Is there any knowledge more sensitive and 'singular' than education? It aims at making the person in the condition to be free. Rekh Magazine is honored to have a conversation with professor Gert Biesta, a leading philosopher of education.
What is the task of education? No doubt for professor Gert Biesta, one of the most read, appreciated and studied philosophers of education worldwide. He answers: "The brief answer comes from Hannah Arendt: Amor Mundi,’ that is, a love for the world". We talk about several issues, from distance learning to Arendt's category of 'natality', from education for adults to the condition of Italian teachers, and more. An exclusive, smart, and immersive meditation on a complex anthropological issue.
During the pandemic outbreak, on a global scale, students had to deal with distance learning. What consequences may be expected, in the future, about the relationship teaching-learning?
I am not a fan of the word ‘learning,’ as I don’t think that it’s a very helpful or very precise word in education. So I would always talk about education, and therefore also about ‘distant education.’ The expression is a bit strange, however, because when teachers and students are together in a classroom, there can be also all kinds of distances – for example, the student dreaming away with their thoughts; or the teacher talking over the heads of the students. So what we are rather talking about is education using video and audio connections. As we all know, video images can really catch our attention – think of television, youtube, TikTok and so on – so the real challenge is how, as a teacher, you can create (or I like the word orchestrate) meaningful education. Because so much teaching has happened and still happens in classrooms – I would say under the condition of ‘physical proximity,’ that is, bodies together in a confined space – many teachers are very good at making education happen under such circumstances and don’t have a lot of experiences doing it via video link, for example. But I don’t think that being together in a classroom is automatically better than meeting via video link. It is different, and the real challenge is how, in both settings, we can bring about meaningful education. I’m optimistic that teachers can do so, if they have a good sense of their professional identity and their ‘artistry,’ that is, their ability to ‘invent’ meaningful educational activities and encounters in new situations.
It’s not just the question of whether teachers should take the risk – I think that they are always doing risky work, if, that is, they encounter their students as human beings and not as objects that just need to produce test scores.
Is education enough to transform society?
I think it’s naïve to think that education can transform society, so we should be careful with too big ambitions in relation to this – such that education should solve the problems with the economy, employment, sustainability, democracy, peace, and so on, although expectations in relation to this are constantly put on education. But that doesn’t mean that education cannot make a difference. A society in which schools are able to engage students in history, geography, and the arts will definitely be a different society than one where students just should focus on being successful in passing exams in language, science and mathematics. And we should also be mindful that we don’t think that the school is only there to ‘serve’ society. In my recent book (World-Centered Education) I argue that we tend to focus too much on the question what kind of school society needs, and forget to ask what kind of society the school needs so that the school can be a space and place for education. So society also has an important role to play in making good education possible.
In your recent book (World-centered education) you argue that education should be world-centered rather than child-centered or curriculum-centered. Could you briefly explain what you mean?
I fear I can’t explain it briefly – that’s why I needed at least a whole book! In the book, I note that the discussion about education seems to be going back and forth between people who argue that education should be child-centered – by which they often mean that it should follow the child, allow the child to develop its talents, become who the child wants to become, and so on – and people who argue that education should be curriculum- or knowledge-centered, which means that education is about getting the curriculum ‘into’ the child. Both views are already one-sided, as you can say that education needs a child and a curriculum. But what all this forgets is that the reason for having education, for having schools, is because we want to equip and encourage the new generation for their life in the world. That’s already one reason why the real centre of education should be the world. In addition: the world, by which I mean the natural world, the physical world, and the social world, is not a construction or a playground where we can just do what we want to do. The world confronts us with limits and limitations – see the environmental crisis and also the democratic crisis, which, so I argue in the book, are both the result of not respecting limits and limitations; the limits of the physical and natural world and the limits of the social world. This is why education that just wants to make sure that children can develop their full potential or all their talents is actually problematic, because it forgets that not everything that children potentially have should or can be developed. So the other important reason for putting the centre of education in the world, is precisely to help children and young people to come to terms with the limits and limitations of the world in which they live – which is a complex, lifelong challenge.
But if teachers really understand that they are trying to equip and encourage their students for their own independent, free life, there is always a risk involved. And a very worthy risk, I would say, because without taking the risk – the risk, for example, that students will think critically, will come to their own judgments – nothing educational will actually happen, only reproduction of what already exists.
Through education, students become aware of inequalities and develop the tools to oppose to totalitarian government and oppression. How do you interpret the protests that occurred in Iran, in the struggle for fear?
