Learning on Your Own Terms

For the Dutch website Autisme Digitaal, I wrote a blog post on the “create your own curriculum” trend. Here is an English version, slightly longer and a tat more academic / activistic. 😉

---

Creating Your Own Curriculum: Learning on Your Own Terms

One evening, scrolling through TikTok, I encounter a video of a young woman proudly displaying her “personal curriculum”: a list comprising philosophy books, a watercolour course, Japanese lessons, and a dossier on sustainable fashion. “This is what I want to learn,” she declares, “not what a system imposes upon me.” The video has garnered thousands of likes, and the comments overflow with people sharing their own lists. From bread-making to quantum physics, from learning sign language to rewriting one’s own life narrative—the variation is extraordinary. And I recognise something in that energy, that hunger for autonomy. Because deep down, I’ve always had that.

A Critical Disability Studies Perspective

For me, learning at school often felt like a profound mismatch. I functioned, but it cost me enormous energy to adapt to a pace and structure that didn’t suit me. It felt as though I was constantly swimming against the current. Until I decided to stop swimming and build my own boat.

The trend “Make your own curriculum”—the construction of one’s own learning plan—feels, therefore, not merely like an entertaining hype, but as a fundamental shift in how we conceptualise learning. And for autistic people, this approach can be particularly powerful.

Why the School System Doesn’t Work for Everyone

Neuroscientist Dr Michelle Dawson, herself autistic, once wrote that the education system has been designed from a neurotypical perspective, wherein adaptability and social conformity often weigh more heavily than profound interest and expertise. For many autistic people, this means that their strengths—such as pattern recognition, attention to detail, and the capacity for intense focus—remain underutilised, whilst they must constantly invest energy in navigating implicit social rules and chaotic classroom situations.

I still recall how, as a student, I often went to lectures with a knot in my stomach. Not because the material was too difficult, but because the manner in which it was delivered—the crowds, the forced pace, the interruptions—exhausted me. My brain worked differently: where others could effortlessly switch between topics, I needed time to delve deeply into a theme. It was a continuous struggle.

But here we must pause for a critical intervention. The narrative that “my brain works differently” risks naturalising what is, fundamentally, a systemic failure. The problem is not that autistic cognition is “different”—the problem is that educational institutions have been constructed around a narrow band of acceptable cognitive styles, sensory tolerances, and social performances. As disability studies scholar Margaret Price argues in Mad at School, the issue is not individual pathology but institutional design that actively produces disability through its refusal to accommodate neurocognitive diversity.

The self-construction of a curriculum reverses this. Rather than attempting to squeeze oneself into a predetermined mould, one creates a learning environment that aligns with how one’s brain works. This can be liberating, because it proceeds from one’s own interests, pace, and learning style. One no longer needs to waste energy on masking one’s difference; that energy can be invested in actual learning.

Yet we must interrogate this celebration of individual autonomy. Whilst the ability to create one’s own curriculum represents a form of resistance against oppressive educational structures, it simultaneously risks reproducing neoliberal logics of self-responsibility. As Fiona Kumari Campbell warns in Contours of Ableism, the demand that disabled people endlessly adapt, self-advocate, and construct their own accommodations can function as a form of governance that absolves institutions of their obligations. The question becomes: why must autistic people build their own boats when the problem is that the river has been engineered to drown us?

Autonomy: Freedom From or Freedom To?

But it also concerns something more fundamental: autonomy. What does autonomy actually mean in learning? Is it freedom from structure—or the freedom to choose one’s own structure? The French philosopher Michel Foucault described learning as a form of ‘care of the self’—not in the sense of relaxation, but as an exercise in self-formation. This resonates with the idea of a personal curriculum: not learning to satisfy external demands, but to develop a relationship with oneself.

Here, however, Foucault’s framework requires extension through crip theory. As Robert McRuer argues in Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability, autonomy itself is an ableist construct when understood as independence from support, assistance, or interdependence. The notion of “choosing one’s own structure” presupposes access to resources, cultural capital, and the social legitimacy to make such choices—resources unequally distributed along lines of class, race, and disability status.

The “Make your own curriculum” trend, whilst potentially emancipatory, operates within a broader context of educational disinvestment, where the dismantling of collective provision is repackaged as individual empowerment. We must ask: who has the material conditions to construct their own curriculum? Who possesses the economic security to pursue learning that doesn’t immediately translate into employability? Whose “obsessions” are legitimised as valuable expertise rather than dismissed as symptoms requiring intervention?

Learning Is More Than Cognition

What attracts me to the “Make your own curriculum” trend is that it redefines learning. A curriculum needn’t consist solely of academic subjects or professional skills. One can also make space for things often overlooked but essential for one’s wellbeing: learning to relax, practising self-care, understanding social interactions, developing creative expression.

