For much of the twentieth century, education was treated as a process of “essence-making.” Like a carpenter following a blueprint to create a chair, the educational system looked at a child and saw a pre-determined end product: a worker, a citizen, or a specialized cog in the industrial machine. However, the rise of student-centered learning has sparked a return to a more profound philosophical root. To truly center a curriculum on the student is to embrace the core tenet of Existentialism: existence precedes essence.
In the existentialist view, a human being first appears on the scene, exists, and only afterwards defines themselves through their choices. When applied to curriculum design, this philosophy transforms the school from a factory of standardized outcomes into a landscape of self-creation.
The Existential Crisis of the “Object-Student”
Modern education often suffers from what Jean-Paul Sartre would call “bad faith.” Students are frequently treated as objects—data points on a standardized test or vessels to be filled with “essential” knowledge. When a curriculum is purely prescriptive, it denies the student’s subjectivity. The existentialist critique of this model is clear: if the “essence” (the learning objectives and career goals) is determined before the student ever enters the room, the student’s radical freedom is suppressed.
A student-centered curriculum grounded in existentialism seeks to reverse this. It acknowledges that the learner is a “subject” in a world of “objects.” Therefore, the primary goal of education is not the acquisition of facts, but the navigation of one’s own existence and the courage to define one’s own meaning.
Radical Freedom and the Power of Genuine Choice
In many “student-centered” classrooms, choice is often an illusion—a choice between two pre-vetted worksheets or three pre-selected essay topics. Existentialism demands more. It calls for an Emergent Curriculum, where the path of inquiry is co-created by the learner’s own interests and questions.
Radical freedom in the classroom means that the student has the agency to fail, to pivot, and to explore “useless” avenues of inquiry if those avenues provide personal meaning. This is the difference between “controlled options” and “genuine agency.” When a student chooses their own project, they are not just learning biology or history; they are authoring their own life.
The Value Exchange: Two Models of Education
| Feature | The Factory Model (Essence-First) | The Existential Model (Existence-First) |
| View of the Learner | A product to be shaped. | A self-defining subject. |
| Curriculum Source | External standards and mandates. | Internal inquiry and lived experience. |
| Primary Value | Compliance and Proficiency. | Authenticity and Responsibility. |
| Role of Content | An end in itself. | A tool for self-discovery. |
| Goal of Education | Economic utility (The Worker). | Ontological development (The Person). |
The Teacher as a Provocateur
In an existentialist curriculum, the teacher’s authority is not derived from a mastery of facts, but from their role as a Provocateur and “Fellow Traveler.” Inspired by the work of Maxine Greene, the existentialist educator strives to “release the imagination.”
The teacher’s job is to create “situations” that force students out of their complacency. They do not provide the “correct” moral to a story or the “only” way to solve a problem. Instead, they ask: “What does this mean to you? How will you act upon this knowledge?” The teacher becomes a mirror, reflecting the student’s freedom back at them and challenging them to take a stand.
Voices of the Existential Learner
- Jean-Paul Sartre: “Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself.”
- Albert Camus: “Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.”
- Maxine Greene: “We are the projects we are currently engaged in… we are always in the process of becoming.”
Authenticity and the Critique of Assessment
If the goal of education is to define one’s own essence, then standardized assessment is a philosophical impossibility. You cannot standardize a unique human essence. Existentialist curriculum design favors Authentic Assessment, which prioritizes:
- Portfolios of Growth: A record of the student’s “becoming” over time, rather than a snapshot of a single day.
- Self-Reflection: The student’s own evaluation of their work is considered more important than the teacher’s grade.
- Phenomenological Reporting: Encouraging students to describe their experience of learning—how a scientific concept changed their view of the world or how a poem resonated with their personal history.
In this model, “success” is defined by the degree to which a student’s work is an authentic expression of their own values and efforts.
The Burden of Responsibility: Navigating Student “Angst”
Freedom is not always a joyous experience. Sartre famously noted that we are “condemned to be free.” In a classroom where the student is the architect of their own path, they often encounter angst—the overwhelming realization that they alone are responsible for their success or failure.
Many students, conditioned by years of being told exactly what to do, find radical freedom terrifying. An existentialist curriculum must therefore be scaffolded by a “pedagogy of care.” Educators must provide a safe emotional harbor where students can navigate this angst. We must teach students that the “dread” of making a choice is simply the vertigo of their own potential. By supporting them through this discomfort, we help them develop agency, the most critical “21st-century skill.”
Education as the Project of Being Human
Applying existentialism to student-centered curriculum design elevates education from a transaction to a transformation. When we move away from “essence-first” schooling, we stop trying to manufacture predictable citizens and start empowering unpredictable, creative, and authentic human beings.
The existentialist classroom prepares students for the one task that remains relevant regardless of technological or economic shifts: the task of creating oneself. In an age of AI and automation, where “essences” can be calculated by algorithms, our radical human freedom—our ability to choose our own meaning—is our most precious asset. A curriculum designed with this in mind does not just prepare a student for a career; it prepares them for the lifelong project of being human.
