How far should we go seeking new horizons for education’s autonomy?

Abstract

While the fresh debate on education’s autonomy continues in this special issue as in other forums and venues, new layers of complexity on this theme continue to emerge, just as further nuances are revealed in the course of discussion. Following this welcomed growth in the discussion, and in the spirit of characterizing autonomy—and therefore also education’s autonomy—as it bears polysemic possibilities, we explore in this editorial old and new theoretical and practical horizons for conceptualizing and realizing education’s autonomy. We claim that advocates of education’s autonomy should ask not just where we want to go but also how far do we want to go; to what degree programs of education’s autonomy should inspire to change theoretical and practical frameworks, and as such the way we think about education? To what degree educational programs should exceed the current social structures within which education functions? By surveying such questions, we hope to expand the discourse on education’s autonomy into related and even unrelated contexts, where it is very possible that autonomy is not seen as having any direct relevance—depending, of course, on how one poses its questions—but where on a closer look, both context and case bring up new avenues of thinking and dialogue. We invite scholars to experiment with these horizons, as the discussion moves toward further examination of what education’s autonomy means and what are those possible and uncharted terrains which invariably emerge whenever the subject is brought up.

While the fresh debate on education’s autonomy continues in this special issue as in other forums and venues, new layers of complexity on this theme continue to emerge, just as further nuances are revealed in the course of discussion. Following this welcomed growth in the discussion, and in the spirit of characterizing autonomy—and therefore also education’s autonomy—as it bears polysemic possibilities (Yosef-Hassidim and Baldacchino, 2021), we would like to take the opportunity in this introduction to the special issue in Policy Futures in Education to explore old and new theoretical and practical horizons for conceptualizing and realizing education’s autonomy. We invite scholars to experiment with these horizons, as the discussion moves toward further examination of what education’s autonomy means and what are those possible and uncharted terrains which invariably emerge whenever the subject is brought up.

Reflecting on the goals of a movement for education’s autonomy, we should ask not just where we want to go but also how far do we want to go; to what degree programs of education’s autonomy should inspire to change theoretical and practical frameworks, and as such the way we think about education? And since education is embedded in society—after all, even with autonomy, it is a social sphere in a democratic society—to what degree educational programs should exceed the current social structures within which education functions? Entertaining such questions quickly leads us to understand that these are not only questions about the meaning of education’s autonomy, but also about the meaning of education itself and education’s place and role in society.

By surveying such questions we hope to expand the discourse on education’s autonomy into related and even unrelated contexts, where it is very possible that autonomy is not seen as having any direct relevance—depending, of course, on how one poses its questions—but where on a closer look, both context and case bring up new avenues of thinking and dialogue.

When it comes to autonomy, the discussion takes various routes. Invariably there are those who, in the context of education, enter the discourse of autonomy via a disciplinary approach (e.g., Siegel and Matthes, 2022), while others would see it from how education as such operates in a societal and political-economic horizon (e.g., Blacker, 2000). There is also the case of where one places “autonomy,” in that as we have argued elsewhere the intrinsic-extrinsic binary for educational autonomy can only be sustained descriptively if one where to insist that an autonomous act or an autonomous quality must remain separated by contexts for education which often turn out to be mechanistically poised. Just as the pedagogical is often seen as either a practice or teaching, and while there is an argument for the immanently pedagogical characters of subjects and disciplines (see Yosef-Hassidim and Baldacchino, 2021), the case for autonomy comes into the same patterns of discussion.

Deschooling

One case for autonomy is that of deschooling. Often regarded with a strong degree of ambivalence, deschooling is misconstrued as the omission of schools from learning. Barely fifty-one years into the publication of Ivan Illich’s Deschooling Society (Illich, 2012), which also coincides with Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire, 2005), the discussion of autonomy as a matter for education has taken even more complex twists. In Illich’s Deschooling Society, autonomy is often seen as being posed in extremis, while Freire’s approach to a critical pedagogy has somehow been pushed into a tamed and rather mainstream pedagogical tool of inclusion. Yet reading Freire and Illich together comes with a warning against conflating their theories of education on presumed grounds of convergence, even when what they really share is a radical sense of heterodoxy that characterizes equally radical, albeit very different, cases for autonomy (see Baldacchino, 2022).

Leaving Freire’s case for autonomy aside, while Illich’s case must be read in view of his later pronouncements on Deschooling Society, even back then his claims for disestablishment have been almost always wrongly contextualized and heavily misconstrued (as he would show in his work After Deschooling, What? [Illich, 1974]). From such misreading the concept of autonomy that emerged from deschooling found itself turned into a straw man to be burned in the usual rituals found on the right and the left of the educational spectrum.

