Keywords

Introduction

In the 1980s, school research “discovered” the development of the individual school as a theoretical problem. In particular, the realization that individual schools can develop into schools of different quality under the same or similar conditions was central to this problem. Helmut Fend therefore referred to the individual school as a “pedagogical unit of action” [pädagogische Handlungseinheit] (Fend, 1986, 275), thus expressing the insight that the development of the individual school is subject to a dynamic of its own, relatively independent of state-imposed school reforms.In short: The question of quality is decided in the individual school. This institution has therefore increasingly been recognized as a world of its own and has been thematized, for example, as an organizational culture, that is, as an order that is produced by local actors – especially teachers – and that then itself influences further interactions. It is this order that contributes decisively to rendering the individual school relatively resistant to interventions “from outside.” To this day, the problem of clarifying the prerequisites, possibilities, and limits of school development [Schulentwicklung] and of school development consulting [Schulentwicklungsberatung] that supports the development of the individual school remains unresolved in school research (see Rolff, 2018).

At this point, the question arises regarding the conditions under which development processes of the individual school can be described as legitimate from an educational perspective, at least if one does not want to claim that the development of the individual school – in whatever direction – can per se already be judged as educationally legitimate. In this sense, Wolfgang Schönig explicitly draws attention to the fact “that educational science should at least be able to offer an orientation framework that names the minimum requirements for school quality” (Schönig, 2000, 92). Insofar as “school development” and “school development consulting” can neither gain the “criteria for the improvement of school quality from within themselves, nor be value-neutral, nor leave the search for criteria solely to the schools or to the public discourse” (ibid.), both are dependent on a theory in which an educational-theoretically [erziehungstheoretisch], Bildung-theoretically [bildungstheoretisch], and institutional-theoretically [institutionentheoretisch] reflected description of school is developed, which could function as a guiding idea of school development and school development consulting.

In this chapter, I would like to explore how school teaching can be described in light of a theory of non-affirmative education. I start from the assumption that this theory implies an idea of teaching that could function as an educationally justified point of reference for school development and school development consulting, and that furthermore indicates a theoretical level beneath which public debates about schooling in the twenty-first century should not fall. School teaching that is conceived as non-affirmative, according to my thesis, must consequently be conceived as educative teaching, or more precisely: as educative teaching under the claim of Bildung [erziehender Unterricht mit Bildungsanspruch]. In order to substantiate this assertion, I will primarily argue systematically and describe educative teaching as a specific kind of teaching that “transcends” school subjects in specific respects. Such teaching links the thematization of knowledge with questions of the good life and of good living together [Fragen eines gelingenden Lebens und Zusammenlebens] and, in addition, brings students to reflect on the assumptions on which specific knowledge and specific value judgments are based.

The chapter is structured as follows: In a first step, I briefly explain the basic idea of a theory of non-affirmative education, discussing the difference between affirmative and non-affirmative education on the one hand and different basic forms of non-affirmative education on the other (1). In a second step, I situate school teaching in the context of these three basic forms and show how it can be conceived as educative teaching under the claim of Bildung (2). In a third step, I will develop a framework that allows us to distinguish different dimensions of non-affirmativity that are important in the context of educative teaching and that must taken into account if school development and school development consulting are to be oriented towards this idea of school teaching (3).

Non-affirmative Education as Discipline, Teaching and Guidance

Human beings – this is the basic premise of the following considerations – are imperfect beings who exist in the necessity to act. By acting, human beings bring forth culture, whereby culture is understood here in a broad sense. It is not limited to literature, art, philosophy or religion, but also includes natural science, technology, politics or economy. By creating culture, human beings turn around their imperfection without being able to overcome it. Against this background, education can be understood as a reaction to a certain permanent problem [Dauerproblem] of human life and coexistence. This problem consists in the fact that culture is not genetically inherited, but has to be acquired. Education can be understood as the specific form of interaction in which people help other people to acquire culture. In this sense, education reacts in equal measure to the mortality problem [Mortalitätsproblem] – culture must be handed down – and the natality problem [Natalitätsproblem] – people must be introduced to culture (see Sünkel, 2013).

Unlike a description of education as affirmative – reducing it to a means of enforcing social expectations of the next generation – a description of non-affirmative education focuses on education as a traditional and transforming intergenerational practice (see Benner, 1990). In this context, the question of what to favour or disfavour in living and living together is understood as a question that has not been answered before all education, so that education would only have to pass on answers that have already been found. Instead, non-affirmative education hands over the aforementioned question as a question. This includes hel** newcomers to reflect on answers that others have already found in their search for orientation. But these answers do not provide a standard to which education would have to be oriented. Rather, they become the object of discussion in education itself – which of course implies that children and young people may transform tradition in their own way.

