The UK's new Coalition Government looks as if it will make the narrow, traditional school curriculum we have now even narrower and more rooted in the past. The Labour government made timid moves to improve the National Curriculum, not least by equipping it with a few general aims, even though these meshed poorly on to intra-subject aims. Michael Gove and Nick Gibb have both produced justifications for a traditional curriculum, but these do not stand up. This article suggests an unacknowledged rationale for it; and concludes with a critique of the Coalition's notion of a "fair" educational system.