What should be learned? How should it be organized for teaching? These seemingly simple questions are deceivingly political. Curriculum theorists are preoccupied with the politics of the first question at the expense of the realpolitik of the second. Instructional designers are preoccupied with the realpolitik of the second question at the expense of the politics of the first. I argue that conceptual distances between curriculum theory and instructional design are based on divisions of labour established during the 1960s. After decades of neglect, curriculum theorists, and specifically critical theorists, appear clueless when it comes to curriculum design and the realpolitik of their causes. When it comes to the realpolitik of practice their political causes are formless. Quite the opposite of critical theorists, instructional theorists nearly mastered the realpolitik of form but have no political causes. I argue that, to contradict the "status quo" of C&I, curriculum theorists will have to dirty their hands with the realpolitik of form and instructional designers will have to clutter their heads with theory.