Debate over subject curricula is apt to descend into internecine squabbles over which (whose?) curriculum is best. Especially so with school English, because its domain(s) of knowledge have commonly been misunderstood, or, perhaps, misrepresented in the government’s programmes of study. After brief consideration of democratic education (problems of its form and meaning), I turn to issues of knowledge and disciplinarity, outlining two conceptions of knowledge – the one constitutive and phenomenological, the other stipulative and social-realist. Drawing on Michael Young and Johan Muller, I argue that, by social-realist standards of objectivity, school English in England -- as currently framed in national curriculum documents -- falls short of the standards of ‘powerful knowledge’ and of a democratic education conceived as social justice. Having considered knowledge and disciplinarity in broad terms, I consider the curricular case of school English, for it seems to me that the curious position of English in our national curriculum has resulted in a model that is either weakly, perhaps even un-, rooted in the network of academic disciplines that make up English studies.

中文翻译：

---

知识、课程和民主教育：学校英语的奇特案例

关于学科课程的争论很容易陷入内在的争吵之中，即哪个（谁的？）课程是最好的。尤其是学校英语，因为它的知识领域通常被误解，或者在政府的学习计划中被歪曲。在简要考虑了民主教育（形式和意义的问题）之后，我转向知识和纪律问题，概述了两种知识概念——一个是构成性的和现象学的，另一个是规定性的和社会现实主义的。借鉴迈克尔·杨和约翰·穆勒，我认为，根据客观性的社会现实主义标准，英国的学校英语——目前在国家课程文件中的框架——达不到“强大的知识”和民主教育的标准被视为社会正义。