Keywords

Introduction

Educational practices have a complex and intertwined foundation in the awareness of multiple contexts and relations and in reflection guided by theories, values, and experiences.

The development of a non-affirmative education theory is a productive move to combine comprehensive philosophies and explicit values about society and human beings, and their relationships, with fundamental analyses of the realities and discourses that surround educational practices. The societal purpose of education, educational institutions, and of leadership should be the points of departure for theorising and should guide the analyses of the interests and power vested in educational practices and the development of non-affirmative concepts and educational theory.

Both philosophy and context influence our thinking about education. In some cases, influences are open and transparent, but often they are hidden and obscure. Both kinds of influence work and make their mark on our reflections. Thus, we need to have critical perspectives on all the sources in the areas in which education is embedded: education and Bildung, culture, policy, power, and governance.

  • Educational practices are about theories of education (Bildung), because education, teaching, and learning at schools follow their own type of logic.

  • Education is culture because it is part of nation-building. Thus, education is a pivotal societal institution.

  • Education is policy because it prepares individuals for working life and a good life’ in general.

  • Education is power because it shapes relations between social groups and individuals. It develops a general sense of what constitutes valid and valuable knowledge and a good community.

  • Education is governance because the state uses education to establish its position in global competition and transnational cultures. Thus, education is national and at the same time transnational and global.

In this chapter, such analyses of contemporary policies, governance, power, culture, and education are conducted and criticised from a non-affirmative educational perspective. The fields build on theories of various kinds because the practices we wish to discuss are complex and multi-layered. Educational practices are influenced by multiple relationships. As the intention of this chapter is to take a profound look at influences on education from many sources, we structure the analyses and discussion in discourses.

Discourses

Discourses are a major aspect and theme of social and sociological analyses. Here, ‘discourse’ is understood as a form of argumentation and a way of structuring the world. Schneider (2013) describes discourse as ‘communication practices that systematically construct our knowledge of reality’. The media used for communication are language, non-verbal communication, and visual communication. Communication expresses human thought and thus constructs a cognitive framework with normative foundations that is open to enlightenment and manipulation (Fairclough, 1995). Discourses affect social relations through their real physical outcomes in our environment.

With inspiration from Norman Faircloth (1995), among others, such analyses of relations between language and power integrate analyses of texts, analyses of text production processes and distribution, and sociocultural analyses of the discursive event as a whole (p. 23). This understanding may include non-human agents (Fenwick & Edwards, 2010), such as social technologies and manuals. To add to this understanding and dig a bit deeper into the concept of influence and power that is based on Foucault’s post-structural perspective, influence, and power may be described as a network of relationships where the poles (the agents) are defined by the relationships of which they are a part. For example, the special relationship between teaching and education defines the teacher as well as the student. The teacher would not be a teacher without a student, and vice versa. Another example is that of prisoners and their guards. The relationship, not the poles, defines the aspects of power and influence. Therefore, power is productive and relational. Influence is communication between a minimum of two parties or agents (Foucault, 1983).

Foucault explicitly questioned how discourse influences people’s mentality and prompts them to govern themselves in certain ways – a process he called ‘governmentality’. Throughout his work, Foucault showed how specific opinions were formed and preserved to establish what is now commonly called the hegemonic or dominant discourse – society’s dominant viewpoint(s), kept stable by the dynamics of political power (Foucault, 1972; Schneider, 2013). Thus, discourses are instrumental in making people think ‘correctly’, or affirmatively, according to the constructors or institutions of a given discourse, about what the core and most important schooling and educational practices are.

Discourses may assume positions of dominance relative to other discourses: Dominant discourses are the spoken, written, and behavioural expectations and models that we all share as a cultural group. This also makes them normative, meaning that they are based on our expectations as a social group.

The concept of discourse is used to focus on the influences between agents and sources in order to get an understanding of general themes and the interconnected and often interacting power opportunities. It is thus a way of describing and structuring major interrelated tendencies in the thinking and enacting of sections of the world and phenomena in them. When applying discourse theory, we may bring to the foreground the interrelated trends in many kinds of influences, be they political, cultural, technical, or other.

