Social Foundations of Curriculum Notes

Slide 13

Changing American Society

- The context of the book is in the evolution of the society through time.

- The society changed from a society of production of savings, characterized by

preferably low consumption of goods and services, and more human labor into a society
with the advent and prevalence of technology and the commodities became
indispensable to everyone.

Slide 14

David Riesman, in his book The Lonely Crowd(1953) classified the societies into three
different categories:

1. Traditional
- It prevailed mainly in agrarian societies where the agriculture was the primary
mode of production.
- The traditional society is dominated by traditions, customs, norms and culture
that is prevailing for ages.
-
2. Inner- directed
- It is based on a Puritan morality
- The elders or adults (e.g. parents, teachers, police, officers, clergy, etc.) heavily
influences the child's morals, ethics, and perspective about his/her future goals.

3. Outer-directed
 - Media, peers heavily influence the child.
- The elders still influence the child, but not much unlike in the inner-directed
society
- It is due to social and cultural climate in US in which teamwork, group
integration was valued well.

Slide 15
Postmodern Society

- This type of society deals with the discourses about questioning ang
challenging knowledge that are deemed to be deterministic for generations.
- Here, discourses were prevalent, and school has a major role to play in this
type of society.
- The school is the main distributor of knowledge that are used to spark up
discourses and inquiries about the world and self-concepts.

Slide 16

Post-Industrial Society

- This is also known as the knowledge-based society

- Knowledge is the main commodity in this type of society.
- The prevalence of technology that make knowledge accessible to the people is
a key factor for this society.

Slide 17

Postnuclear Family
- This is a type of family that challenges the usual notion of a family, particularly
the idea of a nuclear one.
 - Cohabitation (partners living together without marriage) is increasing through
time.
- Because of the shifting in societies, childbearing and marriage had became
separate, not two concepts go side-by-side.

Slide 18

New Family Types

- Since the notion of family changes, the idea of a nuclear family was put into
challenge.
- Given the different contexts of different cultures, it was said that the role a
nuclear family should play was not fulfilled. What happens for real is the contrary.
- The new family types (modern and postnuclear) were believed to fulfill the holes
of the nuclear family.