Learning, Curriculum and Life Politics: the selected works of Ivor F. Goodson
Coming to Curriculum
As the papers about the school came through I began to realise this was an unusual and highly innovative school (McMullen 1970).
C O U N T E S T H O R P E C O L L E G E
THE MAIN AIMS
1. For those of school age: to give them the widest possible set of abilities, achievements and attitudes to enable them to find those actions - intellectual, emotional, social - that will bring the greatest satisfactions to their life as adults which will lie between the years 1975-2025.
2. For those who have left school: to provide opportunities for them, both as individuals and groups, to find greater satisfactions from the life they lead now and will lead in the future.
The full interpretation of these general aims will be worked out by the staff, students and community over the years; however, certain considerations are clear from the beginning:
(i) It will be necessary to fit people to take part in the ‘superstructure’ of society - the economic and political section - education must be appropriate to rapidly changing technological and social patterns, to a world where industry and commerce demand increasingly high-grade technologists, middle-grade technicians, executives, planners and administrators rather than skilled, semi-skilled, or unskilled workers; to an increasing demand for ‘service’ occupations of all kinds, involving mainly human relations; to a world where, for perhaps the majority, the length of time spent on 'work' and the interest of it will decline sharply.
(ii) It will be as necessary - or even more so - to fit people for a richer individual and group life outside the ‘superstructure’ of society, both because economically this is now possible and also because pressures show that we are increasingly dissatisfied with a purely 'technocratic' approach to society; that fewer people will get satisfaction from work; and that work will occupy a smaller part and less time in our lives.
Both of these 'directions' imply a re-examination of, and a change in, curriculum, methods, authority relationships, and organisation.