The analyses in this chapter are based on analyses and discussions of two discourses: an ‘outcomes-based discourse’, and a ‘democratic Bildung discourse’ (Moos, 2017a; Moos & Wubbels, 2018).

The First of Two Discourses

The democratic Bildung discourse emerged from the social democratic, post-World War II welfare state model but built partly on theories that were developed prior to the war. We call this understanding of general and comprehensive education – based on the works of John Dewey (1916/2005), Wolfgang Klafki (2001) and Dietrich Benner (2021), among other theorists – Democratic Bildung because its central intention is to help children position themselves in the world, in democratic communities and societies, in ways that make them competent to understand and deliberate with other people (Moos & Wubbels, 2018).

John Dewey (1916/2005) strongly advocated the need for democracy in society and schools, and thus also for developing education that would prepare students to participate in a democracy by developing democratic habits through practice:

A democracy is more than a form of government; it is primarily a mode of associated living, of jointly communicated experience. (Dewey, 1916/2005, p. 87)

Wolfgang Klafki (2001) understands general and comprehensive education as democratic education because its intention is to position children in the world, in democratic communities and societies, in ways that help them develop competence to understand and deliberate with others. Klafki sums up his discussion with three points: general education must be education for everybody to develop the capacity for self-determination (Selbstbestimmung), the ability to participate (Mitbestimmung), and the capacity for solidarity (Solidaritätsfähigkeit) (Klafki, 1983).

The third principal line of thinking in the democratic Bildung discourse is Dietrich Benner’s theory of non-affirmative education (Benner, 2021; Uljens & Ylimaki, 2017), which I present very briefly, together with the principal ideas of two of his colleagues, Michael Uljens and Alexander von Oettingen. A fundamental theme in this theory, and thus at the very heart of this discourse, is the discussion of the fundamental educational paradox:

How is it possible – through external influence – to bring human beings to a state where they are not controlled by external influences? (Nelson, 1970, p. 349; Oettingen, 2001)

Two fundamental principles may make it possible to surmount this paradox: the child’s sense of plasticity and the call for ‘self-reflection’. Bildsamkeit is the fundamental, innate ability (and willingness, we should add) to be open-minded and to participate in a shared praxis. This concept acknowledges the child’s ‘not-yet-condition’ – it has not yet become what it is going to be – but it must participate in educational interactions in order to become human. ‘Self-reflection’ means that the self is able to focus its attention on something in the outer world and, at the same time, on herself or himself, and relate these to each other. This ability enables human beings to act, reflect on their actions, and thereafter initiate other actions. Therefore, educators should encourage children to engage in self-reflection by encouraging self-activity.

It is difficult to determine how much influence those theories of general education, or other theories, may have had on educational policies and practices. Sketching their political and practical history and situation might look like this:

  1. 1.

    The 1958 Parliamentary Report on the FolkeskoleFootnote 1 – that is, the Danish Ministry’s Guide to Education at Schools – was discussed and adjusted extensively at the municipal level, which involved politicians, educational professionals, students, and local communities. For many years, the chain of governance went from state to municipality to school. The teachers’ union was very influential at all levels until 2013.

  2. 2.

    The Act on the Basic School expressed the political intentions in Article 1 (“Act on Folkeskole 1993,” 2000), which states:

    The school shall prepare the students for active participation, joint responsibility, rights, and duties in a society based on freedom and democracy. The teaching of the school and its daily life must therefore build on intellectual freedom, equality, and democracy. (Author’s translation)

    Ironically, this declaration of democracy in education was issued at the beginning of the new, neoliberal outcome discourse era. But that discourse did not emerge until years later.

  3. 3.

    Ministries of education shared influence over schools with local authorities as government-issued legislation and allowed local administrations to interpret the overarching legislation when they implemented it (Moos et al., 2016; Moos & Paulsen, 2014). Until the beginning of the millennium, there was only a national test when school was completed in years 9 or 10.

  4. 4.

    Mainstream educational practices were enacted by governance systems, each of which had two sections: a professional-administrative one and an elected body like government and parliament, city administration and city council, school leadership, and school board, and leadership and teacher council. The act described a student council.

  5. 5.

    The educational governance supported a general practice of permitting teacher discretion in interpreting national aims, student motivation and abilities, and the choice of teaching methods and learning material.

  6. 6.

