Valid knowledge: astrology in the curriculum of the post-compulsory education and training sector

Abstract

What is taught students in the post-compulsory education and training sector reflects a tradition of authorised knowledge influenced by the historical development of epistemology, positivism and the empirical sciences. Now that 'truth' has been dismantled and a paradigmatic shift is occurring with recent discoveries in cosmobiology and physics, a synthesis of physical science and metaphor of action may provide an alternative access to knowledge. Astrology has had a history of educational acceptability waxing and waning with its compatibility with the prevailing cosmological paradigm. Using symbols and signs, astrology manifests itself as a metaphor of reality, and a world-ordering code by which many people make meaning of their lives. This thesis shows that, whilst the western zodiac may be illusory, astrology is a form of knowledge as valid as some other conceptualizing processes by which mind defines the world, and therefore astrology as an organized set of principles constituting a craft, merits a place in the post-compulsory educational curriculum.