Influences on the Curriculum

The most important idea in this subtopic is simple but powerful: the curriculum is not neutral. We tend to assume schools teach 'the best knowledge' or 'just the facts'. Sociologists disagree. They argue that knowledge is socially constructed — it is selected by people, and that selection reflects whose interests and whose culture dominate society.

What 'socially constructed' means here.

• Out of everything that could be taught, only some things are chosen. Someone decides what goes in and what is left out.
• That choice is shaped by power: the groups with most influence over society also have most influence over what counts as 'real' or 'valuable' knowledge.
• So the curriculum reflects the views, history and culture of the powerful, while other forms of knowledge are excluded or dismissed.

Michael Young — knowledge is stratified.

• In Knowledge and Control (1971), Young argued that knowledge in the curriculum is stratified (ranked) into a hierarchy.
• High-status knowledge = abstract, academic, theoretical, written, individually assessed (e.g. mathematics, classics, sciences). This is the knowledge that opens the door to universities and the best jobs.
• Low-status knowledge = practical, vocational, manual, group-based, 'everyday' knowledge (e.g. craft, vocational skills).
• This is not natural. The powerful define their own kind of knowledge as 'high-status', so the children of the powerful — who already possess that culture — are advantaged.

Why this matters for the exam. If knowledge is socially constructed and stratified, then the curriculum cannot simply transmit 'shared, useful knowledge for everyone' (the functionalist claim). Instead it can be read as serving the powerful. This single insight is the engine of almost every critical answer in this subtopic.

The syllabus asks you to explain the factors influencing the content of the curriculum. Learn these five — each is a ready-made point for Q1, Q2 and Q4.

Factor	How it shapes the curriculum
Power	Dominant groups (the state, ruling class, religious or political authorities) decide what is taught and what is excluded. The curriculum reflects their interests.
Status	Some knowledge is treated as 'high-status' (academic) and some as 'low-status' (vocational). This hierarchy is itself a choice that advantages the powerful (Young).
Culture	The national or dominant culture is privileged — its language, history, religion and values are taught as 'normal', while minority cultures are sidelined.
Economic demands	The curriculum is shaped to meet the economy's need for skilled workers — this drives vocationalism and links to the New Right and the correspondence principle.
Gender	Subjects and representations are gendered, channelling boys and girls towards different subjects and reinforcing gender roles.

Power and status in detail.

• Whoever holds power in society — governments, dominant classes, religious or political authorities — has the loudest voice in deciding the curriculum.
• Marxists argue the curriculum therefore serves the ruling class: it transmits ideology and a high-status academic culture that the middle class already possess.

Culture in detail.

• A national curriculum usually centres the dominant culture: its language, literature, history and religion. This presents one culture as the norm and can marginalise minority groups (see the ethnocentric curriculum below).

Economic demands — vocationalism.

• Governments increasingly shape the curriculum to fit the needs of the economy: emphasising employability, science, technology and vocational training so schools produce the workers employers want.
• The New Right strongly support this (education should serve the economy and the market). Marxists (Bowles & Gintis, the correspondence principle) argue vocationalism really just trains a compliant workforce cheaply, benefiting employers more than pupils.
• Evaluation: does vocational education benefit pupils (real skills, jobs) or mainly benefit the economy/employers? That debate is gold in a Q4 essay.

Gender in detail.

• The curriculum can be gendered: option systems, subject images and the content of subjects push boys towards 'masculine' subjects (sciences, technology) and girls towards 'feminine' ones (languages, humanities, caring subjects), reinforcing traditional gender roles.

The syllabus links the curriculum to cultural reproduction — the process by which education reproduces existing inequalities across generations while appearing neutral. Three 'hidden' curricula do this work.

1. The hidden curriculum.

• The hidden curriculum is everything pupils learn that is NOT in the official syllabus: obedience, punctuality, respect for authority, competition, hierarchy, 'knowing your place'.
• Functionalists see it positively — it socialises pupils into the shared values and discipline society needs.
• Marxists (Bowles & Gintis) see it as cultural reproduction: through the correspondence principle, the hidden curriculum mirrors the workplace (hierarchy, obedience, external rewards), producing an obedient, exploitable workforce.

