The School Curriculum Ten Years Hence - UCET: Universities ...

consequent crisis of values within society. No longer could one
assume a consensus over what was worth teaching or over aims of
education or over the values which should be promoted through
schooling. He continues
Our education crisis is fundamentally part of a general crisis of
values. If education, and by implication, the curriculum is not
thought of as contributing to a solution of this crisis of values, it can
all too easily become an agent of the worst sort of conservatism.
‘Conservatism’ can be understood in two senses. The first is the
retreat to traditional ways of identifying and responding to the
problem. It is as though nothing has fundamentally changed. Old
solutions will be perfectly adequate for the future needs. And,
therefore, there should be the maintenance of or (where necessary)
a return to traditional values and approaches.
The second sense of conservatism concerns the deep suspicion, by
those in power, of ‘radical solutions, and thus the reluctance to
relinquish control over the management of public affairs and
services. There is a guardian class, which knows better than the
community as a whole what is best. Such a class has some special
insight into the transcendental values of ‘goodness, beauty and
truth’, and thus is prepared to enforce these insights upon those
who are less gifted, wise and knowing.
These two senses of ‘conservatism’ often get mixed together.
Steeped in traditional values, those in positions of power enforce
those values against all opposition – and by all possible means.
When I was first appointed to Oxford, I shared a platform and later
a dinner, with Keith Joseph. He told me that I was responsible for
all the problems of our schools because I (and others like me) had
introduced teachers to John Dewey. For some time Dewey was
attacked in pamphlet and popular press by such philosophers of
conservatism as Anthony O’Hear and Roger Scruton. Dewey was
(wrongly) seen as the ‘patron saint’, if not the ‘religious founder’, of
child-centred education, which was deemed to undermine both
traditional values in the curriculum and traditional modes of teacher
authority and control.
However, the two senses need to be kept apart. The paternalistic
controller, the self-appointed guardian, could conceivably exercise
his or her power to enforce a radical agenda in the belief that
solutions, even radical ones, are to be found at the centre of policy
decision making, not amongst those who implement the policies.
For Morrell, however, there was no one who had the wisdom or the
knowledge to say clearly and unambiguously what the problems