The 1936 curriculum reform in Belgian primary education

Abstract

As it was inspired to a large extent by the reform movement (Decroly and others), the 1936 curriculum is generally seen as an important innovation in the history of Belgian primary education. This study shows, however, that educational practice did not change fundamentally in those days. Several factors such as, among other things, personal tensions, rivalries and a lack of continuity in educational policy, inhibited greatly the implementation of the new curriculum. It seems that there was an inevitable gap between the idealistic context of the innovation on the one hand and the sociohistorical reality in which it had to be implemented on the other. Such a discrepancy is, perhaps, perennial rather than unique in the history of education.