The publication of the Curriculum Development Centre's discussion paper 'Core Curriculum for Australian Schools' in June 1980 stimulated discussion of the concept of core curriculum in Australia. The driving force came from the Foundation Director of the CDC, Dr Malcolm Skilbeck. This study discusses the themes and directions to which Skilbeck was committed through a study of his work prior to his return to Australia in 1975 and his subsequent writings. The study considers Skilbeck's work against general thinking on educational matters in Australia and overseas. The initial discussion centres on Skilbeck's work in the United Kingdom prior to 1975. This concludes that his views were moulded by his own research on the American progressive educator John Dewey and that Dewey's ideals of a democratic society moulded and sustained by a democratic core curriculum have been dominant in all Skilbeck's subsequent thinking. The study reviews the establishment, working and conclusions of the CDC Core Curriculum and Values Education Working Party. In two subsequent chapters, the study looks at Skilbeck's approach to cultural mapping and school-based curriculum development as the two fundamental Planks of his approach to the development and implementation of a core curriculum for Australian schools. The study shows that Skilbeck's concept of cultural mapping is helpful but does not succeed in providing an effective basis for the articulation of national guidelines. In consequence, the CDC did not succeed in providing a framework sufficient to hold together the infinite range of possibilities opened UP by school-based action. The study considers the limited published reactions to the CDC Paper. It notes that the termination of the CDC by the Committee for Review of Commonwealth Functions in early 1931 prevented the fuller dissemination and debate of the topic during 19S1 and subsequently. The study notes that responses were disaapointingly few and in many cases failed to address the central questions raised by the CDC paper, in particular the idea of national curriculum guidelines and their application through school-based curriculum development. The major responses came in the State of Victoria where local circumstances encouraged discussion of the issues raised by the CDC. The study concludes that the CDC discussion paper was a valuable stimulus to discussion of curricular foundations at the time it was released but represented a point of view that was not fully understood or appreciated at the time. It laid the foundation for the renaissance of the general concept as 'democratic curriculum' in 1986 and provides important indications of the potential for the development of the Participation and Equity Program.