This raises the question of what we actually consider as knowledge. Is knowledge something measurable in grades and diplomas—or also the quiet wisdom that emerges when one learns to engage with oneself, with others, with the world?

Psychologist and autism researcher Dr Tony Attwood emphasises that many autistic people benefit from explicit learning of skills that others pick up implicitly. Social scripts, emotion regulation, recognising bodily signals—these are all things one can ‘learn’, but which rarely appear in a formal curriculum. By incorporating them into one’s own learning plan, one grants them the attention they deserve.

But we must challenge Attwood’s framework here. The assumption that autistic people must learn to approximate neurotypical social performance enshrines a compulsory able-bodiedness, to use McRuer’s term. Why must we learn neurotypical social scripts rather than demanding that society becomes literate in neurodivergent communication? Why is the burden of translation placed perpetually upon us? As disability justice activist Lydia X. Z. Brown argues, the imperative to “learn social skills” often functions as a euphemism for forced assimilation into normative social orders that were never designed to accommodate us.

This connects to what bell hooks describes in Teaching to Transgress: learning as a form of liberation, as a process of consciousness-raising. Education that not only transfers knowledge but also helps one to better understand oneself and claim more space in the world.

Hooks’s engaged pedagogy, however, must be read alongside disability justice principles. Mia Mingus reminds us that liberation cannot mean simply accessing oppressive structures; it must mean transforming those structures entirely. A personal curriculum that teaches us to “function better” in ableist capitalism may provide individual survival strategies, but it does not constitute collective liberation. We must ask whether our self-directed learning serves our own flourishing or merely our more efficient exploitation.

I have, for example, consciously worked over recent years on developing a repertoire of rest moments. I’m learning to recognise signals of overstimulation earlier and have built a toolkit of strategies: breathing exercises, somatic meditation, creative writing. For me, this was an eye-opener: I needn’t only gather knowledge; I’m also allowed to learn how I live.

These aren’t ‘subjects’ in the traditional sense, but they are certainly part of my personal curriculum. They help me to function better, not by working harder, but by caring for myself more intelligently.

Lifelong Learning, Redefined

The term “lifelong learning” often carries a bitter aftertaste. It conjures images of compulsory retraining, chasing technological developments, constantly having to prove one’s relevance. But the “Make your own curriculum” movement gives the concept a different charge: learning as a form of curiosity, of personal growth, of discovering who one is and wishes to become.

For many autistic people, this is not a luxury but a necessity. Professor Catherine Lord, a leading autism researcher, points out that autistic adults often face changing circumstances—new jobs, relocations, relationships—that demand continuous adaptation. Simultaneously, there’s the challenge of remaining true to oneself, to one’s core needs and values. A personal curriculum can help find that balance: what do I need to survive in this world, and what do I need to flourish as the person I am?

Yet Lord’s framework of “adaptation” must be interrogated. The discourse of autistic people “adapting” to “changing circumstances” positions neurotypical society as the stable norm to which we must continuously adjust. But as Mel Baggs (rest in power) argued, autistic people are not failed versions of neurotypical people; we are complete humans whose ways of being are constantly pathologised. The question is not how we adapt to a hostile world, but why the world remains hostile and refuses to adapt to us.

Learning thus becomes not only a way to keep up, but a way to remain true to oneself. I’m currently teaching myself, for example, more about understanding power structures in organisations—not because I find it fascinating, but because it helps me navigate professional contexts that are often rife with implicit hierarchies. Simultaneously, I’m learning textile art techniques, purely because it brings me joy. Both are equally valuable in my curriculum, even if the outside world might consider only the former ‘useful’.

But this equivalence itself warrants scrutiny. Why must I learn to decode hostile power structures in order to survive in workplaces that were never designed for me? Why is the burden of understanding oppressive systems placed upon the oppressed? As Sara Ahmed argues in Living a Feminist Life, diversity work often becomes the work of the diverse—those marginalised must not only endure marginalisation but also educate others about it. My learning about organisational power structures is not neutral self-improvement; it is unwaged labour demanded by an ableist world.

What If Society Took This Seriously?

The question that occupies me is: what if schools, employers, and policymakers took the idea of a personal curriculum truly seriously? What if we no longer asked: “How do autistic people fit into the system?”, but: “How does the system adapt to the diversity of human brains?”

What if educational institutions offered space for students to shape their own learning trajectories, with guidance rather than coercion? What if employers recognised that professional development looks different for everyone, and that neurodiverse employees often flourish most when given autonomy over their own growth path?

