The Emotional Curriculm

What University Students Remember Most

Photo by Austin on Unsplash

Years after the class has ended, students often remember not what we taught, but how we made them feel. The content of a lecture may fade, but its emotional tone lingers, the quiet steadiness of a teacher’s confidence, the warmth of their welcome, the tension in a moment of public correction. These residues of feeling become part of what we might call the emotional curriculum of education: the invisible syllabus transmitted through presence rather than PowerPoint.