What is a student?

I have, it must be admitted, so far focused almost exclusively on the activity of schooling and the role of teaching and the teacher. This is perhaps a fault in the framework and construction of the approach to the activity of schooling which has been presented, in that it has been engaged primarily with the foundations and constitutive features of the activity of schooling in theoretical and conceptual terms and with the art of teaching. One could perhaps plea that it goes without saying that without students there is no activity of schooling and that the emphasis on natality and the coming into the world of new generations implicitly carry with them the role of the student. But I find it necessary here towards the end of my reflections to engage with the most important element of any educational situation, namely the educational subject, and in the case of schooling: the child(ren). This will not be done through a philosophical anthropology of what it means to be human or what constitutes human development and learning, but, as has been the aim throughout, through an attempt to narrow down what it is to be a student – a child engaged in the activity of schooling. I argue that there are two sides to this: first, that in the activity of schooling we are not primarily concerned with the self in singularity but with the self in plurality and, second, that students in the activity of schooling are tasked with ‘inhabiting’ the scholastic space and with being attentive towards the world, and they are consequently invited to judge and think about the exemplary objects and things and to become interested. I argue against Arendt’s perfunctory contention that we are primarily concerned with the “free development of characteristic qualities and talents … the uniqueness that distinguishes every human being from every other” (Arendt, 1958/2006a, p. 185) and place an emphasis instead on the dimension of plurality. This entails that rather than being concerned with the uniqueness of the individual student, we are primarily concerned with a collective endeavour of reconciling ourselves to the world and attempting to bear with that which – and those who – is strange to us. The individual student’s development and characteristic qualities and talents are secondary to the generational function of the school, as the mediator between the world and the new generation. This also entails that we are not primarily concerned with the individual student’s learning outcomes but with the act of 163bringing together children and the world, and directing the attention of the child towards something outside – and greater than – themselves:

The magical event of the school – and hence, not the mechanical process of learning – invokes things to become ‘alive,’ to come to speak, and hence, creates the possibility for students to become interested. The school does not just offer the opportunity to learn mathematics, but to become interested in mathematics.

(Masschelein & Simons, 2015, p. 88) This is an essential point. The activity of schooling is not about learning, but about awakening interest. As we have seen, interest here does not refer to personal interest but to the direction of attention towards some thing that lies between us. Interest is about becoming aware and becoming enticed by something that is shared and exists in the space between human beings. It is about becoming aware of, and getting to know, the human artifice and the natural world we inhabit. This is at the same time a personal and a collective endeavour, but what is important is that it cannot take place in solitude. The activity of schooling is a collective endeavour and is thus distinct from thinking which is undertaken in solitude. Thinking may, of course, follow, and the students can during the course of the lesson withdraw to a thinking posture, ¹ but one cannot school oneself. So, rather than being about the development of individual characteristics, schooling is about turning attention towards something in the company of a teacher and one’s peers. In this movement or this moment, there is the potential of what I have previously – based on Wagenschein – called formative experiences (bildende Erfahrung), but these are in a sense secondary to the process itself and cannot be predetermined as the outcome of it. If we attempt to force them into being, we walk into the trap of predetermining what the end of education will be and succumb to the instrumental fallacy. As many teachers would probably testify, it is exceedingly difficult to predetermine where and when these experiences occur, and more often than not they are not manifest or even realised by student and teacher in the precise moment they occur. So, rather than turning my gaze to the internal learning processes or the possible outcomes of the activity of schooling for our students, I focus on how they are engaged and what they potentially practice when we place them in the company of a teacher and (exemplary re-presentations of) the world.