ABSTRACT
The definition of learning as personal is something of a truism in most accounts of education. The progression of education is, broadly, a progression away from person-centred learning towards learning that is knowledge-centred. Whereas in the primary classroom, teachers are seen as ‘teaching the child’; teachers at the secondary level are defined as ‘teaching the subject’. Person-centred primary education, and personal, expressive areas of the secondary curriculum, are both traditionally seen as constituting the less advanced, less essentially mature forms of human knowledge. The curriculum of education can also make its own contribution to the painfulness of school learning. Although education is supposed to mean access to the whole human heritage, the heritage offered belongs differentially to the members of any classroom group. In the learning they are asked to undertake in school, many children still find no reference to their own cultural background, community life, family patterns.
