Constants of Education

Abstract

This chapter assumes that if we would like to enlighten education as an anthropological phenomenon we will have to make its (soft) technology (used here in the classical sense reasoning special effects that specific actions may have for the experiences to be made) transparent. The basic pedagogical operative mechanism is the incommensurable relation between pointing and learning linked together by special forms of articulation. In other words, compulsory education can be regarded as the unity of the difference of two operations, of pointing and learning. This may be called the “pointing-structure of education” leading to different forms of education. The “mechanism in the art of educating” is demonstrated in the form of four specific triangles: the evolutionary triangle (nature–consciousness–culture/society), the ontogenetic triangle (baby—significant other—things), the didactic triangle (pupil—teacher—topic) and, as a kind of summary, the classical form calculus (causa finalis = topic—causa materialis = child—causa efficiens = educator). These four can be regarded as the “Bermuda-triangles of education” because education seems to disappear within each of the three given components and therefore educational theory has to bring them to reappear as a specific anthropological phenomenon and communicative practice. Finally, the chapter demonstrates that these triangles operate when five specific conditions are fulfilled: (a) the bodily basis, (b) affect and emotion, (c) special educational time (d), space, and (e) last but not least, social-structural conditions both materially and normatively. From this perspective, the limitations of education and its potentials and possibilities as a human practice become evident.