“Initiatives such as the RSA’s Opening Minds, among many others, seek to teach competences (or skills) looking at what young people might need to be able to do to effectively apply the knowledge they gain at school. By bringing such capabilities into the curriculum itself, both to demonstrate the relevance of the knowledge being imparted, and to develop young people’s capacity to use that knowledge, these initiatives seek to give all young people the opportunity to shape their worlds.

However, important critiques of these discourses emphasise the dangers of an education that seeks to form personalities and identities in order to create perfect citizens and economic operatives. By suggesting that young people must use what is learned at school in a certain way, for certain ends (sustainability for example), the curriculum could become an agent that denies young people real freedom for self determination and creative thought.

How do we move beyond this impasse? How do we equip young people to exercise agency without determining how that agency should be used and to what end? What does a curriculum that is designed explicitly with young peoples’ agency in mind look like?”

Click here to read more. Take a look at the RSA Education Seminars Report.