Curriculum Policy as Compensatory Legitimation? A View from the Periphery

The continuing debate on the relevance and imposition of `Western theories' for explaining educational policy in the Third World is fascinating on a rhetorical level but lacking in the actual `testing' of such theories in a crossnational context. Responding to the general debate, and to a particular paper by Hans Weiler included in this issue of the Oxford Review of Education, on curriculum reform in West Germany, this paper explores the utility of the construct of `compensatory legitimation' for the comparative study of curriculum policy. After demonstrating the limits of existing compensatory strategies for explaining the curriculum policy of Zimbabwe, a new application for the theoretical construct is advanced for post-colonial states. The specific argument of this paper is that socialist curriculum policy, independent of actual curriculum practice, serves as a powerful vehicle for the legitimation of the state in post-colonial societies in the face of unaltered (capitalist) material conditions.