If shoes are shaped wrong, part of the answer is in how the people who design them are taught. So we looked at the courses.
of footwear training programmes don't mention the foot at all.
* Between finishing the film and compiling this data, one programme updated its curriculum to include the foot, bringing this figure from 79% to 76%.
Even programmes built around the last, the wooden foot-shaped form a shoe is made on, rarely teach the living foot it's meant to represent.
Source: Stupid Shoes research, 2026. A global survey of footwear design, last-making and shoemaking curricula, classifying whether each programme includes foot biomechanics, anatomy or ergonomics based on its published syllabus. "Partial" means some programmes at an institution touch foot anatomy in a fitting or construction context while others do not. Classification reflects publicly available course descriptions and may not capture every detail taught in class.
This survey is part of the research behind the documentary Stupid Shoes. It reflects published curricula at the time of review and is intended to illustrate a pattern, not to rank or judge individual institutions. If a programme's coverage has changed, we'd be glad to hear about it.