ABSTRACT
Given the previous chapter's closing emphasis on interesting lessons, the focus moves away from issues of management, into the factors that determine curriculum building and presentation. This chapter considers what an ethical curriculum might be, and tries to define it. Using the first two of what are labelled Stenhouse's Three Pillars, the chapter demonstrates how the underlying building blocks of curriculum design need to be subject to ethical scrutiny if students are to receive a genuinely ethical education. The chapter notes the differences between a taught curriculum imposed by the teacher, and a learned curriculum owned in part by the learner. This is an exceptionally important chapter given current debates about who owns the curriculum and how curriculum is both compiled and delivered. There is an initial consideration about how current curriculum measures in schools (e.g. those from the National Curriculum and the Examination Boards) relate to the ethical approach outlined here.
