The two conference essays in this volume, delivered in Sydney (2009) and Sevilla (2013), discuss and situate the essential counter-narrative of any engaged or committed pedagogy in architectural education : what if, in spite of all good intentions, curricula, personalities, talent, benevolent dogma, soft dictatorship and administration, learning actually does not really happen in the way we think it happens? What if, after all instruction, training, inventive courses and interactive seminars and studios in architectural education, we are actually re-inscribing existing patterns of domination, untruths and distortions; in other words we are closing minds rather than opening them. What would this mean? Would there be any reason to speak up? And on what basis? What grounding are students being given in non-risk times, in neo-liberal worlds of stuffed goats and politicians, if they are invited to see themselves slot into a professional market and global world intent on self seeking agendas and self-generating ego worlds?