If participation does not include an openness to the issues that are of real concern to the community and an opportunity to influence policy relating to those issues, it becomes an empty public relations gesture fostering apathy, disinterest, resistance, or counter-organization. (MB)

This article closes off a debate in this journal between the author and James D. Kaminsky concerning the latter's philosophical analysis of a "Freedom and Authority Memorandum" delivered to South Australian public schools in the early 1970s by then Director-General of Education, A. W. Jones. (TE)

The contraditions within the systems of school support and school policy-making make it difficult to find a manner of governance of the social studies program which is protected from extraneous influence and yet avoids creating a buffer between the schools and the democratic forces to which they are responsive. State and federal governments…