ABSTRACT
The child-centrist approach has objected to the imposition of cultural products for their own sake and sought a stronger justification for what is to go on in the curriculum. Education is to be a 'drawing-out' of what is 'in' the child already and to be developed by following the individual's rather than society's 'needs' and 'interests'. The concepts of 'needs' and 'interests' have undergone extensive criticism in the literature[4] and I am in almost complete agreement with this criticism: 'needs' are not logically identifiable with 'wants', nor are 'interests' with what it is in a child's 'interest' to learn. Suffice it to say, however, that this model presupposes innate mental structures that make any child potentially rational and regards the object of education as being to actualise these innate mentill powers. Yet the model fails to specify what sort of things these innate mental structures can be and what sort of things will count as an expression of them. We have-as with the possibility, according to Hirst, of new forms of knowledge-simply to 'wait and see', only in this case it is the powers developed in a child who follows his 'needs' and 'interests'. The sought-for stronger justification for what is to go on in the curriculum has therefore not materialised. I must confess to finding talk about 'innate mental structures' somewhat confusing. Instead, I should substitute 'that to which any language user is committed', though admittedly this must point to a primitive organisation of consciousness, which is the precondition of any human society.
