Despite the 'progressive' influence of the English Plowden Report and Scottish Primary Memorandum on British primary curricula from the 1960s onwards, secondary education has generally continued to follow a more traditional subject-centred route and post-war educational theorists have not generally been favourably inclined to other than subject-based modes of curriculum planning and organisation. However, in the light of current curriculum reviews on both sides of the Scottish border-callingfor more educationally meaningful curricula-the perennial issue of how school knowledge might best be (...) ordered for the coherent educational experience of pupils seems worth revisiting. To this end, this paper examines some of the influential post-war philosophical arguments against integrated and interdisciplinary approaches to the curricular organisation of knowledge, concluding that they are not as compelling as they might formerly have seemed. (shrink)

In this article I revisit MacIntyre's lecture on the idea of an educated public. I argue that the full significance of MacIntyre's views on the underlying purposes of universities only become clear when his lecture on the educated public is situated in the context of his wider ‘revolutionary Aristotelian’ philosophical project. I claim that for MacIntyre educational institutions should both support students to learn how to think for themselves and act for the common good. After considering criticisms from Putnam, Wain (...) and Harris I conclude that MacIntyre's later work points towards an idea of educated ‘community’ that is more outward looking and open to difference than his earlier articulated idea of an educated ‘public’. (shrink)