ABSTRACT
Ideas as to the content of this hidden curriculum have varied. Illich, thinking particularly of the position in developing countries where Western-style education is introduced from outside, sees it as indoctrination into the materialist values of Western society: the cult of consumer goods; the acceptance of vast inequalities of wealth; the idea that there should be universities rather than more primary schools, hospitals rather than more itinerant nurses, roads and fast cars for a wealthy elite rather than dirt-tracks and slow trucks for peasant farmers. The values of liberalism, it is argued, are moral and procedural values based on an understanding of what education involves. In terms of the liberal concept of education, for the educator rather than the indoctrinator what he intends to bring about can be expressed in terms of autonomy and critical judgement. Thus there is a connection between the teaching methods and the liberal contrast between education and indoctrination.
