Abstract
The idea that education is meant to fulfil goals outside itself motivates education as a significant force for all with ambitions to change society in its image. The neoliberal wave that has washed over us moved this ambition from a ‘public’ sphere into a ‘private’ sphere, accentuating individualisation, competition and profit for education owners and customers while sharing this fundamental idea: Education is to create a future which is not here, and that future is defined by the powers directing education from the ‘outside’, either ‘the market’, and/or ‘the state’. Therefore, such an idea also empties education of its force from within, ‘taming’ education. However, as will be argued in this paper, the shift from ‘public’ to ‘private’ tends to be more a matter of degree than a fundamentally different understanding of what education is. Rather than starting with the Platonian idea that education is to perfect the state or the market by perfecting the individual, this contribution will, as did the Sophists, begin in the everydayness of our shared lives, involving people, animals, plants, clouds, and mountains, engaged in the mixture of a world. With homage to John Dewey, this paper will ask us to ‘stop, look and listen’ to pay full attention to the present moment we share with others in this world at precisely this moment and to argue that the publicness of education emanates from this moment. The paper will show that there is nothing outside, beyond, above or against the moment of education. It is autotelic. Instead, the practice of teaching within the moment of education, the paper will conclude, is not to guide towards a goal outside education, defined as such by powers directing education, but to guide the unfolding of the present and, therefore, to connect people, animals, plants, mountains, and clouds across difference.