18/04/2026
WHOSE CURRICULUM IS IT, ANYWAY?
Dorothy Heathcote once reflected:
I don't think linearly… My logic is totally different.
Her point wasn’t just personal. She was questioning something much bigger:
Why do schools expect everyone to think in the same way?
In the past, she said, education served a clear purpose:
to make people literate
to help them count, function, and work
But now, she argued, the world demands something different:
we need them to be human, generous, thoughtful, with many kinds of language inside them…
Not just language in the sense of French or German - but:
the language of feeling
the language of interpretation
the language of social understanding
And yet, so often, these things are taught at a distance.
She gives the example of “Citizenship”:
They're learning it ‘over there’…
She means: they are learning about something happening in another place or time. Instead, she suggests something very different. Students should
visit courts of law
meet police officers
experience how society actually works
Because learning, for her, has to be lived.
She puts it simply:
“Whose job is it for you to learn?”
Many students would say: the teacher’s.
But her answer is:
“No… it's yours; but it's my job to enable you to want to.”
That shift is everything.
She describes a project working on the design of a hospital garden, and imagines what could happen if this was central to the school day. The students would learn about
science through soil and growth
art through design
music through creating sound for the space
Their days would be packed… they’d be walking tall on their understanding.
Instead, she observes, many students spend the day:
folded up like praying mantises…
And perhaps the most striking statement of all:
The curriculum is still made for them. It is not made by them.
This is the challenge she presents to us: not just, What should we teach?
But:
Who is the curriculum really for — and who is helping to shape it?
(Source: So Dorothy Heathcote video (University of Newcastle, 2002)
