"Teachers have every reason to face the future with confidence if they are go forward in partnership with all the other people who have a rightful interest in the curriculum" - this is one of the concluding comments in The Future of the Curriculum , published to mark the 25th anniversary of City of Dublin VEC and Shannon curriculum development centres. According to the book, both centres view curriculum development as a way of empowering teachers and helping them to grow to professional maturity.

An education writer, Martin Buber, is quoted. He describes the artistry of teaching as "calling forth the personality of the student through dialogue." He wrote in 1961 that "the teacher enters the classroom and sees the pupils at their desks, the misshapen and the well-proportioned, empty faces and noble faces in indiscriminate confusion, like the presence of the created universe. The glance of the teacher accepts and receives them all."