ANALYSIS OF THE SAUDI ARABIAN SCHOOL'S ENGLISH CURRICULUM
To infer theoretical bases for a published and implemented curriculum is a task fraught with the dangers of subjective perception and projection of personal biases. Nevertheless, through the analysis of the pedagogical methodology and of the textual contents, some reasonable conclusions can be honestly and validly be drawn. Such inference is as much a deductive as an inductive process. From the published factual information one can readily deduce the methodological approach. From the methodological approach one can induce the high probability of philosophical, ideological, political, cultural, and pedagogical assumptions upon which the information was selected and structured. Induction, by definition however, is a "process of estimating the validity of observations of part of a class of facts as evidence for a proposition about the whole class" (The Random House Dictionary of the English Language, 2nd ed., Unabridged, 1987). Whether the curriculum under study represents a statistically valid sample is a moot question, but it is the sole object of our analysis. In this analysis, therefore, I have made logical deductions from both form and content of the curriculum, and I have moreover hazarded induced propositions on the basis of my knowledge of the cultural and political contexts in which the curriculum was written. From these cogitations I have identified the following assumptions about the nature of knowledge, learning, and classroom social relationships made by the designer and developer of the curriculum.
"Language," says Catherine Walsh (1987), "is a sociocultural phenomenon." "Individuals can only be understood in terms of their specific sociohistorical setting... Children come to school with this speaking consciousness already well developed... It is through language that individuals learn to act as members of society... It is the development of speech al...