Illich’s claim for the inevitability of disestablishment is best explained by a wider understanding of what autonomy meant to him. Rather than an expression of mere disdain toward the school and the curriculum, in Illich’s mind the disestablishment of education had to do with the ways of living that would in turn articulate and structure how humans are (that is, as living and autonomous human beings). Running both concepts of deschooling and autonomy on the very notion of living, Illich’s take on schooled societies was marked by what he regarded as the autonomy by which humans extended their hand through tools—especially those of knowing, doing and by implication, learning. At that stage, not unlike Aristotle and Dewey, Illich regarded the tool as an organon—an extension of the hand. Crucial to the exercising of the tool as an organon is the control that humans have on their tools and what they decide to do with them. Because tools are extensions of the hand, it means that the extensional is an expression of autonomy, and where knowing, making, and learning are regarded as essentially dispositional.

From Illich’s approach to tools one could argue that what moves the desire to extend the notion and idea of autonomy is how autonomy is regarded as being dispositional. With that, any attempt to reclaim autonomy cannot simply be structural, because the structure itself reflects our dispositions toward it. While schooling is often at the mercy of policy makers and curricular engineers, what is ultimately taught remains implicit to how we (as individuals and as members of society) exercise the dispositional tools of learning and what role this plays in society itself, even when it is schooled. For Illich, this implies an inevitability in how any move to disestablish structures like educational institutions would come from how, when, or whether we decide (or have no choice but) to assert the autonomous freedom by which we consent to education. This sense of autonomy is a form of intentionality which, though not always evident and evidenced, is in one’s power to exert—even when the situation appears impossible.

Far from what commentators, adulators, and critics alike, have often said about Illich’s approach to autonomy, for Illich, deschooling is never done in extremis. Rather deschooling is an inevitable outcome of the autonomy that we cannot but realize as a dispositional tool:

The disestablishment of schools will inevitably happen—and it will happen surprisingly fast. It cannot be retarded very much longer, and it is hardly necessary to promote it vigorously, for this is being done now. What is worthwhile is to try to orient it in a hopeful direction, for it could take place in either of two diametrically opposed ways. (Illich, 2012: pp. 102–103)

Yet even after years of building his theories on the dispositional power of tools, Illich was never one to hold onto fixed norms or models. As he reflects back, toward the end of his life, he came to realize that a major paradigm shift has happened, which he reckons coincided with the emergence of cybertechnology in the late 1980s. With the emergence of a system of cybertechnology, the challenge has shifted. It is no longer found in how we use the tools at our disposition, but in how this ability—and by consequence, its autonomous agency—seems to have vanished with the advent of the new technologies which back at the time of writing Tools for Conviviality (Illich, 2001), Medical Nemesis (Illich, 2010) and Deschooling Society (Illich, 2012), looked different. As he tells David Cayley:

I am at fault for having persuaded some very good people who read me seriously that it makes sense to talk about a school system as a social tool, or about the medical establishment as a device. Strangely one of these old students, Max Peschek… has been conducting a seminar among his friends about the fundamental mistake of Ivan Illich. What Illich did not understand, according to Peschek and he is certainly right, is that when you become the user of system, you become part of the system. (Illich and Cayley, 2005, pp. 77–78, emphasis added)

This realization was to mark a fundamental turn in Illich’s approach to just about everything. As Jean Robert puts it in his book The age of systems in the thought of the later Illich,

Without autonomy there is no ethics, so there is an ethical duty to limit how far autonomy could be abandoned. According to Illich in the 1970s, industrial society’s conditions of existence progressively ceased to exist, clearing the horizon for the plural invention of post-industrial societies. Ten years later, the rudiments of a social cybernetics were being perfected which threatened to relegate to history the tool that was placed at the service of human intentions. (Robert, 2019: p. 17)

While here we have no space for expanding on how Illich read this from perspectives that were more akin to a philosophy of contingency, and more so through the perspectives of Medieval theologians like John Duns Scotus and Bonaventure (see Illich and Cayley, 2005 and Baldacchino, 2020), he explains how in this fundamental change in the history of tools, this new age of systems poses a profoundly radical challenge to how we perceive notions like agency, freedom, and autonomy:

