that teachers may well cry: ‘Enough. Where do we fit in anything else-does design technology not further increase the clutter of the curriculum?’ Perhaps comfort may be found in the suggestion that Design Technology is not ‘as well as’ but ‘instead of’ of because of the particular role it has to play. Design Technology is not a process which lends itself to fragmentation in terms of time-an hour today-perhaps some time tomorrow. Involved in the detective work of a search for a solution the child needs to follow the leads before they grow cold —to try the idea, to find the picture, to make the wheel. During this time, maths, reading, recording of experience will take place, perhaps not in the guise in which they so often appear-the ‘reading book’, the maths workcard-but nevertheless, what is being offered is genuine mathematical and language experience which is of equal if not greater value than the rather more isolated practice of skills.
