This article focuses on the interface between the formal learning associated with the curricula of school and college, and the personal knowledge and broader learning lives and identities of two young people as they move into and through their post-16 careers. The interviews reveal the complex interaction between the formal curriculum, contingent social, economic and cultural influences and dispositions, and everyday learning, inside and outside of school and college. Whilst we appreciate the value and contribution of the formal curriculum, where young people find their own meanings and understandings, we maintain that all young people would profit from a curriculum in school and college that is "catalytic," and more explicitly centred upon their knowledge conceptions, and their sense of themselves as learner and agent in all of the different dimensions of their lives. Such a curriculum would be empowering. It would challenge all young people to critique what is accepted as knowledge (its content, form and structure) and simultaneously encourage them to enlist their experiences and identities, in all the different spheres of their lives, for understanding. (Contains 5 notes.)