The distinction between the hand and the thing which it holds, which became fundamental for thinking in the thirteenth century, has disappeared. Thinking about the world, not in terms of causality, but in terms of systems analysis has brought us into a very new era, into which we couldn’t have come if we hadn’t moved out of the world of tools. And the world of tools, I’ll say it once more, could not have taken the shape it did without the adoption throughout society for a few hundred years of the explicit spirit of contingency. (Illich and Cayley, 2005: pp. 77–78, emphasis added)

How can one articulate autonomy in an age where the spirit of contingency becomes inevitable in anything that we try to understand? While Heller’s (1993) and Rorty’s (1989) discussion of contingency still retains high relevance to the study of education and with it that of educational autonomy, the implications of an age of systems, as presented by Illich, would imply that the play between autonomy and heteronomy becomes even more crucial. Thus, as we speak of systems where the tool as organon seems to have lost its claim to a dispositional agency in the hands of humans, then the approach to autonomy must be read from a far more volatile set of possibilities. Robert (2019) explains this far more plainly than Illich himself: “In a political sense, Illich said, we must lean towards what he called the positive synergy between autonomy and heteronomy, or between what I can do myself and what I would ask others to do for me” (p. 63, emphases added).

It soon becomes obvious that the impression of deschooling as being a case made in extremis, would be premature. If deschooling was a matter of shaking the educational, then how or what would the loss of autonomy with the demise of our dispositional tools in an “age of systems” constitute? This is a matter for extensive discussion in the near future, particularly as the literature around the later Illich is still emerging as we write this paper.

Decurricularization

A central possible avenue here is decentering structured curriculum from the heart of formal schooling. Let’s call it decurricularization. Apple (e.g., 1995, 2004, 2008) has already shown how the curriculum reflects ideological influences on what is considered legitimate knowledge with selecting, preserving, and passing on conceptions of competence, ideological norms, and values. ¹ What might be alternatives for a curriculum that reflects dominant political and societal forces? How might decurricularization look like? Is the education’s autonomy movement ready to consider, say, removing subject matters as the basic building blocks of structured and scheduled educational experience? ² Especially following the critique of “learning” as the focus of education (Biesta, 2014), are we open to the idea that subject matters won’t have a monopoly over what is considered an appropriate educational “material” to be addressed (if any material is to be kept at all)? To what extent non-curricular content should be leading teacher-student interactions, for example, through discussion of current events? And perhaps the focus should dramatically shift from declarative knowledge (knowing “that,” or “about”) whatsoever to procedural knowledge (know-how of skills such as teamwork)?

Alternatives for a compartmentalized, structured, and disciplinary curriculum that reflects societal interests are offered in the critical literature. An interesting idea, that stems from a critique of the curriculum, is offered by Masschelein and Simons (2013). In the book In defence of the school: A public issue they argue that the school was always under close inspection and monitoring and was given legitimacy as long as it served those who had the power to shut it down: “It was tolerated so long as it subjected itself to programmes of adjustment or applied itself in the service of a set of fixed (religious and political) ideals and ready-made projects (nation-building, civilizing missions)” (p. 9). Similar to Apple’s account, the curriculum plays a key part in this taming:

The division of students into classes, the system of examination and especially the curriculum and the various courses of study and educational approaches - all of this is a means or a tool to perpetuate power… The school, it is argued, is essentially conservative: it is about the teacher as a representative of the older generation, the curriculum as the crystallised expectations of society, and teaching itself as the favoured activity of the teaching staff.” (p. 16-7)

And a major societal expectation from the curriculum is employability: “The school, and with it the younger generation, enrols itself in the social project of maximising employability insofar as it allows itself to be seduced into reformulating its goals and curriculum into terms of competencies/qualifications” (p. 96).

Masschelein and Simons (2013) do not see the school as an institution that “prepare(s) its pupils for ‘real life’” (p. 15). Instead, and in order to prevent the school from reproducing social inequality, Masschelein and Simons (2013) call for schools to be a place of suspension from society:

School as a matter of suspension not only implies the temporary interruption of (past and future) time, but also the removal of expectations, requirements, roles and duties connected to a given space outside the school. In this sense, scholastic space is open and unfixed. Scholastic space does not refer to a place of passage or transition (from past to present), nor to a space of initiation or socialisation (from the household to society). Rather, we must see the school as a sort of pure medium or middle. The school is a means without an end and a vehicle without a determined destination. (p. 36)

Therefore, “the school must suspend or decouple certain ties with students’ family and social environment on the one hand and with society on the other in order to present the world to students in an interesting and engaging way” (p. 15). Thus, “society is in some way kept outside” (p. 38). Masschelein and Simons do not call for separating the school from society; on the contrary, “[w]hat is dealt with in school is rooted in society, in the everyday, but transformed by the simple and profound acts of (temporary) suspension and profanation” (p. 39).

