ABSTRACT
The history of American medical education suggests that it is difficult at best and impossible at worst to change the curriculum. Two different waggish commentaries state it very well. In the early 1950s, the statement was that ‘changing curriculum in the medical school is like trying to move a graveyard.’ Nobody knew (or apparently cared) whose bones they were, but surely they were somehow to be revered and not disturbed. Late in the 1960s, a new statement emerged: ‘changing curriculum in the medical school is like rearranging the lifeboats on the Titanic’ - a reference to the fact that many schools were busy with curriculum change, but that the changes were largely cosmetic and would contribute little to avoiding potential educational disaster.