Here we encounter the limits of liberal inclusion. As disability studies scholars have long argued, the framework of “accommodation” and “adaptation” leaves the fundamental structure of oppressive institutions intact. We ask for flexible curricula within universities that remain committed to competitive individualism, timed examinations, and the production of docile workers. We request autonomy within workplaces that extract surplus value through the exploitation of labour. These are not solutions; they are prettier cages.

A curriculum is never neutral: it always reflects a power structure—what we consider important to know, and who determines that. A personal curriculum inverts that hierarchy: it places the individual back at the centre of the learning process.

But which individuals? As Nirmala Erevelles argues in Disability and Difference in Global Contexts, we cannot discuss educational autonomy without addressing the material conditions that enable or foreclose such autonomy. Working-class disabled people, disabled people of colour, disabled people in the Global South—their access to “personal curricula” is constrained not merely by ableism but by intersecting systems of capitalism, racism, and imperialism. The celebration of individual curriculum construction can become a form of what Erevelles calls “ability privilege”—available primarily to those with race and class privilege.

There are already cautious experiments underway. Some innovative schools are experimenting with competency-based education where students have more say over their learning process. Certain employers offer personalised development budgets that employees can deploy for education they find meaningful, from technical courses to mindfulness training. But these remain exceptions, not the norm.

If society embraced neurodiversity, our education system would become richer and more creative. We would learn that there is no single correct way to acquire knowledge, no standard pace to which everyone must conform. We would gain more space for depth alongside breadth, for specialisation alongside generalisation, for self-knowledge alongside world knowledge.

Yet we must push beyond the rhetoric of “embracing neurodiversity.” As Nick Walker argues, neurodiversity is simply a fact of human variation—what matters is whether we construct neurodiverse-affirming or neuronormative societies. The language of “embracing” and “celebrating” diversity can obscure the material violence of exclusion, the deaths of autistic people at the hands of police and carers, the poverty and unemployment that disproportionately affect us. We don’t need celebration; we need structural transformation, resource redistribution, and the abolition of systems that produce disability as deprivation.

Learning as a Form of Freedom?

The “Make your own curriculum” trend is ultimately a call to make learning personal, meaningful, and joyful again. It’s a resistance against the idea that learning is something one undergoes, that is imposed upon one, that serves to satisfy external expectations. Instead, it proposes learning as something one does for oneself—to grow, to understand, to find one’s place in the world.

For autistic people, this can be particularly liberating. For years, we often try to meet standards that weren’t made for us, learning skills that others consider important whilst our own interests are dismissed as ‘obsessions’. Creating one’s own curriculum is a way to reverse that dynamic: you determine what is valuable, what is worth investing time and energy in.

But liberation cannot be individual. As disability justice activists insist, no body is free until all bodies are free. My personal curriculum, however carefully constructed, exists within structures of compulsory able-bodiedness and able-mindedness that will continue to produce disability for others. The question is not simply how I can learn on my own terms, but how we collectively dismantle the systems that make such individual accommodations necessary in the first place.

My own curriculum continues to evolve. It contains things I must learn to survive in this world, things I want to learn because they fascinate me, and things I learn because they help me be more myself. I’m learning to breathe. I’m learning to listen. I’m learning to let go. All equally valid, all part of the same journey.

Perhaps learning isn’t something we do, but something we are. A continuous process of becoming—of giving new meaning to ourselves and the world. Lifelong learning is then not the duty to keep up, but the freedom to keep becoming.

Yet we must ask: becoming what? And for whom? Alison Kafer, in Feminist, Queer, Crip, warns against the tyranny of future-oriented thinking that positions disabled people as perpetually “becoming” more functional, more independent, more normal. What if the goal is not becoming, but being? Not adaptation, but refusal? Not learning to survive in ableist structures, but building new worlds entirely?

And that begins with the recognition that you have the authority to write your own curriculum. Not as rebellion, but as a fundamental right. Perhaps that’s why the trend moves me so deeply: because somewhere between TikTok lists and notebooks full of plans, something revolutionary emerges—the right to educate yourself.

But let us be clear about what constitutes revolution. Individual acts of self-determination, whilst valuable, do not constitute systemic change. Revolution requires collective action, the redistribution of resources and power, and the transformation of the very structures that produce the need for personal curricula in the first place. The right to educate oneself must be accompanied by the obligation of society to stop producing ignorance, inaccessibility, and exclusion.

The “Make your own curriculum” trend, then, is not a solution but a symptom—a creative response to educational systems that have failed us. It is a survival strategy in a hostile world. And whilst we celebrate the agency and creativity of those building their own learning paths, we must not mistake individual survival for collective liberation. The goal is not to help autistic people build better boats, but to stop engineering rivers designed to drown us.

---

If you like this blog, you might also be interested in my 2024 piece “Autism and feminist pedagogy in the university classroom“, published by the Tijdschrift voor Genderstudies.