Abstract

A curriculum that reflects a pluralist, multi-cultural society in a characteristically ‘Western’ way may seem to militate against traditionalist sub-cultures, but this outcome is less ‘Western’ than ‘modern’, in Habermas's sense.‘Modernisation’, involving the institutionalisation of rationality and the decentering of consciousness, and thus acceptance of the ‘Western’ solution, is possible within any culture, regardless of its content. In a Western society all are economically compelled to a partial ‘modernisation’, and in Habermas's view all cultures in modern societies suffer erosion by the extension and intrusion of economic and administrative sub-systems. Cultural modernisation affords the strongest available resistance to this erosion. Thus, a supposedly ‘Western’ curriculum approach would strengthen sub-cultures, notwithstanding the demise of traditionalism [1].