Sociology of Education
Curriculum, Credentials, and the Middle Class: A Case Study of a Nineteenth
Century
High School [статья]
Опубликовано на портале: 30-01-2003
David F. Labaree
Sociology of Education.
1986.
Vol. 59.
No. 1.
P. 42-57.
This historical case study of a prominent nineteenth-century high school analyzes
one example of the development of the hegemonic curriculum. This developmental process
hinged on the complex relationship between the high school and its middle-class constituency,
a relationship that was mediated by the market in educational credentials. Shaped
by bourgeois ideological principles (merit, self-discipline, and utility), the curriculum
of the mid-1800s provided the school's middle-class constituents with a valuable
form of symbolic wealth: i.e. educational credentials. However, by the 1880s the
market in educational credentials changed. Alternative suppliers appeared on the
scene, and the middle class began looking beyond a high school diploma to the acquisition
of professional credentials. This market pressure forced the high school to revamp
its course of study. What emerged was a version of the modern hegemonic curriculum,
in which knowledge is stratified, academic, and appropriated through individual competition.
