The non-instrumental value of education has been highlighted in several schools of thought within philosophy of education. In the contemporary discussion the post-critical educational theorists are maybe the most salient advocates that tries to describe education without a telic means-end function. Hodgson et. al. (2017) defends ‘education for education’s sake: education as the study of, or initiation into, a subject matter for its intrinsic, educational, rather than instrumental value’. In the analytic tradition, both Peters and Hirst argued that the search for truth is intrinsically valuable, and Peters (1963) argues against the instrumental ‘moulding’ idea of education that is prevalent in economy and sociology. Dewey, states that ‘to set up any end outside of education, as furnishing its goal and standard, is to deprive the educational process of much of its meaning and tends to make us rely upon false and external stimuli in dealing with the child’ (2010 p. 29). And in later work he argues that ‘education as such has no aims. Only persons, parents and teachers etc., have aims’ (2011, p. 60). 

This last statement suggest that we need a clear distinction between the agents of education and education as an institution. Because, while agents generally have intended aims with their actions, institutions are rather constituted by formal rules such as constitutions and laws as well as informal constraints such as sanctions, customs and traditions etc. (see e.g. North, 1991). This distinction also helps us to separate education as a phenomenon from educational organizations such as schools, universities and vocational training centres. It is further helpful in an argument for the non-instrumental value of education. 

Because there is something unclear with the intrinsic versus instrumental value of education-discussion. The opposite of intrinsic is not instrumental; the opposite of intrinsic is extrinsic. And similarly, the opposite of instrumental value is not intrinsic value; the opposite is rather, with reference to the Aristotelian telic tradition, final value (Korsgaard, 1996). With these distinctions we could thus opt for a non-instrumental view on education without committing ourselves to ascribing some mysterious intrinsic value to education (see Gatley, 2021). Education is not valuable in itself or in isolation. If it is valuable, it is always valuable in relation to some agent and thus extrinsically valuable despite if it is instrumentally valuable or not. In this talk, I will argue for a deontic understanding of education as a pedagogical relation and thus suggest an alternative to the intrinsic-instrumental debate. 

In any normative and/or moral analysis of education it is easy to miss the distinction between what education is and what education is for. Gert Biesta famously addresses the question of what education is for in his triad of the purposes of education: Socialization, qualification and subjectification. In contrast, Naomi Hodgson et. al. adress the problems of the formulations of what education is for in their Manifesto for Post-Critical Pedagogy. Masschelein and Simons go even further and suggest that ‘Formation through study’ is ‘not functional’ because it has to do with ‘knowledge for the sake of knowledge and skills for the sake of skills’.

The worry seems to be that too much focus on ends external to education leads to an instrumentalization of the value of education and education itself. There has been a growing worry among educational theorists, especially in the last decades, for this increasing instrumentalization of education. The remedy proposed is to instead emphasize the ‘intrinsic’ and ‘educational’ value of education. It is, however, not just a recent worry. A similar concern was addressed in the 1960’s by R. S. Peters when he argued against instrumental, moulding-versions of education and even earlier by John Dewey.

My suggestion is that we should focus more on the functions of education to capture the inherent normativity in education as a social institution (as stated by e.g. Harvey Siegel, D.C. Phillips and Eamonn Callan, aims and functions are not necessarily the same). I will argue for viewing education as a special kind of social institution that inherently entails deontic normative functions. To do this I will introduce distinctions from social ontology, as well as some proposed definitions of function, purpose and aim etc. that hopefully offers more nuance to what possible kind of inherent normativity that education ‘naturally’ entails as a social phenomenon.

It has become quite common within educational theory to highlight the non-instrumental and non-functionalist value of education. In this paper I ask if there can be any education without function and in what way, if any, human action, such as e.g. teaching, educating, learning or studying can be said to be non-instrumental and intrinsically valuable. 

R. S. Peters and Paul Hirst has argued that the pursuit of truth is intrinsically valuable and more recently Jan Masschelein and Maarten Simons argues that formation through study is not functional because it has to do with ‘knowledge for the sake of knowledge and skills for the sake of skills’ (p. 79). The purpose is not to argue that things cannot be valuable for their own sake. It is rather to stress the importance to distinguish between telic and deontic functions as well as between intrinsic and non-instrumental value and extrinsic and instrumental value. To make these distinctions I draw on previous work that has been done by Christine Korsgaard (1996) and Jane Gatley (2021) as well as social ontology. An additional question that arises from these distinctions is what kinds of values that can be considered as educationally valuable.

First, I present some well-known arguments for the intrinsic value of education and aims of education. I then introduce a distinction between deontic and telic functions from the field of social ontology. Next, I draw on previous distinctions being made between intrinsic and non-instrumental value and extrinsic and instrumental value. Finally, I argue that it is questionable if any human action, such as e.g. teaching, educating, learning or studying can be said to be intrinsically valuable and non-functional. It is also questionable if social kinds can exist without a function. Consequently, because education is indeed a social phenomenon it always has a function, and the value of education is rather instrumental and/or extrinsic than intrinsic.

Detta är ett försök att fundera över möjligheten att särskilja en nordisk version av bildning och vad ett sådant projekt kan bidra med. Vilka potentialer och risker, för ett begrepp som främst brukar härledas till tysk upplysning, men som kan spåras tillbaka till den grekiska antiken, kan en ny distinktion som ’nordisk bildning’ eller ’nordisk danning’ ha? Då det inte finns något sådant som en enhetlig nordisk bildningsidé, eller ens en konsensus kring vad huvudordet bildning i en sådan nominalfras är eller bör vara, kommer jag presentera två exempel på idéer kring bildning i en svensk kontext som kan utgöra två olika möjliga riktningar för var (nordisk) bildning kan ta vägen: Skola för bildning och folkbildning.

