Durkheim, Vygotsky and the Curriculum of the Future

This paper is concerned with the principles on which the curriculum should be based. It argues that the fundamental issue is the relationship between the knowledge on which the curriculum is based and the everyday knowledge that learners bring to school or college. The approaches to knowledge of two educational theorists, the French sociologist, Emile Durkheim, and the Russian psychologist, Lev Vygotsky, are discussed. While pointing out some of the limitations of their approaches, the paper argues that their attempts to integrate the objectivity and the historicity of knowledge must remain at the heart of future curriculum debates.