The name is absent

280

dependence, and strive towards autonomy in a different value system,
a group who become self-determining not only in theory, but in
reality.

Self-determination,in the area of ’what is held to be knowledge’,
questions radically the assumptions of the dominant group and its
power to impose its definitions of knowledge on minority groups.

IVhat is ’held to be knowledge* in the educational curriculum and
how it has come to be held as knowledge has been explored by
Young (1971), and others, ⅛h∂ show, in the tradition of
Marx, how the dominant ideas in society are the ideas of the
dominant group.

An alternative cultural system threatens the dominant group:
what is held to be knowledge, the curriculum, must be seen as an
integral component of the cultural system, and hence a curriculum
that is really alternative,equally,must be seen as threatening
mainstream culture.

It will be interesting to see further outcomes of the meetings
in Darwin, in 1982, of representatives of Aboriginal Independent
Schools. It may be that such a show of strength, by increasing the
credibility of the community school movement, moves it out of the
^,not-to-be-taken-seriously∙ category into one demanding therapy or
nihilation to repair the injury done to the symbolic universe of the
dominant group.

It must be concluded that the school is viable, that the group

contains within itself the ’inherent factors of continuity’ posited
by Sorokin for the perpetuation of the group, and in particular, of
the school.

However, the political and cultural autonomy of Strelley, and
its ability to support an independent school rests, in turn, upon
its economic viability.

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