Teaching as a Gesture of Non-Indifference and the Presence of the School in Dark Times

In this presentation, I address Biesta’s notion of world-centred education via a special focus on the school as a site of teacherly gestures. To begin with, I interpret “world-centredness” as that which goes “beyond learning.” Moreover, I introduce the question of the school by discussing Eckart Liebau’s ideas (and Biesta’s appropriation of them) on how to frame the relation between the school and society. I engage, then, with Biesta’s critique of the impulse society as fundamentally inimical to the task of education. The argumentative trajectory culminates in a discussion of Biesta’s dialogue with Klaus Prange’s operational pedagogy and a re-description of teacherly gestures as gestures of non-indifference. Against this backdrop, I argue that the school as a site of teacherly gestures that point to the world is granted a democratic mission, inscribed in the very operations which take place in that domain.