    Learning material was produced by private companies and had to be approved by the school board (individual boards for each school).

The governance discourse developed by the welfare model advocates democratic equality and deliberation in society and its institutions, and it builds on individual authority and democratic participation and deliberation for democratic Bildung.

Governing the Neoliberal State

The economy is the fundamental framework of contemporary states and transnational agencies. One effect of this is that, over the past 30–40 years, many Western nations have transitioned from being primarily welfare states to being competitive states (Pedersen, 2010).

In the years following World War II (WWII), we saw the emergence of welfare states, where areas of civil society were taken over by the state, which would protect citizens and thus further social justice, political equity, and economic equality. Full employment was a major goal, and the public sector was seen primarily as delivering services to citizens; for example, citizens were supported if they became unemployed or ill.

Transnational agencies such as the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Bank (WB), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the European Commission (EC) – to mention only a few–have been driving forces behind the opening of national economies to global marketplace logic and competition since the 1970s, and their power has been increasing since the mid-1990s. Their economic aims shifted from growth through full employment and increased productivity through the labour force and technology to growth through international trade and investment.

Beginning in the 1970s, governments started to turn economics in a neoliberal direction built on a rational choice ideology, increasing market influence and minimizing state influence (e.g., deregulation, privatisation, outsourcing) (Moos, 2014). Citizens are seen less as citizens in a political democracy and more as part of the labour force, fully responsible for their circumstances, and as consumers. The public sector is seen primarily as serving production and trade in the national economic system.

Neoliberal states develop new forms of governance and new technologies of governance (Peters et al., 2000), that rely heavily on the market as the logical basis for public policy and that involve the devolution of management from the state to the local level, to local institutions (in the case of education, to self-managing or private schools), to classrooms (classroom management techniques), and to individuals (self-managing students). Foucault called this kind of network managing, meta-management combined with self-steering, neoliberal governmentalisation (Foucault, 1991): governance presupposes management agencies, but it also requires and gains the cooperation of the subjects involved. According to Foucault, this is the case in every modern society. What makes a difference is the logic or rationale that seems to govern the fields:

No longer are citizens presumed to be members of a political community, which it is the business of a particular form of governance to express. The old and presumed shared political process of the social contract disappears in favor of a disaggregated and individualised relationship to governance. (Peters et al., 2000)

The Second Discourse

Following World War II, educational policies moved from a democratic bildung discourse to an outcome-based discourse, where the purpose of schooling, Democratic Bildung, was forgotten and replaced by measurable educational aims. Democratic and sense-making leadership were replaced by top-down economic management. Thus, fundamental aspects of education were changed from educational purpose to measurable aims, leadership in relationships was replaced by charismatic individual management, and belief in the core values of trust and responsibility was replaced by control and accountability.

The outcome-based discourse is attached to the competitive state that emerged from neoliberal, free-market economics and is called the ‘outcome-based discourse’ (Moos, 2017a) because it identifies the fundamental outcomes of education as the measurable outcomes of student learning. In this discussion of education, there is a tendency to homogenise educational practices, for example, by advocating for general education in a globalised world. Many aspects of the outcomes-based discourse were developed over time, and a coherent version of that discourse was seen in the Danish School Reform of 2013 (Moos, 2016).

The act from 2013 and subsequent regulations stated that the primary and secondary school should be a ‘learning outcomes managed school’, with more than 3000 national goals that would fall under four main categories: learning objectives, competencies, skills, and knowledge (Undervisningsministeriet, 2015). The number of national tests was increased to 42, 14 of which were compulsory from 2013 onward.

The outcomes-related aspect of Danish school reform was argued for based on the national test results of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which policymakers claimed were too low. That parameter was used as the benchmark for a school’s success. A successful school has results that place it among those of the top five nations in the PISA league table. Policymakers and educational scholars claimed that traditionally, too much teaching was based on unclear and unfounded hunches, and that could not continue. Therefore, education needed to be reformed from the bottom up. Teaching should be based on knowledge of what works with respect to national goals. That meant it should be evidence-based. Initially, this idea came from an OECD report on quality in the Danish educational system, the Peter Mortimore review (OECD, 2004b), and the review of Danish educational research (OECD, 2004a). The main recommendations in these reports were to strengthen the culture of evaluation because institutions and agencies should be held accountable for their outcomes and to focus more on evidence in education because goals should be based more on concrete, generic knowledge (Moos & Krejsler, 2021).

