Questions concerning the ownership of the curriculum (or of learning) have been prominent in education for many years. They have played an important part in the reorientation of adult education and in the development of multicultural education, as well as in the idea of learner- centeredness more generally. They have helped to weaken some of the bastions of privilege and mindless tradition that have characterized the educational systems of some countries, while their sensitivity to the needs of individual learners has been prominent in the development of progressivist thinking in education, from the kindergarten to lifelong learning. They are crucial to the agenda of widening participation. While not doubting the seriousness of the problems to which these developments have been responses, this paper takes issue with the uncritical and sometimes strained usage of "ownership" found here. The idea of ownership, connected with the themes of possession and consumption, needs also to be considered in terms of its negative connotations. The paper does this through an examination of the idea in of disowning knowledge as this emerges in the writings of Stanley Cavell. This is an idea that Cavell elaborates especially in relation to the plays of Shakespeare, but it is a refinement of aspects of the theme of acknowledgement that pervades his thought. His reworking of the idea of ownership relates not only to matters of material possession but also to questions of family relationship and personal identity, understood especially in the light of certain forms of skepticism. I connect the implications of this with the manner in which the content of the curriculum has come to be conceived - especially where there is a preoccupation with accountability and transparency, and where education is characterized by performativity, in Jean-François Lyotard's helpful phrase. Hence my discussion explores the limits of the idea of ownership in relation to the curriculum, and its possibly harmful effects, in order to point towards the possibility of a more sensitive and more receptive, non-consumptive relation to content. In explaining the nature of such an ethically rich orientation towards learning, the possibility that this may be uncomfortable is considered. The uncomfortable (though virtuous) nature of the relation to alterity thus implied is seen as an antidote to the sentimentalisation, mystification, or neutralization of learning. The practical implications of this are illustrated with curriculum examples - examples that seek also to provide a deeper insight into the possibilities of learning and the kind of personal growth that this can entail.