Abstract
Any attempt to review the use of the term culture in education is asking for trouble. Raymond Williams, in Keywords (1976: 87), claims that culture is “one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language.” As part of this complexity, it can refer to “high” art, to artistic practices more broadly including popular arts, and to the whole way of life of a people or period. Williams traces the history and multiplicity of denotation and connotation of the word culture not in order to arrive at a singular meaning, but to enable us to hold in tension these differences of meaning or emphasis. Terry Eagleton goes even further in this rejection of attempts to pin it down, referring to the concept culture both as “an historical and philosophical text” and as “the site of a political conflict” (2000: 19). Rather a lot for one word to carry.
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© 2011 Peter E. Jones
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Wrigley, T. (2011). Culture, Class, and Curriculum: A Reflective Essay. In: Jones, P.E. (eds) Marxism and Education. Marxism and Education. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230119864_2
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