The document discusses Durkheim's view of the moral order in society and its relationship to the curriculum in schools. It makes three key points: 1. According to Durkheim, society has a common moral order of beliefs and values that are independent of individuals and constrain their behavior. 2. The curriculum is shaped by and aims to teach this common moral order to ensure its basic principles are obeyed. It also aims to identify and control behavior that does not conform. 3. This helps achieve social cohesion and solidarity by socializing learners to accept the dominant social norms and values. It reproduces the existing social order, including potential inequalities around issues like race, class and gender.

1. Education 3B – Curriculum
Vision of a ‘good society’

2. The moral order according to
Durkheim
The central values, decided by people, but external
to us. The totality of beliefs and sentiments
common to average citizens of the same society
forms a determinate system which has its own life;
one may call it the collective or common conscience
…. It has specific characteristics which make it a
distinct reality. It is, in effect, independent of the
particular conditions in which individuals are
placed; they pass on and it remains. (Durkheim,
1968)

3. Key aspects of the moral order:
• Common conscience
• Independent of the individual
• Individual constrained by it

4. The Curriculum:
• Is shaped by the basic principles of the
common moral order
• It functions so as to ensure that these basic
principles are put into practice and obeyed
• Allows for behaviour that does not conform to
be identified and controlled, e.g. cheating

5. Relation between the moral order
and curriculum:
• that curriculum practices in schools teach, socialize
learners into accepting the common moral order ( take
for e.g. the norm of individual achievement, and how
the definition of cheating in school and the
‘punishment’ for cheating – physically and symbolically,
contributes to the norm of individual achievement
being learned)
• that behaviour that does not conform to the common
moral order is identified and controlled so that there is
conformity – example the norm of independence,
children are taught from foundation phase to become
more and more independent.

6. •So the curriculum is a way to achieve social
cohesion and social solidarity…
•A social order that is based on knowledge not
tradition, faith, etc.

7. Defining the curriculum problem
• There is no one correct definition of
curriculum. Definitions range from narrow
views of curriculum as ‘a course of study’ to
broader definitions of ‘what actually happens’
in educational settings and to even broader
perspectives of the relations between
curriculum and society. How would you
explain the gap between the intended and
actual curriculum?

8. Stenhouse provides two views of
curriculum:
We appear to be confronted by two different
views of the curriculum. On the one hand the
curriculum is seen as an intention, plan or
prescription, an idea about what one would like
to happen in schools. On the other it is seen as
the existing state of affairs in schools, what does
in fact happen. Curriculum study rests on how
we talk or write about these two ideas of
curriculum. (Stenhouse, 1983:2)

9. • refer them to pg. 4 and the 3 mainstream
definitions. What view do they emphasise?

10. What a curriculum plan should make
clear
Principles for:
• selection of content,
• sequencing of content and
• teaching strategy (method/pedagogy).

11. • Does your teaching subject curriculum
provide: what should be taught? In what
sequence? How?

12. • the gap between the intended and actual
curriculum is not unique to SA.
• Thus Stenhouse says: ‘the gap between
aspiration and practice is a real and frustrating
one’.

13. • CAPS as the intended/ideal/planned/
prescribed/official curriculum.
• The difference between curriculum,
curriculum policy, curriculum study and
curriculum development.

14. • According to Stenhouse curriculum studies
focusses on the gap between the intended
and ideal curriculum, its main method is case
study and empirical data is collected.
• It is an inter-disciplinary field of study
informed by sociology, psychology, philosophy,
history, etc.

15. A curriculum is an attempt to communicate the
essential principles and features of an
educational proposal in such a form that it is
open to critical scrutiny and capable of effective
translation into practice (Stenhouse)

16. A curriculum should provide:
• Principles for the selection of content – what
is to be taught and learned
• Principles informing a teaching method.
• Principles informing sequencing of content
• Principles to assess whether the objectives
have been achieved.

17. The origins and nature of curriculum
• The authors explain the nature of curriculum
in terms of being centrally about knowledge,
reality and truth and the assumptions
underpinning each. They go on to explain that
what is selected as valid knowledge may vary
from different points of view with dominance
and power playing a role in settling the issue.

18. Look at the 12 definitions in the Lovet
and Smith reading
• Analyse each definition.
• Identify the view that each definition holds.

19. What is the nature of curriculum?
Curriculum is essentially about knowledge, truth and
reality
1. Any curriculum is centrally about knowledge – what we
know, how we know, what ought to be taught and
learned –
Definition 2: The curriculum should consist entirely of
knowledge from the disciplines
Based on the assumptions about the nature of knowledge
• Objective – everywhere the same or universally true,
apart from the knower,
• Subjective – personal and constructed by the knower

20. 2. Curriculum and socialization of
learners
• We spoke about this already – Lovet and
Smith reinforce it…
• One of the purposes of the curriculum is to
socialize the new generation – to accept social
norms.

21. 3. Curriculum as a selection
• Cannot teach all knowledge, skills, values,
select some
• What is selected is not neutral but biased in
favour of dominant groups.
• In this perspective the curriculum reflects the
experience of those doing the selecting. Eg.
Gender, racial, sexuality, social class biases
encoded in disciplinary knowledge

22. 4. Curriculum and reality
• But the curriculum creates reality for learners
– that regulates, shapes their consciousness,
their identity
• for some the reality matches with their own
life experiences while for others it is
conflicting even alienating. How does this
impact performance?
• Is it wrong to introduce learners to ‘other’
realities?

23. 5. Curriculum and Truth
• values, principles, ethics –
• what is right or wrong behavior,
• what is good, what is beautiful or aesthetics –
• beauty and quality of human experience
• So some topics are deemed right and good
others are not!

24. 6. Curriculum and context
Global, national, regional, local, school context.

25. Broader influences on the curriculum
• Historical,
• Political,
• Social and
• Economic factors.

26. Terminology
• Curriculum as intention
• Curriculum as process
• Curriculum as product

27. Levels of curriculum planning -
• National,
• Provincial,
• School,
• Classroom,
• Subject, etc.

28. Normative and descriptive
• Normative: how things should be…e.g. the
intended curriculum
• Descriptive: how things are…the actual
curriculum…

29. The Hidden Curriculum
(not explicit in the article)

30. Also known as the implicit, covert
curriculum
…those things which pupils learn at school
because of the way in which the work of the
school is planned and organized, but which are
not in themselves included in the planning or
even in the consciousness of those responsible
for school arrangements. (Kelly, 1982)
• E.g. boys are more important than girls
• In a democratic school learners are more
friendly?

31. • Ivan Illich coined the concept of a ‘hidden
curriculum’. It has become a well-known
phrase in the study of education. What it
means is that the overt curriculum of schools
and other establishments where formal
education takes place is much less important,
in the long run, than the covert process of
subtle repression, which is the real curriculum
(Pandor 2005).

32. This is the critical view of curriculum:
It reproduces inequalities: race, class and gender
based!