Very often, the curriculum that is developed in this situation has a scientific structure: experts know how to attain their (often political) ends, and they describe in detail every step that schools, teachers, and students must follow. In this orientation, there is a focus on going ‘back to the basics’ and ‘back to the skills’, because these are what may easily be measured.

The vision of education in an outcomes-based state is built on two core theories: management by objectives and outcomes-based accountability. Proponents of the outcomes-based discourse often refer to parallel theories, such as scientific management and the scientific curriculum, as their core theoretical bases (Blossing et al., 2013). Proponents of these theories are fundamentally concerned with effective and efficient governance and, thus, with centralised power. Also, the scientific curriculum hides the power to determine the purpose, content, relationships, and methods of education under the pretexts of expertise and value-free decisions.

The Danish Government passed a legislative act, Act 409, which fundamentally changed the teachers’ relationships to school principals, municipalities, and authorities (Regeringen, 2013). The act states that school principals must determine the teachers’ workloads and the scope of their work (subject and class). Until this act was enacted, this process had been negotiated between teachers and representatives of teachers’ unions, and school principals and employers.

The outcomes-based discourse and its associated practices are subject to more national social technologies than we have ever seen before in the history of education and educational theory. Social technologies may be seen as silent carriers of power. They are made for a purpose – often hidden from the practitioners – and also specify ways of acting. Therefore, they indicate a non-deliberative practice that is steered and managed from the top down (Dean, 1999).

The Contract and Social Technologies

In Denmark, a very important tool of the public (and therefore also educational) governance is the social contract (Andersen, 2003; Bovbjerg et al., 2011; Moos & Krejsler, 2021). Over the past 30 years, specific contracts have been developed for public governance and organisational leadership and management. The inspiration for this came from the (OECD, 2016). The contracts are part of public governance and thus part of the relationships between governments and organisations, consultancies, institutions, and individuals. They are not legally defined as symmetrical contracts; they are governance contracts and therefore special in that the superior level defines the framework of resources, the values, and the indicators, whereas those at the acting level sign the contract and thereby indicate that they intend to comply with and implement the expectations and indicators.

An example of an individual, social tool that is compulsory for all teachers is the ‘student plan’. Each teacher must collaborate with each student to devise a plan that addresses individual academic and social goals, the stage of learning or progress, and the actions that need to be taken every year, from kindergarten through the 9th year. The contracts are developed in ways that further their governance aspect and also make use of many social technologies. Digitalisation is part of this and will be discussed below.

There are distinctive forms of Danish governance contracts, like vertical, top-down contracts between political-administrative principals and local and institutional agents. They encourage actors to compete for contracts both within the public administration and with external private enterprises or consulting firms. There are also horizontal contracts within agencies or authorities. The agency is divided into departments that compete with each other and external actors for contracts.

One kind of contract is written in such detail that it is necessary to use social technologies such as international and national comparisons or governance packages (manuals or planning prescriptions). Another kind of contract is softer and thus leaves decisions regarding implementation to the practitioners, as long as they stay within the general framework. In most cases, a degree of self-evaluation is built into the contract. Such contracts leave decisions to the practice level, where people must manage themselves and their work. This type of leadership through values means that organisations and individuals must take over the values and norms laid out by the superior level (Andersen, 2003).

Contract governance is essentially a model for separating goal setting from production and measuring results. For those purposes, there is a need for clear and measurable goals/standards and reliable measurements of results/outcomes.

The neoliberal model of governance has been characterised by diverse combinations of social technologies that may be divided into three themes (Dunleavy et al., 2005). First, there is the disintegration of public sectors into semi-autonomous units at several levels – national, regional, local, and institutional. Next, at each level, there are also initiatives that involve private companies and consultancies that enter the broad competition for contracts. This means that relations between areas are guided by competition among providers, and by contracts between levels (OECD, 2016); this is followed by incentivisation, which offers pecuniary rewards based on performance. Contracts are often negotiated and managed based on a Management by Objectives or a Management by Results (MBO/MBR) model.