En ny statlig utredning vill skärpa reglerna kringskolplikt, men Sveriges syn på närvaro i skolan är unikt snäv och alla elever kan inte följa kraven på fysisk närvaro. En skola som inte är till för alla bör vara försiktig med att göra anspråk på att vara obligatorisk, skriver utbildningsforskarna Christian Norefalk och Hanna Sjögren.

Homeschooling, which can be defined as “the practice of families choosing to wholly or partly educate their children in settings other than schools” (Myers, 2020, p. 212), is profoundly restricted in Sweden, but to different degrees permitted in all other Nordic countries (Eurydice, 2018). It is therefore reasonable to assume that the very meaning of ‘the right to education’ have come to stand for different things in the different countries, with potential consequences for the relationship between families, schools and the state across the different nations. National configurations of the relation between families, schools, and the state have consequences for individual citizens in each Nordic state. 

In this paper we argue that there is a need for clarifying the meaning of education in relation to homeschooling in a Nordic context, that can bring about a more nuanced and precise language to talk about the right to education. We use different philosophical perspectives on education, as well as educational policy on homeschooling in Sweden and Finland to discuss different understandings of the right to education in the Nordics.  

Essential for developing a more nuanced and precise language to talk about the right to education is the insight that the right to education can be approached in different ways and is relevant from the perspective of various fields such as law, ethics, and history, as well as political science and sociology among others.  

From a pedagogical and philosophy of education perspective, the question of how education should be understood becomes central in the talk about the right to education (see e.g. Dewey’s ‘education as growth’, Peters’ ‘education as initiation’, Illich’s ‘deschooling’, Curren’s ‘initiation into practices that express human flourishing’ and Masschelein’s & Simons’ ‘defence of the school’). Despite this, there has been little discussion of the notion of education underpinning this right. Therefore, a more considerable attention needs to be given not just to the implementation of the right, but also to its conceptualization (McCowan, 2010 & 2012). How can we understand the right to education in relation to pedagogical relations, upbringing, Bildung, schooling and learning goals?

 On the one hand, education is often considered synonymous with schooling, and it is easy to miss both the complexity of a student's school experience and a broader understanding of how the concept of education can be understood (McCowan, 2012). In most parts of the world, schools are seen as natural, self-evident and inevitable (Papastephanou, 2014) and in Sweden, public schooling under a national curriculum is compulsory for all children.  

On the other hand, education is also often understood as reaching some specified learning goals. In the Finnish context, the obligation to learn means that instead of participating in the teaching organized through official schools, a person can acquire knowledge equivalent to the basic education by, for example, studying at home. This is referred to as “hemundervisning” (["home teaching"] i.e. homeschooling). However, the focus is on learning outcomes and knowledge goals rather than on the pedagogical process itself. 

The aim of this paper is to defend the Kantian normative idea of aspiring towards maturity, freedom, and universal morality, against a recent criticism of Kant’s tree analogy, put forward by Morten Korsgaard. The aim is not to defend the tree analogy as such. Neither is it an attempt to argue against metaphors as such. It is rather to point out a more general problem of building an argument from the use of metaphors as premises, and to highlight the necessity of separating content from logical form, as well as descriptive empirical assumptions from normative aspirations. I first give summary of Kant’s tree analogy and give it some context in relation to more mechanistic analogies as well as more atomistic social contract ideas from the enlightenment. Secondly, I point out some general problems of using metaphors as premises for building an argument. In the third part I turn to what I think are the more particular problems in Korsgaard’s reasoning about Kant’s analogy in relation to what Korsgaard refers to as “the capitalist logic of progress”. Finally, I will end the paper by showing why Kant's aspiration for maturity is worth defending. 

 The meanings of concepts commonly used in education such as  ‘knowledge’, ‘justice’ and ‘indoctrination’ play a direct role in educational policy, practice, and ultimately people’s lives. In this panel discussion based on our recent edited book of the same title, Alexandros Nikolaidis, Christian Norefalk and Ruth Wareham will discuss their work on conceptual engineering in philosophy of education. Nikolaidis will briefly present his work on engineering the concept of educational justice; Wareham will present her work on engineering the concept of indoctrination; and Norefalk will highlight general considerations when it comes to engineering educational concepts. We will then probe whether conceptual engineering is fruitful when applied to educational concepts and educational issues. We will respond to some of the more critical chapters in our edited volume to explore some of the potential pitfalls of conceptual engineering in an applied field such as education. We will also ask what conceptual engineering as a methodology has to offer empirical researchers in education, and what the field of education can teach those interested in applying conceptual engineering.

This article investigates whether there is any place for the school of thought that is known as analytic philosophy of education in the aftermath of postmodernism, and whether analytic philosophy of education can be treated as a ‘method’, among other alternative ‘methods’, that can be applied regardless of what kind of ‘-ism’ or ideology one embraces. An additional aim is to suggest some important questions for analytic philosophy of education to take into consideration. We argue that conceptual engineering may be a promising avenue for analytic educational theory if it is used with a critical intent that is more heuristic and inconclusive than prescriptively ideal.