2. The ethnocentric curriculum.

• An ethnocentric curriculum is one that reflects and prioritises the culture, history, language and values of the dominant ethnic group, while marginalising or ignoring minority ethnic groups.
• Troyna and Williams distinguished a 'narrow' and a 'broad' definition of racism in schools and argued the curriculum gives a low priority to minority languages and cultures.
• Coard argued that an ethnocentric, British-centred curriculum can make Black pupils feel inferior and undervalued, harming their self-image and achievement.
• Effects: minority pupils may not see their culture, history or achievements represented, which can damage identity and engagement — a form of cultural reproduction along ethnic lines.

3. The gendered curriculum.

• A gendered curriculum channels boys and girls towards different subjects and reinforces gender roles through what is taught and how groups are represented.
• It works through subject option systems, the gendered image of subjects (physics seen as 'masculine'), and the content of textbooks and lessons (e.g. men more visible as scientists/leaders).
• Feminists argue this reproduces gender inequality by limiting girls' (and boys') aspirations and steering them into traditional roles.

The shared logic: all three curricula reproduce inequality quietly. Schools look neutral and fair, but in fact they transmit the culture of the dominant class, ethnic group and gender — passing existing inequalities on to the next generation.

The concept of cultural capital explains how the curriculum reproduces class inequality.

Bourdieu — cultural capital.

• Cultural capital = the knowledge, language, tastes, attitudes and 'ways of being' of the dominant (middle/upper) class.
• The curriculum and the school are built around this dominant culture. So middle-class children arrive at school already 'fluent' in what schools value and reward — the right vocabulary, the right confidence, the right cultural references.
• Working-class children possess a different culture, which schools tend to undervalue. They are effectively studying in a 'second language', so they are disadvantaged from day one.

Cultural reproduction and symbolic violence.

• Because the curriculum rewards the culture middle-class pupils already have, education carries out cultural reproduction: it reproduces the existing class structure across generations while appearing neutral and meritocratic.
• Bourdieu calls the devaluing of working-class culture symbolic violence — schools treat middle-class culture as superior and working-class culture as deficient.

Linking it all together.

• The factors (power, status, culture) decide that the curriculum contains high-status, dominant-class knowledge.
• Cultural capital then explains who is advantaged by that choice — the children who already possess that culture.
• The outcome is presented as 'merit', but it is really the reproduction of privilege. This is why Marxists and Bourdieu reject the functionalist idea that the curriculum simply transmits useful, shared knowledge.

Evaluation angle. Cultural capital is powerful, but critics note it can be hard to measure, and some working-class and minority pupils DO succeed — schools can compensate (e.g. through multicultural or anti-sexist curricula). The balanced view: the curriculum strongly tends to advantage the culturally dominant, but the outcome is not fixed.

Every essay in this subtopic turns on one debate: is the curriculum a tool of the powerful, or a transmitter of shared, useful knowledge?

View	What the curriculum does	Main criticism
Functionalist	Transmits society's shared culture and the skills the economy needs; high-status knowledge is genuinely valuable	Ignores how 'shared' knowledge actually reflects the powerful; assumes neutrality
Marxist	Reproduces ruling-class ideology and a high-status culture the middle class already possess (Bourdieu, Young)	Can be too deterministic; some working-class pupils succeed; literacy/numeracy really are useful
Feminist	The gendered curriculum reproduces patriarchy and traditional gender roles	Girls now outperform boys at many levels, so the gendered curriculum is changing
New Right	The curriculum should serve the economy and the market (vocationalism, choice, standards)	Vocationalism may benefit employers more than pupils; can widen inequality

Bringing the perspectives together.

• Marxists (Young, Bowles & Gintis, Bourdieu) argue the curriculum is shaped by power: high-status knowledge, the hidden curriculum and cultural capital all reproduce class inequality.
• Feminists add that the gendered curriculum reproduces patriarchy.
• Anti-racist sociologists (Coard, Troyna & Williams) show the ethnocentric curriculum marginalises minorities.
• Functionalists reply that the curriculum transmits shared, useful knowledge and the skills the economy needs — and that some content (literacy, numeracy, science) genuinely benefits everyone.

The vocationalism debate is a perfect mini-essay: does shaping the curriculum to economic demands benefit pupils (real skills, employability) or mainly benefit the economy and employers (a cheap, trained, compliant workforce — the correspondence principle)? A* answers weigh both and judge.

How to reach a top-band judgement. Do not just list the views. Set them against each other on the key question — whose interests does the curriculum serve? — and conclude with a criterion: e.g. 'because the same high-status, dominant-class culture is consistently rewarded across class, ethnicity and gender, the evidence supports the view that the curriculum primarily reflects power, even if some of its content is genuinely useful.'