Such suspension, Masschelein and Simons (2013) argue, releases the school from its obligation for “productive time.” Thus, it re-opens up space for the original idea of “scholastic time” (p. 33), that is, “free time” used in order “to gather young people around a ‘common thing’” (p. 10), and as such to the pedagogical practice of “putting something on the table” (p. 91) through “subject matter.” Subject matter, as opposed to politically oriented curriculum, is knowledge and skills that are “detached from everyday application,” and as such “the material dealt with in a school is no longer in the hands of one particular societal group or generation and there is no talk of appropriation; the material has been removed - liberated - from regular circulation” (p. 32). As a result, “[s]ubjects with a more or less academic background are no longer the starting point for curriculum development within teacher training” (p. 125–6).

Instead of meeting societal expectations, “something from society is brought into play or made into play” (p. 40). Masschelein and Simons (2013) stress that “[it] does not mean that the school is not serious or has no rules. Quite the contrary. It means that its seriousness and rules are no longer derived from the social order and the weight of its laws, but rather from something from the world itself” (p. 40). The “something” can be anything—“a text, a mathematical expression or an action such as filing or sawing” (p. 40)—and the school transforms its meaning.

Masschelein and Simons (2013) elaborate on the play-like character of education with further examples of specific items put on the table:

That school is the playground of society is perhaps most evident in those places where something from the world of work is included without any immediate relationship to production. This we see, for instance, in technical and vocational education: working on an engine, carpentering a window frame. This is valuable, but not directly a function of productive life: the car need not be delivered; the window need not be sold. The school is the place where work is ‘not real’. This means that it is transformed into an exercise that, like a game, is carried out for its own sake (p. 40, emphasis in original)

Accordingly, the teacher’s work is different than delivering curriculum: “It is by putting something on the table, by being passionate about her subject and by opening up the world through all kinds of subject matter that the teacher fulfils her pedagogical responsibility. In this sense, the school is neither a family nor a household” (p. 98).

When such a proposal for the school’s place and role in society and the educational work is examined in the context of education’s autonomy, we have to ask what does it mean in curricular and structural terms, and also in terms of advocacy for education’s autonomy. As an exercise, let’s examine curricular aspects. It seems that decentering from the teaching-learning process the structured curriculum—and with it disciplinary bodies of knowledge—toward things, or items, (literally or figuratively) put on the table for study that is not oriented toward employability, must entail quite significant reduction of curricular content, as wide portions of the existing curriculum is designated for employability purposes, whether directly (as in the case of vocational education) or indirectly (in the case of more academic disciplines that serve as perquisites or measures for higher education enrollment). But such exercise about possible internal implications within the schooling system must lead also to a crucial question regarding wider social considerations: should education’s autonomy “care” about any implications for schooling that stresses the educational at the expense of instrumental interests and societal expectations? If so, to what degree? Should advocates of education’s autonomy suggest “compensation” for removing curricular portions, a move that would surely face opposition by many stakeholders, not the least higher education institutions that use school achievements (read: grades) for sorting candidates and also expect school graduates with particular disciplinary knowledge? A related consideration here is that for many disadvantaged groups, schooling—with its instrumental functionality—serves as a ticket out of poverty; to what degree, if any, should education’s autonomy be concerned for depriving these people of this this way out?

Advocates of education’s autonomy should note that autonomous schooling that does not orient students toward, say, higher education, without proper social and institutional mechanisms in place instead of the instrumental work being done in schools, runs the risk of and opens the door for formation of alternative and inequitable markets that offer for fee the same instrumental services removed from K-12 education and that are aimed at giving the advantage for their clients. So again, how far are we willing to go?

Looking for new allies

Moving from educational proposals to existing programs, alternatives for compartmentalized curriculum are implemented today in schooling, the most popular of which are probably interdisciplinary curriculum and project-based learning (PBL). These alternatives do not only challenge traditional teaching content in terms of a single, isolated, stand-alone subject matter, but also traditional teaching and evaluation methods in terms of direct delivery and testing, and as such challenge the role of the teacher. STEM education, as an interdisciplinary, integrated construction, is already ingrained in educational discourse and practice, and has become a “norm” within technological circles of education (Li et al., 2020). To what degree education’s autonomy should adopt and push such curricular arrangements and advocate for them as a counterforce to political hold on education? Despite the popularity of and the overall praises such curricular alternatives gather in the literature and in schools, critical theoretical and philosophical evaluation of their educational contribution is quite limited, and especially an inquiry on how they are immersed in, influenced by, or oriented toward the technological view that is advocated, or at least encouraged, by political and economic ideologies. To continue with STEM education as a contemporary example, it needs to be remembered that STEM education—as well as its allegedly “progressive” version STEAM education—is promoted in many cases with political and economic interests in mind (see STEM education framework that demonstrates this in Kelley and Knowles, 2016). This political and economic inclination suggests that alternative curricular arrangements have potential for advancing or materializing education’s autonomy only if their educational value is considered and prioritized over any other interest or concern.

