University of Illinois Collective of Curriculum Professors

The University of Illinois developed a long-standing tradition as a collective for curriculum studies promoting social foundations and philosophy as a basis for curriculum development, education for furthering democracy and advancement of liberal arts in schools with attention to aesthetics, particularly in the last half of the 20th century. The College of Education made a powerful impact on curriculum theory with important collaboration on curriculum books produced in the 1950s and 1960s by B. O. Smith, William Stanley, J. Harlan Shores, Harry S. Broudy, and Joe R. Burnett; the proposal of Lawrence Metcalf for the social studies curriculum; and contributions of Louis Rubin. Ironically, a more prominent impact on curriculum policy was the diatribe against the life skills curriculum by Arthur Bestor, a history professor ...