Contracts may be seen as opportunities to import benchmarks, social technologies, and specific procedures into the governance process: Objectives and outcomes are clearly described and detailed by the contractor, who often refers to standards and scores in international assessments such as the PISA test, both as an objective and a benchmark. Thus social technologies support the global standardisation and homogenisation of education (Moos & Wubbels, 2018). Another feature of contracts is what works: When describing objectives and outcomes, references are frequently made to ‘what works’ or ‘best practice’, evidence-based programs, or procedures. This designation, the concept of evidence, is becoming the generic expression of concrete and best knowledge everywhere, and in all contexts (Krejsler & Moos, 2021). A general aspect of the contracts is that numbers are used more often than before, and Danish policymakers argue for the need to comply with global or international standards or best practices in education. One reason for this is that the results of this kind of comparison are given in numbers, and numbers are often regarded as precise, accurate, and full of relevant information. Numbers are thought to cross the lines between the fluffy and imprecise field of education and the objective field of the natural sciences (Nóvoa, 2013).

Contracts are suitable for expanding the group of actors involved in education. One way to do that is through educational programs: individuals, associations and consultancy firms develop and offer best-practice packages internationally, and with generic, international arguments. Privatisation is another option for governments to choose. In most cases, a contractor can make open bidding optional for public and private agencies or institutions. This model has been adopted for governing free, primary and lower secondary schools, high schools, university colleges, and universities. Consultancies: National and international, private, or philanthropic consultancy firms are increasingly finding their way into educational governance (also see the section on “Digitalisation”).

Generally, the logic of neoliberal development applies to contracts. The development of numerous contracts is built on neoliberal market logic. Thus, education is seen as a commodity that is produced by producers: teachers and schools. The services/goods are delivered to consumers (students/parents) once the provider wins the tender. Today, this perspective is being challenged by the intrusion of high-tech, digital algorithms, and the like. In Sect. “Digitalisation” of this text, we shall discuss that development and its opportunities for, and threats to education.

Discourse on Democracy: Organising and Relations

Important aspects of the Democratic Bildung discourse are thought to be enacted in a school’s practices. Thus, the practices become a pivotal part of the discourse, as Ball et al. (2012) discuss under the theme: of how schools enact policies. However, enacting policies is only one aspect of practices, because cultural influences, theories and so on also have an effect. That means that the school as an organisation, the professional actors, and the students, live the discourse. These short discussions of school organisation and their actors are intended to show the connections between external influences and the internal life of a school: organisation, professionals, and students.

Biesta (2003) describes democratic education (Moos, 2014) as ‘creating opportunities for action, for being a subject, both in schools and other educational institutions, and in society as a whole’. Besides the opportunities for action or participation, the most important concepts related to democracy are criticism and diversity, because they give a more precise direction to the concept of participatory and deliberative democracy. In line with this understanding, Beane and Apple et al. (page 7) (Furman & Starrat, 2002; Woods, 2005) describe the central concerns of democratic schools as:

  1. 1.

    The open flow of ideas that enables people to be as fully informed as possible

  2. 2.

    The use of critical reflection and analysis to evaluate ideas, problems, and policies

  3. 3.

    The welfare of others and the common good

  4. 4.

    Concern for the dignity and rights of individuals and minorities

Pursuing this kind of goal has been a major concern for many educationalists over time. Some of them are (Beane & Apple, 1999; Bernstein, 2000; Biesta, 2003; Dewey, 1916/2005) who state that it is crucial to give students a voice and that this is an opportunity for deliberation at schools. This builds on an idea of a deliberative democracy that attempts to build a connection between liberal and communitarian democracy (Louis, 2003). The basis of liberal democracy is described as a special form of governance, where the free individual is capable of choosing for him- or herself, and where this individual pursues his or her own interests, and so takes care of his or her own life. The education practice takes place at schools, which are often seen as a set of structures. Karl Weick argues that our perspective of organisations needs to change to that of organising: the fixed structures and bricks are not what is important; what is important is to remember that organising is about communication:

When we say that meanings materialize, we mean that sensemaking is, importantly, an issue of language, talk, and communication. Situations, organizations, and environments are talked into existence. (Weick et al., 2005, p. 409)

