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What might students do in such schools, in the absence of prescribed subjects? They might work together in diverse teams to build robots, roller coasters, gardens, and human-powered submarines. They might write and publish a guide to the fauna and history of a nearby estuary, or an economics text illustrated with original woodcuts, or a children's astronomy book. They might produce original films, plays, and spoken word events on adolescent issues, Japanese internment, cross-border experiences, and a host of other topics. They might mount a crime scene exhibition linking art history and DNA analysis, or develop a museum exhibit of World War I as seen from various perspectives. They might celebrate returning warriors, emulating the bard in Beowulf, by interviewing local veterans and writing poems honoring their experiences. The possibilities are endless.

Changing the subject, then, means deriving the curriculum from the lived experience of the student. In this view, rather than a collection of fixed texts, the curriculum is more like a flow of events, accessible through tools that help students identify and extract rich academic content from the world: guidelines and templates for project development, along with activities and routines for observation and analysis, reflection, dialogue, critique, and negotiation.