Events and considerations surrounding the publication of a document specifying the curriculum to be taught in British Columbia's schools are summarized in this paper. The province has moved from a centralized to a decentralized and back to a centralized curriculum. Arthur Wise has called one response that schools have to social criticism "hyperrationalization." By this he means that schools are pressed to intensify the rationality of their organization until effectiveness and efficiency are lost. The institution of the core curriculum has the characteristics of "hyperrationalization" in that it involves increased prescription (of goals and outcomes), requires complex procedures, specifies an inappropriate solution to a problem, looks back to first-order solutions, and requires indulgence in wishful thinking. Administrators, who must mediate between policy and reality in such matters are faced with a number of considerations, including these three: Although the core curriculum places highest priority on specific basics, people in schools place highest priority on such things as incentive to learn, and development of understanding; the core curriculum assumes that teachers possess technical skills that enable them to produce neatly delivered test results; and the core curriculum implies that schools are rationally and directly related to the larger educational system. (Author/JM)