School leadership may mean very different things. If one takes the Democratic Bildung Discourse as one’s point of departure, school leadership means empowering professionals and students to learn as much as possible, and to develop non-affirmative, critical, and creative interpretative and negotiation skills when doing so. It would also mean that professionals are encouraged and given the opportunity to collaborate with other professionals. Theories of transformational and distributed leadership are often used to explain and develop schools and leadership. Gary Yukl (2008) focuses on communicative and sense-making processes when developing a shared vision for schools, and Jim Spillane and his colleagues (2001) develop the concept of distributed leadership, leadership distributed over a number of people who contribute to the development of schools and education in more or less symmetrical relationships (Moos, 2020). On the other hand, the Learning Outcomes Discourse focuses on the correct and effective implementation of goals set at the national level, and on national testing and the international level of PISA comparisons. Education science experts have described the correct answers to their own questions with the expectation that teachers and students will work to implement these affirmations. School principals are then expected to develop the school’s direction based on data from testing and on evidence-based practices (OECD, 2008). Teachers are expected to deliver services to students, who very often work individually (Moos, 2017b).

Digitalisation

The OECD has promoted digitalisation in education for over 30 years (OECD, 1995), and many governments have taken them up on it by promoting the development and dissemination of learning platforms constructed and sold by for-profit companies, often global companies such as Microsoft or Google (e.g. itslearning,Footnote 2 Meebook, StudentIntra, Aula). This is an aspect of the emergence of eduBusiness (Williamson, 2017). This eduBusiness discourse and practice are built on two foundations. The first is the commodification of education that positions education at the center of the global marketplace (Ball, 2004, 2012), and the second is the rather new interest in education that is being taken by international and national private agencies, such as large consultancies and private foundations. Here, the players are interested in profits and the influence they may acquire from accumulated data, and in the global education market.

Global education programs such as PALS (Positive behaviour in learning and interaction) or STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) are examples of this kind of education ‘package’. The corporate world was extremely interested in turning the school curriculum more toward technical subjects. Representatives from the Confederation of Danish Industry were massively influential in the preparation of legislation and research projects on this subject (Schmidt, 2019).

Learning platforms are a major general tool for high-tech companies, and they are also a preferred social technology of the Danish government (Denmark, 2015). They are constructed to use and harvest big data. The use of algorithms to produce mega−/big databases from globally-administered tests and learning programs (Williamson, 2016) helps companies to claim that their programs are evidence-based. Thus, they support downgrading or neglecting the importance of national and local cultures while they achieve ‘algorithmic governance’ of citizens’ everyday lives (Williamson, 2017) by combining thinking, institutions, technologies, and activities that may be used to monitor, control, form and regulate human activity and behaviour (Foucault, 2001; Grimaldi & Ball, 2020).

Another step in the eduBusiness development emerged in 2019 when municipalities began to collaborate with Google Suite for Education (Council, 2019). Google has negotiated low prices for various laptop models, for which the programming and storage facilities are the Google Cloud. Cloud facilities are being offered to municipalities free of charge. Thus, for example, they may give free laptops to all students in all schools in the Municipality of Aarhus. Google does not earn anything, money-wise, but gathers a lot of big data on students and learning in the district, and perhaps also the persistent loyalty of their ‘customers’ (Williamson & Hogan, 2020). The municipal authorities have not yet found this arrangement problematic (Interview with Lucas Lundbye Cone in Jyllands Posten, November 8th, 2019).

The Aula platform – a Danish learning platform, launched by the Ministry of Children and Education (Agency, 2021) – is seen as a complete universe or environment that encompasses all aspects of students’ and teachers’ school life, from learning to well-being and forgotten outdoor activities (Cone, 2020 (forthcoming)). This brings standardising, monitoring, controlling, and surveillance (Zuboff, 2020) of actors to a new, higher level because standards and practices are being determined at a general, national level. One aspect of this is the isolation of education: students work individually on the internet to find the correct answers to general questions, given to all students. Assignments are technical and build on behaviouristic concepts of stimulus and response. Teachers are supposed to act as technical assistants, not as educationalists. Huge tech companies are moving from eduBusiness to learningBusiness.

