SCHOOL SCIENCE IN SEARCH OF A DEMOCRATIC ORDER 51 academia of an aristocratic culture. In John Dewey's words, by making scientific knowledge 'aloof from the practical needs of the mass of men, advocates of scientific education put themselves at a strategic disadvantage*.5 Emphasising the distinction between the requirements of a profession and a curriculum for school he wrote, 'whatever natural science may be for the specialist, for educational purposes it is knowledge of the conditions of human action'.6 'The functions which science has to perform in the curriculum is that which it has performed for the race: emancipation from local and temporary incidents of experience and the opening of intellectual vistas unobscured by the accidents of personal habit and predilection'.7 The curriculum, however, did not respond to this vision. What emerged then and has continued to provide the basic framework for school education ever since, was a model of 'pure' abstract science, in consonance with the demands of logical coherence as viewed by professional practitioners of the discipline. No alternative frameworks were sought; in fact, alternatives, if they did emerge, were authoritatively dismissed. Analysing the historical and sociopolitical forces that shaped the current model of school science, Hodson and Prophet8 give an interesting account of the changes that occurred in the British educational system during the later half of the nineteenth century. Taking off from Layton's^ work they focus on the two major alternative conceptions available then: the 'science of the common things' and 'pure laboratory science'. The former was initiated by an influential clergyman. Rev. Dawas, with the aim to instil self-confidence and integrity of thought amongst th^ children of the poor, in the attempt to ultimately improve their moral and religious condition. The curriculum was consciously designed within the cultural context of the labouring classes and, in Layton's words, 'was no crumb of upper class education charitably dispensed'.10 Prominence was given to the applied sciences such as mechanics and agricultural chemistry to provide familiar experiences for the exercise of reason, speculation and imagination. The success of the programme and Us imminent expansion to all elementary schools was viewed as a major threat to the social hierarchy; it was feared that the classics-based education for the higher orders, which had insistently excluded instruction in science, would prove ineffective for the domination of a 'scientifically' trained mass of poor. Voices from various influential quarters rose to express the perceived social danger in imparting a superior education to those inferior in position. The views of eminent scientists like Lyell and Faraday echoed in the Report of the Public School Commission set up in 1861, explicitly stating that 'from a political point of view, it is not only an unhealthy but also a dangerous state of things in some respects, that the material world should be very much better known by the middle classes of society than by the upper classes.'11 A double-edged campaign backed by the Times newspaper advocated the introduction