This paper examines Claude Grignon's empirical study of lower levels of vocational education in France. The concepts of technical culture and the morality of technical processes are explored. Grignon argues that the hidden curriculum of the Lycee for vocational education (Lycee d'Enseignement Professionel) socialises students into a worldview in which social relations are conflated with technical relations, and take on the appearance of the certainly of technical processes. Social control is exerted by excluding the possibility of ambiguity and change from this deterministic frame of reference. In the second part of the paper we seek to show that some of Grignon's analytic concepts may offer useful perspectives for analysing British Further Education curricula, by applying the concepts of technical and ‘technicised’ culture to some recent developments in British Further Education curricula.
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Dickinson et al. (1982) studied this question.