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In this paper, we use the folk pedagogical construct to explicate the dilemma of teachers being poised between mandated curricula standards and the individual children they serve. By reference to a series of interviews with practicing teachers, we show that attempts to locate an individual child within the curriculum are mediated by the larger structural contexts within which the practices of teaching are inscribed. Teachers’ conceptions of student individuality are shown to assume a trait-like explanatory posture with individual differences being explained in terms of “kinds” as opposed to “degrees”. The resulting dynamic is one of an assumption of categorical homogeneity amongst members of particular “kinds”, as well as a substitution of behavioral and affective outcomes for cognitive ones when individuals are considered in relation to the class.