Grim fairy tales of curriculum change in medical education

Fairy tales play a significant role in shaping cultural norms and adult behaviours. They imprint values and moral norms on children and adults alike by eliciting emotions to characters that uphold or break these norms, and they set standards for socially appropriate behaviour. In this article, we use the fairy tale idiom to retell the story of curriculum change from being an activity in medical education where everyone works together in harmony and collaboration to one in which contestation, resistance and debate are a necessary component for creating change.