Beyond mainstream schooling, non-traditional curriculum and methods are already the signature of alternative schools, alongside a more individualized approach, experiential learning, collective ownership of the institute, and an array of non-traditional evaluation methods. Does this mean that a movement for education’s autonomy should take at least some cue from alternative schools? That the advocacy of education’s autonomy by such a movement has something to ‘borrow’ from the alternative school movement? Supporters of public education (who are a main pool for education’s autonomy support) might not like to consider ideas from an educational sector that significantly relies on privatization and parent choice. What other avenues should we explore in order to expand the movement’s reach?

One strategy is to look outside academia and approach and collaborate with traditional educational stakeholders that typically are not involved in the discussion about the educational. One such actor, which is significant and even powerful when it comes to schooling operation, is teacher unions. These bodies are typically considered labor organizations that conduct collective bargaining and promote members’ vested interests (Moe, 2011, 2015; Moe and Wiborg, 2016; Whorton, 2015; see also special issue 32(2), 2018 of Educational Policy). But scholars also document the changes teacher unions undergo toward social movement unionism or “new unionism” (Little and Stevenson, 2015; Stevenson, 2015), and there is also work and activism by unionists themselves that exceed matters of teacher salaries. For example, researchers document new strategies taken by teacher unions as they face neoliberal attacks on public education in general and upon the unions themselves (Durbridge, 2008; MacLellan, 2009; Weiner, 2005). In addition to bargaining over wages and work conditions, teacher unions demonstrate interest in and commitments to broader social issues, and create alliances and coalitions with other unions and social groups domestically and around the world, including explicit demonstration of solidarity (Little, 2015; Poole, 2015). Most importantly for us in the context of education’s autonomy, several teacher unions take a more comprehensive approach toward their respective education systems. Thus, some scholars portray teacher unions as defenders of public education (Poole, 1999; Weiner, 2012) and as a source for important educational initiatives (Bascia and Osmond, 2012; Eberts et al., 2004; Johnson et al., 2007). The polarity of attitudes toward teacher unions reveals not only how controversial teacher unions are, but also—at least as we see them—the potential inherent in them to become key participators in strategic K-12 educational thinking and planning.

Perhaps the most encouraging sign for teacher unions’ potential active role in education’s autonomy agenda is a discourse of radical educational change and a call for developing alternative visions for education in teacher unions’ publications (Alberta Teachers’ Association, 2009, Association of Secondary School Teachers in Israel, 2004, Chicago Teachers Union, 2012, National Union of Teachers (NUT), 2014; Courtney and Little, 2014). Thus, Rebecca Pringle, National Education Association’s (NAE) Secretary-Treasurer, called in 2010 for a “foundation on which to re-conceive and rebuild our education system for the future” (p. 10). And the National Union of Teachers’ (NUT) Courtney and Little (2014) call “to build a movement around an alternative vision of education” (p. 299), as it is a “crucial part of winning this ‘war of position’ and achieving ‘civil hegemony’… in order to challenge the hegemony of the dominant group” (p. 301). Granted, in most cases this discourse does not incorporate substantial normative proposals about the role, place, and goals of education in society, and in any case, these voices are still, of course, scarce within teacher unions, and we should not expect any sweeping devotion by these organization for any action against the political governance of schooling. But the few voices that are coming from teacher unions and challenge the current order do give us hope that their engagement in education’s autonomy discourse is possible. Any active involvement (beyond just a discussion) of teacher unions would be a momentous support for the education’s autonomy movement due to their mobilizing public opinion capacity through campaigns that targets, among others, parents and communities (Bascia and Stevenson, 2017; Poole, 1999, 2015; Rhodes, 2012), especially as it is demonstrated in campaigns for alternative non-capitalist social systems (e.g., Weiner, 2015). But if teacher unions wish to engage in activism for education’s autonomy and alternative visions for public education, they have to realize that these visions might demand, in turn, reshaping teachers’ work conditions or restructuring wages. And while we suggest exploring what role teacher unions can and should play in education’s autonomy, we are also aware of the challenges for these unions to take any role, including the fragmentation of teacher unions, that is, the common situation in which several teacher unions compete over the same potential members.

