On the occasion of World Education Day 2025: What defines good education

by Ralph Studer,* Switzerland

(7 February 2025) “School education and pedagogical thinking are in crisis,” says Jochen Krautz, Professor of Art Education at the University of Wuppertal. What Krautz is talking about here is now a widespread consensus. There is a need for a return to fundamental principles. And good education would not be that difficult after all ...

In keeping with International Education Day on 24 January, let’s start with what education is not. According to the current concept of BYOD (“Bring Your Own Device”) for the digitalisation of schools, all materials are only accessible online and digitally. Haptic experiences are thus almost completely lost. “The world,” says Christine Staehelin, “is presented on the screen, often reduced to assignments.”¹ Staehelin is a long-standing primary school teacher and a member of the Basel-Stadt Education Council. She knows what she is talking about.

The most important question

For some time now, she has been a vehement critic of current school development. “Those who delegate the task to AI will no longer learn about the world themselves; those who no longer read books but have summaries written for them will no longer form their own opinions and will no longer know how others see the world.” Staehelin also sees a loss of knowledge in general: “Those who do not have a fundamental knowledge base, but only ever ask about individual aspects, will soon no longer know what questions can even be asked.” And those who do not know the contexts will not be able to orient themselves.

What bothers Staehelin about the discussion surrounding the use of AI is that the essential issues are not being discussed. “Perhaps,” she points out, “the most important question would be about the effects of the dominance of screens in the classroom and the associated loss of direct access to the world and to other people.”

A turning away from the reductionist view of humanity

What Staehelin is denouncing here is also shared by other education experts such as Dr phil. Carl Bossard. “In the new Curriculum 21”, says Bossard, “the human being is reduced to a skill.”² This curriculum represents what Staehelin and Bossard criticise as the “reductionism of the human being and of education”. It contains countless competencies and is based on the premise that everything that can be learnt can be standardised and captured in the term “skill”. Bossard says: “In my opinion, it is simplistic to reduce knowledge only to skills, to the instrumental or functional, so to speak. A human being is more than just a vessel of competencies.”³

What does education mean?

But this simple insight is no longer implemented today. According to Jochen Krautz, education is based “on an inner activity, on being receptive to what the subject can say. Education requires one’s own inner and outer activity in and with the subject.”⁴

Basic education includes the fundamental cultural techniques of reading, writing and arithmetic. In addition, there is the understanding and consolidation, the reinforcement and practice of knowledge and skills, as well as the application of what has been learned. Because if you no longer have a command of basic cultural techniques, Chat-GPT won’t help you either. The central task of the school here is also to guide young people to themselves and at the same time from within to their possibilities, to their potential.

This also includes enabling them to achieve a healthy autonomy, to become mature and to take on civic responsibility for themselves and for society. This goes far beyond the concept of competence. Today’s discussions about curricula and timetables should be based on these considerations.

However, this still leaves a significant aspect of what constitutes education unmentioned. According to Bossard, education also means “passionate devotion, wonder, curiosity. The self also consists in the art of losing oneself in something else – in something that is greater than this tiny self, for example in art, in music, in the universe.”

Education needs an adequate pedagogy

Education needs good pedagogy as a basic prerequisite. Pedagogy essentially means guiding children on their path to becoming more mature “by learning the skills and knowledge of culture,” according to Krautz.

Pedagogy takes place in an asymmetrical relationship. What sounds logical and is reflected in reality is, however, questioned in today’s schools. A quick glance is enough to see that adults can and know more than children and young people and bear responsibility for their upbringing.

“The goal of this leadership,” says Krautz, “is precisely maturity, that is, the ability to shape our lives together independently and responsibly.” Responsible self-organisation does not arise from leaving children to their own devices. The child’s inner creative power, which makes it “grow”, needs guidance and a framework so that the child can become a being of community, Krautz concludes.

If these elements are not taken into account, we fail to do justice to the human being and its nature. The human being is a social being and only becomes one in human relationships. Our relationships with others are an essential part of what makes us human, as the philosopher Martin Buber put it. Krautz writes on this: “We therefore do not ‘unfold’ from within alone but become personalities in resonance with and in interaction with our fellow human beings and our world.”

The task of the school

In this development of the human being, questions about one’s own identity arise, especially during puberty. In this process, social bonds and cultural references have a formative influence on adolescents. It is precisely the adolescent who is looking for self-affirmation, self-assurance, and meaning in a difficult phase of life and orients themselves to what culture has to offer.

This is precisely why schools have a particularly important function here, as Krautz notes, because they have a wealth of meaning to offer. They can and must tie the search for identity among young people to the offerings of cultural tradition. Krautz illustrates this with many practical examples: “What forces hold the world together? – physics asks. Where do we come from, where are we going? – religion and philosophy ask. On whose shoulders do we stand? – history asks. How do you think logically? – mathematics shows. What does lovesickness feel like? – poetry knows. How do other cultures think? – foreign languages convey. How do I play together with others? – sports teach. How do I create something myself? – art lessons show.

If schools do not fulfil this task and reduce their role to skills training, then young people will turn to the culture industry for answers in their search for identity, the art professor warns.

The fundamental pedagogical question

Since every person has only one educational biography, it is crucial who stands in the classroom and how this person comes across. Pupils need teachers whose actions are based on loving devotion, care, trust and encouragement to believe in themselves.

This also includes a genuine interest in the development of the pupil, both personally and professionally. Active enquiry and a genuine desire to understand should go hand in hand. Student-centred and passionate teachers with a high sense of personal responsibility for children’s learning are indispensable.

“Without a positive emotional attitude,” Krautz emphasises, “the so-called ‘professionalisation’ of teachers will achieve nothing that makes sense and is fruitful for young people.” And with a view to the great Swiss pedagogue Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, he writes: “He was driven by the question of how he could help young people to find their place, to become fellow human beings and to make their own contribution to the tasks and possibilities of humanity. That is the fundamental pedagogical question.”

The higher goal of education

Today, screens dominate teaching. They lead to a loss of direct access to the world and to our fellow human beings. With its reductionist view of people and education, today’s school has lost its educational mission. As a result, it no longer does justice to the individual pupil and his or her needs. Christine Staehelin describes the reforms in the Swiss school landscape in recent decades as an “upside-down world”.

Yet education has a far higher goal that goes beyond the individual and should be back in the focus of today’s schools. “It [education] demands of us,” emphasises Krautz, “a personal contribution to the development of humanity towards more humanity, justice and peace. An ‘exaggerated’ claim? Possibly. And one that often fails. But can we want less?”

* Ralph Studer, born in 1977, studied law at the University of Basel and was admitted to the bar. He completed a course of training as a “Mediator CAS IRP-HSG” at the University of St. Gallen and trained as a secondary school teacher at the Lucerne University of Teacher Education, teaching at the secondary and post-secondary level. He has been a member of the Foundation “Zukunft CH” since March 2022.

Source: https://www.zukunft-ch.ch/zum-weltbildungstag-2025-was-gute-bildung-ausmacht/, 24 January 2025

(Translation “Swiss Standpoint”)

1 in: https://condorcet.ch/2024/12/eine-verkehrte-welt/

2 in: https://www.zukunft-ch.ch/im-lehrplan-21-wird-der-mensch-aufs-koennen-reduziert/

3 https://www.zukunft-ch.ch/carl-bossard-der-mensch-ist-mehr-als-nur-ein-behaelter-von-kompetenzen/

4 Jochen Krautz. «Bilder von Bildung. Für eine Renaissance der Schule». ISBN 978-3-532-62874-4