Education for a Beautiful Life

Acknowledgements

As with many larger undertakings, such as writing a book such as this, it is not really the work of one but the work of many that have contributed in various ways to bring this book to life. The most immediate people who have supported my work (and had to contend with me being somewhat preoccupied with it at times) are my wife Barbara and my two children Niklas and Daniella. Thank you for your support and love.

I would also like to thank series Editor William Pinar for accepting my proposal into the Critical Conversations book series, and the reviewers of the initial proposal and the final manuscript for their careful read and constructive feedback. Further, my heartfelt thanks go to several colleagues and critical friends, who have supported me by providing considered feedback on early chapter drafts: Laura D’Olimpio, Michael Hand, Michael-John Turp, Claudia Rozas-Gómes, and Peter Roberts. I would also like to thank the Peter Lang publishing team, including Alison Jefferson and Joshua Charles, for their kind support during the writing and publishing process. It has been a pleasure working with you.

Further, I want to acknowledge colleagues who have supported my research work and thinking over the years. My thanks to Maria Nieto for our collaborative work on indigenous approaches to the art of living, particularly in Colombia and the South Americas, which is has informed Chapter Three. My thanks also go to Te Hurinui Clarke, with whom I continue to explore indigenous Māori approaches to an art of living in Aotearoa New Zealand, which informed the sections on indigenous worldviews and education across various chapters. Laura D’Olimpio and I have published on the relation between Philosophy for Children and the art of living, which, among others, informed parts of Chapter Six. And Michaela Vogt and Till Neuhaus have worked with me on the art of living and education from a German cultural perspective, which particularly informed Chapters Six and Seven.

Having reached the mid-point of my career, it seems timely to also thank some of the key influencing figures that helped shape my thinking and academic endeavours. Jörg Zirfas first introduced me during my postgraduate studies in Germany to the philosophy of the art of living, which became a key focus of my work. Peter Roberts has been my PhD supervisor at the time and a mentor for me for many years. I would further like to acknowledge Wilhelm Schmid as key philosopher whose work has shaped my thinking and work fundamentally. I also found Gert Biesta’s writing inspiring and his many books and articles have strongly influenced my own understanding of education. A final thanks has to go to all the many people and colleagues that have inspired me through their articles, conference presentations, personal conversations, and email exchanges.

Introduction

This book is written during a time of relative uncertainty about the future of peace and conflict in parts of the world, such as Ukraine, Eastern Europe, and Russia, as well as in the Middle East, due to the conflict in Gaza and Israel. Recent events, including the global COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Afghanistan, the conflict in Syria, and other localised conflicts and food insecurity have led to mass migration and displacement of people in many parts of the world. The political landscape has also seen a shift over the past decade, with a rise of populist, nationalist parties and politicians challenging not only globalisation but democratic processes and democracy itself in several countries.

Beyond the global and political challenges of our time, education systems, schools, centres, and teachers seem constantly confronted by demands for change due to, for example, international comparative testing such as PISA or the TIMMS study, or national challenges due to change of governments leading to a changing landscape of policy and top-down ministerial directives¹. Educators and schools are also often blamed for the effect of wider challenges in societies and called upon to make changes on a wider social level. As such, calls for schools to ‘fix inequality’, ‘fix the loss of social values and norms’, or just ‘fix the young’ reappear again and again every couple of years in many societies. I have encountered messages like these in the media and public debate repeatedly while living in Germany in the 1990s and early 2000s. In New Zealand, where I reside now, just recently schools and teachers have been called upon by the government to ‘fix’ the decline in reading achievement of New Zealand students through a new mandated literacy programme (i.e., a call for change in what teachers do in schools), even though recent research and reports indicate that only 16.5% of variance in reading achievement is due to school factors and the main challenge and influencing factors lie outside of schools’ sphere of influence, such as the socio-economic context of students, their peers, and other individual factors (Hughson & Hood, 2022; Curtis, Nielsen and Derby, 2024).

As a backdrop of these local and global challenges in society and education, we must draw attention again to the questions of what education and schooling are actually for (cf. Biesta, 2022) and what they can and cannot do (cf. Bowles & Gintis, 2002). However, we should also – to turn the common question on its head – ask what society should do for education (cf. Liebau, 1999). For educators, the question then arises, what is their role in supporting their students to navigate this challenging and changing world? These questions form the basis for the complicated conversations I offer in this book to explore what education is or should be for, what it can and should do, and how current expectations placed on education in terms of, for example, student wellbeing and calls for equity in society, can be considered. Following Liebau’s reversed question, and considering the constraints of the national and cultural context schools find themselves in (Bowles & Gintis, 2002), I also comment on what our societies should do for education and for our young generation to support them in these changing times. To address these complicated conversations, this book offers seven chapters that address various aspects of these matters which can be read in isolation, but also build on each other to make a larger point for a change in how we can and should consider and practice ‘good education’ (cf. Biesta, 2022).

In Chapter One, I ask the question of how we can live a good and maybe ‘beautiful life’ in our changing world. Here, I expand on the challenges and current developments, reflecting on how developments in life have sped up and evolved over the last 50-odd years and what that might mean for people and education. I introduce Schmid’s (2000a) concept of the art of living as a possible answer in this context, which sets the scene for the rest of the book. I explore how Schmid’s art of living can contribute to addressing the different challenges posed for education, schools, centres, and teachers.

One of the current challenges in education that has seen increasing attention in recent years is the question of the wellbeing and happiness of students in education. In Chapter Two, I offer a critique of the term and varied conceptual understandings of ‘wellbeing’ and ‘student wellbeing’ and offer Schmid’s understanding of a ‘beautiful life’ as a more holistic and more appropriate approach in place of the rather narrow understanding of ‘wellbeing’ as the absence of physical, mental, or emotional distress. I also draw attention to the distinction of ‘wellbeing in education’ and ‘wellbeing through education’. The latter, I position as a more forward-facing consideration that, I argue, might be hindered by a narrower understanding of ‘wellbeing’ only considered as ‘in education’ or ‘in schools’.

Expanding on the wellbeing theme, in Chapter Three, I turn to the wider challenge of how education should not only support the wellbeing and ‘good’ of the individual but also the ‘good’ of the community and society. Here, I consider Schmid’s ethics of the art of living in conjunction with selected indigenous worldviews and approaches to community good, to discuss how an education for the art of living can not only support the development of students’ beautiful lives but also contribute to the wider ‘good’ for community, society, humanity, and the planet as our living environment.