Alexander, Robin John (2012) Neither national nor a curriculum? Forum. pp. 369-384. ISSN 0963-8253
Abstract
This article examines the government’s view, as revealed in its June 2012 National Curriculum proposals, of the purposes and character of the primary curriculum as a whole. The proposals are found to be deficient in a number of respects: in their naive, selective and inflated use of international evidence; in their treatment of aims as no more than cosmetic; in their impoverished take on culture, knowledge and values; in their reduction of educational standards to test performance in the 3Rs; in their perpetuation of the damaging Victorian legacy of a two-tier curriculum; and in their characterisation of spoken language, despite what has long been known about its vital role in development, learning and teaching, as little more than ‘idle chatter’. In sum, the proposals are judged to betray contempt for other than politically-compliant evidence and to fall seriously short of what a national curriculum minimally entails.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | This is author-prepared preprint of the paper submitted for publication in Forum. |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of York |
Academic Units: | The University of York > Faculty of Social Sciences (York) > Education (York) |
Depositing User: | Pure (York) |
Date Deposited: | 11 Apr 2014 15:00 |
Last Modified: | 08 Feb 2025 00:16 |
Status: | Published |
Refereed: | Yes |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:76274 |
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Description: Neither national nor a curriculum?