In today’s education system, there’s a growing obsession with performance and accountability. Think standardised tests, job-focused training and endless metrics. But Dutch philosopher Gert Biesta argues this focus is stripping education of its true purpose. He’s a sharp critic of how we’ve shifted from talking about “education” to simply “learning”—a seemingly small change that he believes reflects a massive, often damaging, shift towards a business-like approach in our schools and universities.
For Biesta, education isn’t just about accumulating facts or skills. It’s a deeply ethical process, a human encounter where individuals grow into active citizens in a democratic society (Biesta, 2006, 2014). For anyone interested in the purpose of education, Biesta’s work offers a vital perspective, emphasising that education should help us become subjects—individuals capable of independent thought and action—rather than just objects to be moulded by the system.
The Core Ideas: Beyond Just “Learning”
Biesta (2006) points out that our modern educational language is dominated by “learning.” He calls this “learnification,” and it’s a big problem. This shift, he argues, treats education like a marketplace transaction: students are “consumers,” teachers are “facilitators,” and knowledge is a product to be delivered. While “learnification” might seem to put the student first, it actually strips the teaching process of its deeper meaning and the ethical responsibilities involved.
Instead of focusing purely on measurable outcomes, Biesta champions subjectification. This is the process where people develop into ethical, active individuals. It’s about more than just fitting into society or acquiring a skill; it’s about having your existing perspectives challenged, being disrupted, and growing through your interactions with others. It’s a process that cannot be easily measured or predicted.
Education’s Three Essential Goals: More Than Just What You Know
In his influential work (Biesta, 2010), Biesta outlines three crucial and interconnected purposes of education: qualification, socialisation, and subjectification.
- Qualification is about gaining the knowledge and skills needed for work and daily life. Think reading, writing, maths, or specific job training.
- Socialisation involves learning the norms, values, and traditions of your culture and society. This helps you fit in and participate in communal life.
- Subjectification, as we’ve discussed, is different. It’s about becoming a unique, independent individual capable of making ethical choices and acting on your own convictions.
These three goals are not a checklist; they exist in a constant, creative tension. Good teaching, for Biesta, means carefully balancing these purposes, never letting one overshadow the others. This three-part model pushes back against the idea that education is simply a technical process, reminding us of its profound ethical and human dimensions.
Deeper Insights into Education’s Purpose
Biesta (2010) argues that by focusing on “learning” as an individual process, we’ve lost sight of the intentionality of education. Education isn’t just about making things easy for the student or letting them discover things on their own. It’s an active, purposeful intervention—an engagement between teacher and student that carries the risk of both failure and profound personal change.
The “Beautiful Risk” of Teaching (2014)
In The Beautiful Risk of Education, Biesta (2014) further critiques the trend towards predictable, evidence-based teaching methods. He argues that genuine education inherently involves risk. This is especially true when we treat students as subjects (individuals with their own agency) rather than as objects to be controlled. Effective teaching, he suggests, isn’t about simply delivering content. It’s a relationship built on trust and openness, where the teacher lets go of absolute control. The true value of education lies not in its predictability, but in its potential to foster ethical individuality and active participation in democracy.
This perspective redefines the teacher’s role. Rather than someone who just delivers specific results, the teacher becomes someone who creates the conditions for subjectification to happen. They might interrupt, challenge or invite ethical responsibility, but they do not predetermine how that responsibility will manifest.
Becoming a Subject: Ethics and Individuality
Building on ideas about new beginnings and public action, Biesta sees subjectification as the act of appearing in the world as a distinct and responsive person. It challenges the common idea in neoliberal societies that students are just “self-optimising individuals” focused on their own success. Instead, subjectification emphasises growing through responsibility, embracing difference, and being open to the unpredictable influence of others.
This ethical viewpoint moves beyond simple individual choice. It suggests that individuality isn’t something we achieve alone, but something that emerges through encounters, responses, and recognising the unique existence of others.
