There is, at least in the West, a long-standing difficulty with knowledge in education. This may have
arisen from a deep distrust of the value of dead or useless, disconnected ‘facts’ such as was parodied by
Charles Dickens through his awful caricature of ‘Gradgrind’. But distrust was reinforced by influential
scholarly work such as that from Michael Young in 1971 who in Knowledge and Control communicated
influential arguments about how the school curriculum, through its selection of knowledge, favoured
the elite and alienated the majority of young people. This article opens up a discussion about what kind
of school curriculum is appropriate for young people now and in the future – as a pedagogic right. We
argue that the distrust of knowledge among progressive educationists has led to what we name as
‘Future2ism’. Such a skills or competence-led curriculum thinking is not, we argue, in the interests of
children, especially the disadvantaged. Michael Young, who wrote about the elitist ‘knowledge of the
powerful’ in the 1970s has himself revised, or extended, his thinking by pointing out (Young 2008) that
such specialist knowledge is also powerful knowledge. Thus, if policy makers, or school leaders, decide
that it is better for ‘less academic’ children to receive a differentiated curriculum to suit their ‘needs’
then they are denied access to powerful knowledge. This is unfair on a number of levels; not least it
reinforces social and economic divisions.
In the article, I describe the rise of Future 2 curriculum thinking as a response to the long-known
inadequacies of the ‘traditional’ school curriculum, since at least Gradgrind. But despite its superficial
attractions, and its appeals to ‘creativity’ and ‘twenty-first century skills’, the weaknesses of Future 2
thinking are exposed. Following this we then explore what a Future 3 curriculum may look like – one
that is knowledge-led but progressive and conscious of the pupils we teach, who are seem as agentive
and diverse. The key to Future 3 is to grasp the significance of the discipline expressed as powerful
knowledge – in the case of this article, geography. This is challenging, for powerful knowledge cannot
easily be expressed on the page – through a list of ‘key concepts’ for example. Rather than a list, it
requires specialist understanding of the subject’s goals and purposes expressed more as a system of
thought and enquiry, which itself is dynamic being subject to contestation and change. In this sense,
pupils (all pupils) are inducted into the discipline of knowledge-making, where the quality of argument
matters, where evidence needs to be identified and evaluated and where reliable conclusions drawn (but
nevertheless never beyond contestation or challenge).
The article draws upon an international project called GeoCapabilities which has explored these ideas
with particular reference to their implications for high-quality teaching and the need for teachers to see
themselves as curriculum leaders – as professionals with responsibility for enacting a Future 3
curriculum.
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