Broader social contexts: Changing society, democracy, self-defending education, and locality

If we imagine an expansion of education’s autonomy’s (and as such education’s) theoretical and practical horizons, why should this exercise be limited to the educational landscape, that is, to what happens within the educational sphere—if this demarcation is even possible? While education’s autonomy seeks to characterize and realize some independence of educational affairs from “external” social and theoretical influences, this ambition does not mean an indifference to or an avoidance from influencing other spheres. Education’s autonomy does not mean only a spectator role for education on society. Apple (2012) has already argued that education can change society, but he conditioned this possibility on educators’ broader social engagement in other struggles (much like teacher unions’ new unionism). In fact, we argue, a commitment to education’s autonomy necessarily leads not only to rejecting social, political, economic, and other interests and agendas on education, but also to an active role of education in society in favor of values that align with an educational perspective, whatever this might be. This means that education’s autonomy is not only concerned with what happens in schools. ³ It is also concerned with what happens beyond the school’s boundaries. This is not limited only to what students undergo once they leave school—whether at the end of the school day or after graduation—but also to what happens today in the community, society, or in the world. In other words, education’s autonomy calls for an education that takes a stand and has a say on particular crucial social matters.

What such matters might be, or what might be principles to determine them? One way to think about it is supporting the social infrastructure and conditions that allow education’s autonomy (and education itself) in the first place; for, if the societal and political circumstances for having education as an autonomous sphere are threatened, or the foundation for such an education is weak, education as a social and humane endeavor must to protest again it. And perhaps the most important social-political condition for having education is democracy. And this means that education, as a social sphere, must take a stand when democracy is threatened. This activism for democracy goes beyond—and perhaps is more important than—curricular education for democracy. It suggests reactive and proactive measures inside and outside schools.

However, democracy needs education no less than education needs democracy—and this is far from being new. This double dependency, or even parallelism or alignment, between democracy and education, means that education should consider a similar attitude toward protecting itself as democracy does. A defensive (or self-defending, or militant) democracy is a democracy that takes special measures to protect itself (Stahl and Popp-Madsen, 2022). These notions are perhaps most prominent in Israel, where issues of national security and fighting terrorism (Gross, 2003; Weinblum, 2015) on the one hand and extreme political groups (mostly from the right wing) (Cohen-Almagor, 1994) on the other challenge the very existence of the state or the (already contested and problematic) democratic character of Israel. However, following electoral victories of authoritarian populists in a range of parliamentary democracies in recent years, ⁴ there has been a growing unease with the ability of existing democratic institutions to keep such authoritarian threats under control, and doubts about the capacity of the institutions of parliamentary democracy to protect themselves against democratic backsliding have led to a resurgence of academic interest in the ideas of democratic self-defense, democratic self-preservation, and perhaps the most frequent term of militant democracy (Stahl and Popp-Madsen, 2022).

Similarly—and without denying problems and challenges of the notion of self-defending democracy (see, for example, Müller, 2022)—advocates of education’s autonomy should consider thinking in terms of “self-defending education.” Admittedly, there are no life-and-death matters here like in self-defending democracy. However, threats posed by instrumental, ideological, and political approaches to education do have a significant impact on the essence of education, and as such they endanger its mere existence as a critical endeavor in the service of students’ humanity and society as a whole. Following the education-democracy linkage, the idea of defensive education contributes to defending democracy itself; self-defending education holds the potential to stress human rights and minority rights and as such to deepen understanding of democracy—especially that democracy is much more than elections—and to ignite meanings of and about democracy, without a taken for granted commitment to democracy and with an appropriate critical view of it. ⁵ Thus, those who wish to protect democracy—that is, all those who advocate democracy—should advocate for a self-defending education. But what would a self-defending education look like in reality? Is this a kind of personal attitude toward one’s profession that should be cultivated early in teacher education? Or would it be more of a collective awareness to be fostered by organizational means, for example, by teacher unions as part of active involvement as portrayed above?

