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Pedagogía y Saberes

Print version ISSN 0121-2494

Abstract

BIESTA, Gert  and  NOGUERA-RAMIREZ, Carlos Ernesto. What is the educational task? Arousing the desire for wanting to exist in the world in a grown-up way. Pedagogía y Saberes [online]. 2019, n.50, pp.63-74. ISSN 0121-2494.

Discussions about education often focus on the purposes that should be achieved or the outcomes that should be produced. In this paper I approach the question of the purpose of education differently, by asking what the work of teachers and other educators should focus. The answer I propose is that this work is about arousing the desire in children and young people for wanting to exist in the world in what I refer to as a "grown-up" way. I explain my use of the idea of "grown-up-ness," where I argue that we should not think of this as the outcome of a developmental trajectory but as a way in which human beings can try to exist in and with the world. This suggests, as I explain, that central to the work of education is the interruption of ways in which children and young people are entirely self-centred and self-focused, thus turning them towards the world in which their existence as grown-up subjects can only take place. Education that is focused on this has a task to provide time, space and curricular forms through which children and young people can work "on" their grown-up-ness. And education needs to provide sustenance so that children and young people can be supported and nourished in their task of trying to exist in a grown-up way.

Keywords : education; teaching; grown-up-ness; egocentrism; interruption; curriculum.

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