Gert Biesta, "Obstinate Education: Reconnecting School and Society" (Brill, 2019)

What should the relationship between school and society be? Obstinate Education: Reconnecting School and Society (Brill, 2019) argues that education is not just there to give individuals, groups and societies what they want from it, but that education has a duty to resist. Education needs to be obstinate, not for the sake of being difficult, but in order to make sure that it can contribute to emancipation and democratisation. This requires that education always brings in the question whether what is desired from it is going to help with living life well, individually and collectively, on a planet that has a limited capacity for giving everything that is desired from it. This text makes a strong case for the connection between education and democracy, both in the context of schools, colleges and universities and in the work of public pedagogy.

Kai Wortman is a PhD candidate at the Institute of Education, University of Tübingen, interested in philosophy of education.

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