Lærke Grandjean: Should teaching and pedagogy socialize? To what?

Gert Biesta: If you mean whether in education we should pay explicit attention to the domain of socialisation, my answer would be yes, but all depends on how we understand that. I don’t think that ‘strong socialisation’ makes a lot of sense – that is socialisation where we tell/force students to adopt particular values, behaviours, ways of doing, and so on. The problem is that this turns students into objects of the socialisation efforts of educators. But there is a much more meaningful understanding of the socialisation task of education, namely that of providing orientation – think for example of professional education where one of the tasks is to help students to get a sense of the professional fields they will be working in, its history, its sociology, its politics, so that they can orient themselves. Or in general education: providing children and young people with a sense of the world, again including its history, its sociology, its politics, is crucial in order to give them a sense of where they are. But it should always be complemented by attention to subjectification – there’s always the duty for each and everyone of us to be a ‘self’ and this is something all the traditions and practices that make up the world can never solve or do for us. And it should be complemented by meaningful qualification: so that our students not just have a sense of where they are, but also are equipped to act in the world.

Lærke Grandjean: Thinking of your book “Letting art teach”: What should be the subject(s)/topics of teaching and of pedagogy?

Gert Biesta: I don’t mind to think of education in a rather traditional sense, that is, through curricular areas or subjects – like geography, history, physical education, music, mathematics, languages, and so on, but would always ask three questions: what does it mean to be qualified in such a subject area? What does it mean to know you way around in such an area? And what are the unique possibilities for subjectification – for meeting the world and meeting yourself and your freedom – in such a subject area. So subject areas are for me never just knowledge that should be transferred to students; they are ‘arenas’ for qualification, socialisation and subjectification, and the three always together.

Lærke Grandjean: Should pedagogy and teaching form or civilize or cultivate to the existence? To life? How?

Gert Biesta: That’s a complex question! I’ve just written a paper in which I strongly criticize the educational ‘paradigm’ of cultivation, and for me words like form and civilize have echoes of cultivation, so I would be reluctant to say ‘yes’ to your question. My main point is that cultivation assumes a ‘thing’ that needs or can be cultivated, but for me the human being as existing being is never a thing, but a person who encounters the challenge of leading his or her own life. That is why I tend to like the German word ‘Aufforderung’ – because it is a concept that is not about intervention upon the student as object, but actually as a speaking-to, and addressing of the student as subject.

There’s more to say (and this is actually the book I’m working on right now) but perhaps this gives a first indication.