Abstract
Two fundamental issues frame much of our educational discourse around the theory and practice of curriculum: What knowledge is of most worth? How is this knowledge distributed? These questions are implicitly answered through our practice when we: place one child in one reading group and another child in another group; recommend courses in data processing for some students and computer programming for others; group students and courses into academic or career tracks; select content for inclusion in district curriculum guides; or publish different versions of K-12 textbooks for different presumed ability levels. These practices are routine in schools and appear to be the politically neutral, efficient, and technical means through which knowledge is selected, organized, individualized, and distributed. These practices are assumed to be based on scientific theories of teaching and learning, and objective measures of student ability, development, and achievement. Decisions about what schools teach and who gets what, however, go beyond the scientific, technical, and objective. These decisions represent value based judgments, with consequences, about what others ought to know. This article focuses on the nature and distri-
Published Version
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