Beautiful Risk of Education

Gert J. J. Biesta

Nov 2015 · Routledge

About this ebook

This is a book about what many teachers know but are increasingly being prevented from talking about: that real education always involves a risk. The risk is there because, as W. B. Yeats has put it, education is not about filling a bucket but about lighting a fire. It is there because students are not to be seen as objects to be moulded and disciplined, but as subjects of action and responsibility. The Beautiful Risk of Education is organised around a critical discussion of seven key educational concepts: creativity, communication, teaching, learning, emancipation, democracy, and virtuosity. By opposing the risk aversion that characterises many contemporary educational policies and practices, Gert J.J. Biesta makes a strong argument for giving risk a central place in our educational endeavours and brings risk taking to the forefront of a critical pedagogical practice.

About the author

Gert Biesta (www.gertbiesta.com) is Professor of Educational Theory and Policy at the University of Luxembourg, former president of the Philosophy of Education Society USA, and editor-in-chief of the journal Studies in Philosophy and Education. He has published widely on the theory and philosophy of education. With Paradigm Publishers he published "Beyond Learning: Democratic Education for a Human Future" (2006) winner of the 2008 American Educational Studies Association Critics' Choice Book Award and "Good Education in an Age of Measurement: Ethics, Politics, Democracy" (2010). He also co-edited George Herbert Mead's "The Philosophy of Education" (2008).