The Making Of The Curriculum

Book excerpt: The first edition of The Making of Curriculum was published in 1988 and reviewers hailed it as a seminal work in the field. In that work Goodson explored a number of aspects of the so-called traditional subjects and described the way they develop over time to a point where they can be promoted as 'academic' disciplines. He showed that the claim to be academic was in fact the result of a substantial political contest covering a century or more. The traditional subject was, in short, invented. The first edition of this book provided a series of challenging insights for those desiring to make sense of the current debate over schooling. In this new and extended second edition, Bill Pinar adds an illuminating introduction and Goodson brings his argument up-to-date with a discussion of the National Curriculum - 'a contemporary initiative in the making of curriculum.'