Evidence of Curricular Standardization: Environment Pedagogy in the Chilean and Spanish official curricula in Primary Education

Abstract

This study analyzes the treatment of the socio cultural environment in the Chilean and Spanish official curricula in Social Sciences (Primary Education) in search of evidence that The New Institutionalism in Historical Sociology of Education postulated as arising from world institutionalization of education. Differences between both decrees have to do more with specific details or matters of degree than with divergences in essential aspects of the curriculum. The use of discourses and rhetoric of politically correct pedagogy that conceals the real functions of the curriculum and instrumental ideology that underlies both curricula and that leads to a large number of internal incoherencies may be observed in both of them. The presumably conscious lack of means to achieve some of the stated purposes is the most obvious example of the superficiality of these discourses which are, moreover, surprisingly similar.