ABSTRACT
Curricula are one means by which the young are systematically introduced to the material and non-material world they inhabit. Curricula embody perspectives from human culture considered important enough to merit systematic transmission. The chapter illustrates some of the diversity of meanings accorded education and embodied in curricula in different contexts. These conceptions have been seen to rest on different views regarding the desirable ends of the educational enterprise and on different beliefs, often unacknowledged and implicit, about the nature of knowledge, children, teaching and learning. The ideological perspective is a useful one in helping characterize the nature of current discussion in education. The English educational system provides a useful illustration of the diversity of educational ideologies, each with its distinctive views of education and curricular proposals embodying these. I. Davies' four-fold classification of major educational ideologies are: conservative ideology, revisionist ideology, romantic ideology and democratic ideology.
