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    What is the Educational Task? Arousing the Desire for Wanting to Exist in the World in a Grown-up Way


    Biesta, Gert (2018) What is the Educational Task? Arousing the Desire for Wanting to Exist in the World in a Grown-up Way. Pedagogía y Saberes, 50. pp. 51-61. ISSN 0121-2494

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    Abstract

    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.

    Item Type: Article
    Additional Information: This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en . Cite as: BIESTA, Gert. 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.51-61. ISSN 0121-2494.
    Keywords: education; teaching; grown-up-ness; egocentrism; interruption; curriculum;
    Academic Unit: Faculty of Social Sciences > Education
    Item ID: 13163
    Depositing User: Gert Biesta
    Date Deposited: 05 Aug 2020 11:48
    Journal or Publication Title: Pedagogía y Saberes
    Publisher: Universidad Pedagógica Nacional
    Refereed: Yes
    URI:
    Use Licence: This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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