Gerry Serpell-Morris is the deputy head of a school for severely mentally handicapped children. He is responsible for the part of the school that contains some of the most difficult children, many of whom are not only mentally handicapped, but also quite severely disturbed. He has recently returned to teaching from being a senior lecturer in a college of education where he ran courses in teaching the mentally handicapped. Over the past four to five years he has become more and more discontented with received wisdom about the curriculum in this area.