ABSTRACT
Curriculum history is of major importance to contemporary curriculum workers because it enables them to understand and to put into perspective, curriculum initiatives in the past. Curriculum history provides well-documented accounts of curriculum as it has occurred at specific periods in the past. Studies of curriculum history can include: accounts of major national curriculum projects in the USA and UK in the 1960s, studies of major conferences and curriculum association meetings, and so on. Child-centred education, progressive education, and similar titles have appeared and reappeared in the curriculum history literature. It is a classic example of an issue which seems to be destined to be recycled every decade or so, as revealed by peaks in the 1890s, 1920s, 1930s, 1960s, not counting earlier appearances due to the efforts of Rousseau, Pestalozzi and others. Child-centred curricula can have very different meanings. The term can refer to individualized teaching.