Biesta’s Impact and Critics
Challenging Global Education Policies
Biesta (2010) is a strong critic of international policy frameworks such as the OECD’s PISA assessments. He argues that these frameworks push a narrow definition of educational success, focusing almost entirely on what can be measured through standardised tests. This narrow, economic-driven view, he contends, sidelines education’s crucial ethical and democratic purposes in favour of national competitiveness.
The Curriculum: A Place for Encounter, Not Just Delivery
Working with Michael Priestley, Biesta (2013) rethinks the curriculum. It’s not just a set of topics to be “delivered,” but a vibrant space for encounter. This kind of curriculum invites students into complex, often unpredictable engagements with knowledge, traditions, and other people. It embraces uncertainty and treats education as a dialogue-driven, real-world practice.
This vision requires a shift in how we think about time and space in education. The focus moves from steady progression to meaningful interruptions, from rigid sequencing to genuine responsiveness, and from simply “covering” material to deep ethical engagement.
Honest Appraisals: Strengths and Challenges
While Biesta’s ideas about ethical education have been very influential, they are not without criticism. Scholars coming from Marxist or intersectional perspectives (e.g., Apple, 2004; Reay, 2017) argue that his focus on ethical individual growth might downplay the significant role of social class, economic conditions, and structural inequalities in shaping educational experiences. Others question how easily his concept of subjectification can be put into practice in real-world educational policy.
Even so, his critics generally acknowledge the deep thought and urgent relevance of Biesta’s vision. His work forces us to reconsider fundamental questions about what education should truly achieve and who it should ultimately serve.
How Biesta Compares to Other Thinkers
- John Dewey: Both Biesta and Dewey see education as vital for democracy. However, Biesta critiques Dewey’s progressivism for being too focused on individual development and not enough on the necessary “interruptions” that challenge learners (Dewey, 1916; Biesta, 2010).
- Paulo Freire: While both thinkers prioritise emancipation, Biesta shifts from Freire’s emphasis on mutual dialogue to an ethics of exposure and responsibility, highlighting that there are limits to full mutual recognition (Freire, 1970; Biesta, 2006).
- Pierre Bourdieu: Bourdieu analysed how education reproduces social inequalities through concepts like “habitus” and “capital” (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977). Biesta, in contrast, emphasises the possibility of ethical growth that transcends these structural limitations.
- Nancy Fraser: Biesta’s commitment to diverse ethical perspectives complements Fraser’s call for equal participation in society. However, Fraser’s work is more explicitly focused on addressing institutional and economic inequalities (Fraser, 2009).
Towards a More Human Education
Gert Biesta’s re-framing of education as a space of ethical relationship and individual growth offers a powerful counter-narrative to today’s dominant, outcome-driven approaches. By challenging the idea that education can be reduced to measurable “learning,” he brings the ethical and political dimensions of teaching back to the forefront. While exactly how to operationalise “subjectification” remains an ongoing discussion, his work provides an essential alternative vision—one that insists education is far more than just a function, and that its true purpose is to foster individuality, responsibility, and a vibrant democratic life.
References
- Apple, M. (2004). Ideology and curriculum. Routledge.
- Arendt, H. (1958). The human condition. University of Chicago Press.
- Biesta, G. (2006). Beyond learning: Democratic education for a human future. Routledge.
- Biesta, G. (2010). Good education in an age of measurement: Ethics, politics, democracy. Routledge.
- Biesta, G. (2014). The beautiful risk of education. Paradigm Publishers.
- Biesta, G., & Priestley, M. (2013). Reinventing the curriculum: New trends in curriculum policy and practice. Bloomsbury.
- Bourdieu, P., & Passeron, J. C. (1977). Reproduction in education, society and culture. Sage.
- Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education. Macmillan.
- Fraser, N. (2009). Scales of justice: Reimagining political space in a globalizing world. Polity.
- Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Herder and Herder.
- Reay, D. (2017). Miseducation: Inequality, education and the working classes. Policy Press.
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[…] (2010) adds that education shouldn’t just be about fitting students into economic slots (subjectification). True education should help students become autonomous individuals who can challenge the status […]