Social Meliorists Tradition

Social meliorism refers to a tradition in curriculum studies introduced and defined by Herbert Kliebard in his 1986 landmark publication, The Struggle for the American Curriculum. Kliebard describes four distinct interest groups of educational reformers from the late 19th to mid-20th centuries that were seeking to resolve the then-most basic dilemma of curriculum design and development: “what knowledge is of most worth.” These four groups were determining the purposes of education and were struggling for control of the curriculum in U.S. schools. Kliebard's categories include (1) social meliorism where the schools were seen as a force for social change and the curriculum offered opportunity to forge a new vision for society, (2) humanism that had established a basic organizational structure for U.S. education and defined Western European thought as the most appropriate content for the school curriculum, (3) developmentalism where the selection of the curriculum was decided by psychological patterns and developmental stages of the student, and (4) social efficiency where the curriculum and administrative practices of schools were determined by a conception of efficiency and usefulness for the student. Kliebard stated that no single [Page 793]group gained complete control of the curriculum, and his conceptual schema seems not intended to provide rigid distinctions to separate and classify educators but, instead, to allow the contemporary scholar of curriculum studies to envision tensions among the differing curricular perspectives from the past.

Kliebard portrayed the social meliorists through the work of sociologist Lester Frank Ward and 1930s educators from the field of educational foundations and curriculumGeorge Counts, Harold Ruggwho in other classifications of educational philosophies are typically deemed as social reconstructionists. Social meliorism embodied a social-economic critique of U.S. society and social conditions and viewed the curriculum and schools as a way to reform communities. Implicit in the standard definition of the term meliorism is the fundamental belief that a situation will improve. An interesting aspect of use of the term social meliorism in the field of curriculum studies pertains to whether those identified within this grouping maintained this basic faith.

Kliebard's groupings provide a metaconfiguration from which the many individuals aligned within the field of curriculum studies and the traditional educational philosophical orientations (the “isms” of perennialism, essentialism, progres-sivism, reconstructionism) could be seen in new ways, separating perspectives when necessary and underscoring commonalities and the “hybridization of the curriculum.” Kliebard further brings a sophisticated conception of grouping and classification with the treatment of John Dewey, who he sees within all four of the humanist, developmen-talist, social efficiency, and social meliorist traditions. Although many authors have defined and classified the field of curriculum studies and the field of education in relation to philosophical orientations and educational purposes, Kliebard provided an innovative and unique configuration with the term social meliorism becoming one of the most emblematic terms in the area of curriculum history and a signature concept of his career.