Curriculum as a Selection from a Culture in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Abstract

Almost 20 years ago, Lawton (1975) made the controversial claim that curriculum, in its broadest sense, constitutes a selection from a culture of a society. Drawing from his own experience in the British context in his seminal and subsequent works, Lawton (1975, 1980, 1982, 1983a, 1983b; Lawton, Prescott, Gammage, et al., 1976) initially devoted his attention to the notion of a common culture. He later explored questions such as who selects from the culture and from whose culture the selection is made, with specific reference to the relationship between school curriculum and politics. He also coined the term analysis to typify an approach to planning school curricula which takes as its premise the cultural universals relating to questions about knowledge and values. As Urevbu (1985, pp. 24-25) explains, these universals should be the concern of education irrespective of the kind of society. The present article attempts to establish critically the extent to which Lawton's concept of curriculum as a selection from a culture can be of use in planning curricula for post-apartheid South Africa. Further, by exploring pertinent issues such as which groups will be involved in the selection process in South Africa and from which culture (or cultures) the selection will be made, it attempts to determine the applicability of Lawton's notion of a common (core) curriculum to planning curriculum in a country which is explicitly divided along racial and ethnic lines. Lastly, some implications for South African education in the 1990s will be drawn using Lawton's model as a framework.