It is generally supposed that a curriculum should engage students with worthwhile
knowledge, which requires an understanding of what it means for something to be
worthwhile: a substantive conception of the good. Yet a number of influential
curriculum theories deny or undermine one or another aspect of the key assumption
upon which a meaningful account of the good depends - that people are the agents of
their own beliefs, desires and actions. This renders a significant encounter between
the curriculum and substantive ethics highly problematic. In this article I explore
the meeting between curriculum and human agency in four seminal curriculum theories,
and offer a framework to engage the curriculum with this key concept of substantive ethics.
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