To talk about democracy as a monolithic term is, of course, a mistake; democracies around the world—and accordingly, their educational systems—vary tremendously in terms of their social, political, and economic characteristics, as well as other aspects. This variety poses a challenge to the discussion of education’s autonomy (that thus far remained mostly not just theoretical and abstract, but also universal), where the local political, social, cultural, and economic contexts—as well as the educational—are typically ignored. Even when we limit the discussion to Western democracies, as it is usually the case, what education’s autonomy means—or should or can be—in one place, and its challenges, are quite different. Indeed, it was already acknowledged that “there are pressing educational issues that are distinctive to a particular context, and which merit distinctive philosophical attention and analysis” (Ruitenberg, 2014: p. 93). ⁶ In the case of education’s autonomy (or lack of), however, the general concern is common but its particularities that require distinctive philosophical treatment might be peculiar for each specific location. Therefore, it is vital to discuss complexities around the universality and locality of education’s autonomy, and as such to expose unfamiliar approaches and philosophies as well as challenges and opportunities in the pursuit of education’s autonomy. This contextualized awareness is a vital step toward constructing a more comprehensive theoretical framework for education’s autonomy.

The locality of education’s autonomy stems from objective different political and educational structures that influence the landscape of stakeholders and their relative power, and ultimately shapes the way education is governed, administrated, and regulated in every jurisdiction. Thus, in some countries, the education system experiences the influence of quite unique bodies, such as educational councils (see Weissblei, 2013) or the military (for example in Israel, see Levy et al., 2007), and even for common factors such as teacher unions (Whorton, 2015, and as discussed above) and religious parties or organizations, where their impact on education systems and their autonomy is quite diverse. Relatedly, and perhaps more importantly, what education itself means in different places depends on historical, cultural, and social factors, and consequently the focus and goals of relevant endeavors vary, such as educational research and teacher training (Biesta, 2011). For education’s autonomy advocates it is vital to pay attention to the local context because beyond being an intellectual-scholarly interest, education’s autonomy is also an educational-political transformative vision. In promoting this vision, it is essential to address questions about links between the political integrity (which is very local) and the intellectual and practical integrities of education.

A comprehensive inquiry of local and universal aspects of education’s autonomy is possible not only if scholars in (or from) different political and social contexts around the world analyze and share about their familiar education systems, but also if work on education’s autonomy (or other relevant educational aspects) in one place is accessible for interested scholars from other places. Unfortunately, English-language readers face linguistic obstacles in this regard as some relevant work is published only in other languages such as German, Dutch (with regard to what happens in central and northern Europe), and Spanish (especially with regard to what happens in South America). While few of our multilingual fellow scholars mediate some non-English work, much is left inaccessible. Meetings of scholars from around the world in conferences is one way to address this problem. What might be other ways?

Special issue content and contributors

A demonstration of education’s autonomy complexities and nuances, as well as challenges to the notion itself, are displayed throughout the papers of this special issue. As a way of introducing them we also raise relevant questions and ideas about each of them.

Pádraig Hogan deepens into the notion of education as a practice in its own right, a sui generis practice, and offers an analysis of capabilities and relationships that constitute such an educational practice. Hogan reminds us that the debate on education’s autonomy “is not a partisan one, whether of the left or right, or of a liberal or conservative stance,” and that “Far from being a fully accomplished project, it remains vulnerable to new perils,” and as we note above, as such “it resembles the struggle for democracy itself, even in democracies.” Starting with an historical review of higher education, Hogan closely examines the notion of practice itself and the related notion of the practitioner. He subsequently proposes inherent goals or purposes for education and analyses teacher’s relationships. Hogan’s review of attempts to constitute autonomy in higher education by Thomas Jefferson and Wilhelm von Humboldt raise for us the question why, historically (so it seems), initiatives or calls for education’s autonomy focus more on higher education (particularly the university) and are rarer in the K-12 education context? Is it a preference of scholars to attend to their occupational environment or perhaps K-12 education is considered for many a lost cause when it comes to being a non-politically driven endeavor? Following Hogan’s paper, we also wonder to what degree the individual teacher’s autonomy (as far as granted and acted, and as it is reflected in their relationships) demonstrates (or is an evidence for) the social sphere of education’s autonomy?

For Carl Anders Säfström, history is not only an interesting starting point but a central aspect in his analysis and suggestions for the roots of autonomous educational practice and education in general. Looking at the relationship between philosophy and education, Säfström questions the dominance of Platonian and Aristotelian philosophy over education and schooling, and claims that they eventually brought about “machine schooling” founded on inequality. Instead, Säfström argues that an autonomous tradition of educational practice is demonstrated in the work of the Sophists as a verification of equality. This paper is important not just in terms of challenging the Platonian and Aristotelian heritage, claiming respect for the Sophists, and who can be considered an educator, but especially, at least for us, in demonstrating how theoretical work about and for education’s autonomy can be founded on the actual work of educators in the trenches. This paper also raises for us the questions: to what degree traditions are an obstacle for a critical view of education and for developing a theoretical framework for and realizing education’s autonomy? Following Säfström’s acknowledgement of the dismissed Sophists, and in relation to the discussion on alternative schools above, to what degree (what might be perceived as) the margins of the educational landscape can define what education is and what education’s autonomy is? And how far are we willing to go away from philosophy to draw a theoretical contour for education and education’s autonomy that is basically philosophical in character?

