My original thinking was that the stuff that's being taught should be less controversial there; the political circumstances might make a big difference if you're teaching college students about Marxian political theory or Austrian economics or, say, genetic engineering, but primary- and secondary-school classes are supposed to be survey courses and their contents should be pretty much settled. That might not be a very good argument, though, considering the not-too-infrequent explosions in American political discourse over the likes of evolution or whatever's offensive in literature this week.

Okay. I mostly had in mind professors teaching stuff like quantum field theory or complex analysis and primary/secondary school teachers teaching modern history -- but if you average across all that primary/secondary school teachers teach and all that professors teach you're probably right.

A better argument would likely be that teachers now don't do much to set the curriculum. Individual tenure to protect teacher discretion doesn't make much sense when teachers don't have much discretion.

Well, where I am they can still choose which parts of the curriculum to spend 20 minutes on, and which parts to spend 3 weeks on. Is that different in the US?