A teacher education seminar, designed to be an egalitarian "community of learners," is critiqued. In an effort to make classroom learning relations more equal, instructors referred to themselves as seminar leaders and sought student participation in the curriculum decision-making process. The most significant consequence of the egalitarian approach may have been the atomization of seminar participants. Class readings, the literature review, and discussion of philosophical and methodological issues, when taken up, were in the context of in-class dissertation discussion. The effective displacement of common readings and emphasis on individual presentations of doctoral research allowed individual students to move in their own directions. Neither students nor course instructors raised the issue of student participation in evaluation. Not giving students a voice in structuring student evaluation was an arrangement that seemed to go against the egalitarian structure of the seminar. Comments from the students indicated that the seminar gave expression to real grievances in the participants' lives as students and as teachers. However, the form the seminar took was ultimately an obstacle to more fully understanding the grievances expressed. While valorizing individual voices and curriculum empowerment will continue to be important, such an approach requires a critical perspective that grasps how larger structures determine classroom practice. (Contains 16 references.) (LH)