ABSTRACT
The science curriculum, like all aspects of education, is subject to patterns of control by dominant interest groups. As the authority and influence of dominant interest groups shift, so the nature of the curriculum changes. Brougham saw great possibilities in adapting Fellenberg's ideas to an industrial rather than agricultural context, as a means of stabilizing the social order in England. Richard Johnson maintains that the Victorian obsession with the education of the poor is best understood as a concern about authority, power and the assertion of control. In the 1840s a small but influential group of clerics, clearly influenced by the work of Mayo and Wood, promoted the teaching of science as fundamental to the moral and religious salvation of the labouring classes. In the mid-nineteenth century at least one other conception of what is appropriate school science was actively promoted: the Science of Common Things.