Digitalisation is a two-headed – at least – creature: threatening, as it takes away our freedom of choice and establishes mass surveillance and affirmative education. On the other hand, it facilitates our relations with the world and works in the global community of marketplaces.

Past, Present, and Future?

One of the challenges of educational theory and practices, whether it concerns general educational theory or the scientific curriculum, or the online education platform industry, is finding ways to decide how to bring data, information, or knowledge from the world outside schools and education, inside, to be used as instructional material by teachers and learning sources by pupils. This is a real challenge because the total sum of knowledge in the world is extremely vast and absolutely impossible for any one student to acquire. This challenge has been discussed for ages, and Dietrich Benner also addresses it (2021). He discusses the basic constitutive concepts of individual education. The first is the concept of Bildsamkeit, flexibility, and the second is the transformation of societal influences and requirements:

The second constitutive concept of education, i.e., education as a summons to free self-activity, must also be connected to the social aspect of education processes. The non-hierarchical order of societal forms of practice, as the fourth basic principle, corresponds to the need to transform societal interests in education into pedagogical categories. Thus, everything that children are expected to learn in educational settings must be pedagogically transformed in such a way that the learner can acquire it in a way that simultaneously expands experience, supports forming capacity to judge, is reflective, participatory, and help shape opinions in terms of reflected will. (Benner, 2021)

Benner finds that everything that children are expected to learn must be pedagogically transformed in such a way that students can internalise it. Wolfgang Klafki also considered this very important. He discussed the prevailing principles of formal and material Bildung, focusing on ‘learning to learn’ or ‘learning subjects, and found that both were insufficient and therefore advocated the concept of categorical education, learning through examples (Klafki, 2001).

Researchers who study the scientific curriculum focus on three directions (Blossing et al., 2013): on curriculum objectives based on Franklin Bobbitt’s ideas (1924), on learning outcomes based on Benjamin Bloom’s (1956) ideas of taxonomy or on Ralph Tyler’s concept of technological means–end model (Tyler, 1949).

With the possible exception of Wolfgang Klafki’s categorical didactics, the foregoing concepts build on the understanding that scientists or professionals were able to identify and choose appropriate knowledge and structures for education at schools. Bear in mind that for ages, schools have been regarded as the institutions where, for the first time, children and youth are presented with, and given the opportunity to work on important knowledge. Here they could acquire the knowledge, they could not accumulate outside of school in everyday life. In parallel with the changes in a social situation, teachers h. They used to be teachers in small villages where parents were less educated as teachers and thus regarded them as sources of knowledge. Today, many parents of children in mainstream schools are as well-educated, or even better educated than the teachers, so the teachers may no longer lay claim to intellectual superiority.

In many ways, children and youth are now in the same situation as their parents were: they are in touch with much of the contemporary world through various services and social media, on the internet, radio and blogs, on television or streaming, in books, human relationships in cities. Greta Thunberg demonstrates improving the environment, public discussions of climate change, #MeToo, and other social movements, the new global perspective on the pandemic, and so forth.

Today the streams of information, as well as fake news, are vast and often may leave youngsters with profound difficulty with building an identity or developing helpful social relationships. There are many reasons for this, but one is that social media are not benign. They form people while entertaining or teaching them, through algorithms and social technologies that are in no way innocent: they act for the purpose of something that is mostly hidden from users but still influences them. Actually, social technologies deliver more than they promised when it comes to directions of affirmation of the national system, marketplace, structure, or logic.

School education may need to dig deeper than the didactic surface and broadly reinvent didactic research, thereby teaching and preparing students to live and act in the world, and to understand how it works: the structures and logic ‘that underlie’ things. The Norwegian educationalist Jon Hellesnes stated:

Democratic Bildung means that people are socialised in such a way that they understand the problem complexes pertaining to the preconditions of what occurs around them and to them. Thus, educational socialisation emancipates humans to be political actors. (Hellesnes, 1976) (My translation)

Hellesnes described a vision of education consistent with the Outcomes-based Discourse:

Affirmative education reduces humans to objects of political processes that they do not recognise as political; a conditioned human being is more an object for direction and control than a thinking and acting subject. (Hellesnes, 1976) (My translation)

Hellesnes’ description should be a profound reminder of the need for democracy in education, especially in this digital era.