Juuso Tervo challenges the mere distinction that (at least implicitly) lies beneath some major assumptions of education’s autonomy: the “inside” and “outside” of education, that there are contours of “the educational” where the nomos of its autonomy lies. Tervo seeks “to reconfigure education’s autonomy in a way that questions the all-too-familiar recognizability of ‘the educational’ along the lines of a self-governing, ever-developing human life.” Instead of this parallelism with human self-determination, he proposes an antinomic figuration of education’s autonomy. Tervo takes a literary approach to educational thought and offers an ungovernable approach to education’s autonomy using Comenius’s utopian novel The Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart and Blanchot’s writings on the neuter. Tervo acknowledges the challenges for such an ungovernable approach for educational thought, practice, and policy, but he claims that it nevertheless allows us to question education’s intelligibility and progress that governance assumedly guarantees. Following Tervo’s paper and taking seriously his approach, we wonder how an agenda for education’s autonomy needs to be reformulated without being weakened, if indeed removing the conceptual dividing line between education and the outside is adopted. For example, how does the instrumentalization of education need to be perceived? Can we still talk about interferences in education? What is the place of rejecting political and ideological influences on education—and resistance in general—in an ungovernable approach to education’s autonomy? And, what are the implications for the notion “autonomy” itself in such a theoretical framework?

John Baldacchino examines autonomy itself, and looks at it through the dynamic relationship between particularity, experience, and subjectivism in the works of Georg Lukács and John Dewey. Within the context of autonomy and subjectivity, Baldacchino is especially interested in the question whether forms of mediation in art and education could avoid becoming didactic. He stresses that “subject” in his paper does not necessarily mean an individual or an isolated sense of individualism. This is an intrigued scholarly strategy: examining an aspect of an agent without binding it to a conceptual person or anything representative of a human being. And this, in turn, raises for us questions on the mere attribution of autonomy to education: is this a legitimate association? Can “education” be considered an agent that is “allowed” to claim autonomy? Is this the same kind of autonomy granted for people? And what other characters it is reasonable to attribute to education? Can we portray education as having consciousness? Sovereignty? Wishes? Feelings? We surely used to depict other social spheres, organizations, and institutions with such features. How far can we go with the personification or anthropomorphism of education when we advocate for its autonomy? Do we constrain ourselves, the discussion, or the cause in some way when we insist on autonomy for education? Did we go too far or perhaps not far enough when we (Yosef-Hassidim and Baldacchino, 2021) characterized education’s autonomy as education with its own logic, immanence, agenda, agency, terms, values?

Closing this special issue is Doron Yosef-Hassidim’s paper on what he calls the education-world dilemma: if an educational goal is to be universal, how are people’s current problems and concerns supposed to be integrated or addressed in the educational work, and specifically in teaching the curriculum? The paper looks at this dilemma with a particular educational perspective and within a particular curricular context, namely, how Biesta’s ideas of grown-up-ness and a middle ground can be employed in K-12 engineering courses. As Yosef-Hassidim looks at engineering through an ethical lens and how ethical concerns impact the engineer’s work (and what might the implications be when employing an educational perspective), a related question following this paper is about the openness of education to the “internal” affairs of fellow social spheres (or the transparency about them): When disciplinary content is imported into the classroom, what obligation does education have toward the norms and values that come with it? Are we allowed to employ the death of the author principle on material that enters the classroom (and as such to ignore original intentions and meanings)? Can educators do whatever they want with curricular content (or for that matter, with anything that happens in the world as a platform for educational work)? To what degree, if any, can education sever “objective” knowledge from accompanied critique how to apply it? When disciplinary content enters the educational space, does it have any “right” to impose ethics? If so, when is the line crossed and education’s autonomy is infringed?

We would like to express our gratitude to all the contributors to this special issue, as well as to the anonymous reviewers who contributed invaluable feedback on earlier versions of the manuscripts. We are also thankful to the Editors of Policy Futures in Education who allowed us to publish this important work on education’s autonomy on this respected stage.