What happened there was, and still is, quite remarkable. It is obvious, at least from ‘our’ perspective, that the regimes in such countries want to control their citizens and constrain what citizens are allowed to do, or even to think. Regimes in such countries – but I think the same is happening, for example, in China and particularly in how it is engaging with Hong Kong – use very repressive measures for such control, which of course is meant to make people afraid. It is therefore very remarkable when people stand up and have the courage to raise their voice. What I cannot immediately say is what the contribution of education to this is – though I do think that in democratic societies it is important that we keep this on the radar of our education as well. But for me I am first of all deeply impressed by young people who are willing to stand up and speak. An example I often mention in my presentations is Joshua Wong in Hong Kong, who is currently imprisoned.
Pandemic, wars, global crisis. In such a dark times, what are the main goal of education?
The brief answer comes from Hannah Arendt: Amor Mundi,’ that is, a love for the world. In my own work, I also describe the task of education as that of trying to arouse the desire in the new generation for wanting to be in the world in a grown-up way, that is, not just driven by their own desires, but always pondering the question whether what is desired is what should be desired. For that we, as educators, need to engage with this question as well and probably also need to have a degree of amor mundi.
In Italy teachers are generally under-considered by society. They generally earn less money than other professions. What can be done, in your opinion, to change this frame?
The simple answer is to pay them more. But behind this is a ‘mind frame’, indeed, that is, a certain perception in society about what teachers are worth – or, for that matter, what all kind of work is worth. It is sad that there are such huge differences in perception of what work is worth, and that some of the most important work for our human existence, such as teaching, care work and nursing, is often seen as rather low-status.
You assumed that real education always involves a risk. Should teachers take this risk, and why?
It’s not just the question of whether teachers should take the risk – I think that they are always doing risky work, if, that is, they encounter their students as human beings and not as objects that just need to produce test scores. But if teachers really understand that they are trying to equip and encourage their students for their own independent, free life, there is always a risk involved. And a very worthy risk, I would say, because without taking the risk – the risk, for example, that students will think critically, will come to their own judgments – nothing educational will actually happen, only reproduction of what already exists.
Education seems to be primarily a matter of the young generation. However, society is getting older and older. What educational paths do you see as possible?
I am a big fan of adult education, which I see as a lifelong right to engage in education and to be educated. This is very different from lifelong learning, which is more of an individual’s duty to upgrade their skills in order to remain employable. That may give adults ‘useful knowledge,’ but I think what everyone needs is what in the history of adult education is called ‘really useful knowledge,’ that is, political understanding of how power works, how inequality is produced and reproduced, where emancipation and liberation is possible and needed, and so on. Adults coming together in study groups can do a lot – but I also believe that encountering teachers, particularly teachers who open things for you that you were not aware of, not looking for, and so on, is really important throughout one’s life as well.
Arendt’s idea of natality has been conceived as an ethical category: it leads and founds the human’s (free) agency. May the integration with the category of development solve its aporias?
I don’t read Arendt’s idea of natality as an ethical category, but rather as a fact of life, and it refers to the fact that newness, and new beginnings, are real. We encounter new beginnings when children are born, but also when immigrants arrive, or when students arrive in a classroom at the start of a school year. But, with Arendt, I would say that in all speaking and doing we encounter newness. So it is a very important observation about human life and the human condition. Natality is not the same as freedom, at least not if we see freedom as ‘sovereignty,’ that is the freedom to do what you want to do. Real freedom, which again is a lesson I’ve taken from Arendt, is about how my beginnings can enter the world where they will always be taken up by others who are beginners as well, and thus there’s always the chance – the risk! – that my beginnings, when they arrive in the world, are changed and transformed. I can’t see how development has anything interesting to say here – I find it a hugely problematic idea, particularly in the way in which it circulates in contemporary education. In most cases development focuses on children and the development of their potential and talents, and that is simply not what education is about. For education the question is always whether what emerges, the new beginnings in children will help or hinder in living one’s life well. To constantly bring in that question – which means to interrupt development – is the educational work.
Is Arendt’s account of human subjectivity a valuable resource for the theory and practice of education?
Yes, and it is very central to my work. The beauty of Arendt’s thinking here is that she highlights the double meaning of the word subject. The subject is both the one who begins, and who takes initiative. But subject literally means being subjected and that is precisely the point of our human existence: that our beginnings, and therefore we, are always subjected to what other people do or don’t do with our initiatives. So it’s a very precise way to describe the complexity of what it means to exist as a subject in the world, with others.
© Rekh Magazine
Gert Biesta
Gert Biesta is Professor of Public Education in the Centre for Public Education and Pedagogy at Maynooth University, Ireland, and Professor of Educational Theory and Pedagogy at the Moray House School of Education and Sport, University of Edinburgh, UK.
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