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Schooling markets prioritize the needs of valued 'customers'. In Australia, this has resulted in a proliferation of learning interventions aimed at attracting and holding students perceived to fall into this category, and managing those who don't. In this paper, I attempt two main tasks: a description of the large-scale processes generating increasing customization in education markets, and an examination of the localized effects of a customized learning programme for young people who have left school or who have low attendance rates. This examination investigates the possibility that these young people are set to become modernity's outcasts, as described by Bauman (2004). He argues that an inevitable outcome of modernization and economic progress is the creation of 'wasted lives', or individuals who are no longer able to make a living because their labour is made redundant in markets that operate on a global scale. Close attention to an example of customized learning provided an opportunity to assess this risk. I claim that new forms of customization in schooling produce new forms of differential provision, leading to success in global labour markets for some, and redundancy or 'wasted lives' for others, and that the type of provision afforded by these new forms of customization is largely determined by the relationship between curriculum and pedagogy. The examination of this relationship in one example of customization describes some of the complexities faced by teachers in these settings, and the epistemic opportunities made possible by recognizing and valuing students' backgrounds, in this case the backgrounds of Indigenous students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]