This work offers a detailed critique of various radical interpretations of curriculum history and curriculum theory. Hlebowitsh seeks to show how the progressive experimentalist tradition in curriculum studies has been unjustly characterised by "reconceptualist" theorists as somehow rooted in notions of social control and social efficiency. In their fight against what they see as the behaviourism inherent in traditional curriculum theory, the radicals have pushed aside the important contributions of Progressives from Dewey to Tyler, whose ideas about intelligent self-control and enlightened collective empowerment support values that are fundamental to democracy.