ABSTRACT
The educational aims considered important by headteachers consulted by the Plowden committee included happy atmosphere and satisfaction of curiosity. Teachers, schools, children, environments, infinite variables, make every curriculum event unique, and, to the degree that it is so, precarious. Those using an aesthetic frame of reference have largely concentrated on curriculum as art object and have sought to provide concepts and methods for appraising it. There appear to be a number of characteristic features of the arts which make them apt frames of reference for describing curricular experience and for guiding curricular theorizing and practice. It asserts that communication is fundamental to all curriculum activities, and that what is needed is curriculum language intelligible to all concerned at all levels, a sensitive language of discourse. The study of language register has resulted in the proposal of three dimensions of field, mode and tenor.