Given this background, to describe education as non-affirmative can be interpreted as an attempt to define an education in which the newcomers’ thinking, judging and acting are not standardized. Non-affirmative education differs from an affirmative-conservative education [affirmative-bewahrende Erziehung] and an affirmative-emancipative education [affirmativ-emanzipative Erziehung] in that young people are called upon to make their own judgments and to act on the basis of those judgments. It is precisely in this regard that such an understanding of education itself proves to be non-neutral. Rather, it expresses a normative position specifically directed against attempts to instrumentalize education for the implementation of extra-educational purposes. Non-affirmative education may well be prompted by social expectations addressed to the next generation, but it does not affirm these expectations. Rather, it treats them as determinations [Bestimmungen] generated by people; determinations that – since people are imperfect beings – eventually can be reconsidered as elements of and jum** off points for the future interplay between the individual and the world (see Reichenbach, 2001, 410ff.).

The specific task of non-affirmative education, traditionally referred to as Bildung, is that children and young people be drawn into this interplay and helped in relating to “external” demands. Accordingly, non-affirmative education can be described as the enabling of Bildung [Ermöglichung von Bildung] – and thus as a form of interaction that does not only consist of introducing newcomers to culture, but rather addresses them in a specific sense as subjects – that is, offers them the opportunity to examine claims to validity (see Rucker, 2020, 56ff.). This must not be misunderstood as relativistic, but includes the fact that newcomers are confronted with a resistant world [widerständige Welt] in order to provoke experiences of difference [Differenzerfahrungen], which can be an occasion to test and transcend existing patterns of relating to self and world. Conversely, education does not only mean confronting newcomers with a resistant world: It always also implies opening up the possibility for them to develop their own positions by working through experiences of difference.

Education “that gives thought to what is worthy of becoming and remaining the content and task of one’s life” (Ballauff, 1989, 625) thus means inviting adolescents to “think through well-considered questions” and at the same time letting them “experience the difficulty of well-founded answers” (ibid., 633). In short: “Bildung does not mean feeling comfortable; rather, it involves becoming uncomfortable” (ibid., 627). At the same time, the positions that newcomers develop are not determined in advance, but emerge, are maintained and changed in the self-active dealing of the individual with a resistant world.

The notion of understanding education as introducing newcomers to the search for orientation of a good life and living together and – connected with this – to treat “the question of what it means to be human as a radically open question” (Biesta, 2006, 4) is irreducibly connected to the concept of Bildsamkeit. Indeed, to conceive of the human being as bildsam means to focus on him or her as the “being of principled openness, the being that is not determined” [das Wesen der prinzipiellen Offenheit, das nicht festgestellte Wesen] (Buck, 1984, 135). If we assume that education should address newcomers as human beings, and if we further assume that humans are indeterminate beings [unbestimmte Wesen], it follows that education should introduce newcomers into the world in such a way that their future way of living [Lebensform] remains open. Paradoxically formulated: Education addresses children and young people as human beings precisely when it keeps open the question of what it means to be human. In this sense, the concept of Bildsamkeit fulfils the function of a principle, which refers to the educational interaction and confronts it with the demand to summon newcomers to self-activity [Selbsttätigkeit], that is, to open up possibilities of participation [Mitwirkung]. Education can only do justice to the “indeterminate Bildsamkeit” of the “growing human being” if it refrains from determining newcomers according to traditional claims to validity and instead “challenges their power of judgment” (Brüggen, 1998, 118). This includes hel** children and young people to “retrospectively” criticize and – under certain circumstances – transcend patterns of thought and action they have already developed in the course of growing up (see Stojanov, 2008, 104).

In the tradition of modern pedagogy, various basic forms of non-affirmative education have been distinguished – forms that can neither be derived from, substituted for or reduced to each other. Since the work The Science of Education: Its General Principles Deduced from Its Aim [Allgemeine Pädagogik aus dem Zweck der Erziehung abgeleitet] (1806/1908) by Johann Friedrich Herbart, these include a disciplinary education [regierende Erziehung], an education by teaching [Erziehung durch Unterricht], and an education as guidance [beratende Erziehung].Footnote 1 In the following, I will briefly explain each of these basic forms in order to provide the context for my reflections on educative teaching.

Discipline is understood as a form of education aimed at preventing harm that children and young people might suffer or inflict on themselves or others if they were not restrained from acting in a certain way. In this sense, discipline can take the form of both guarding [Behüten] and counteracting [Gegenwirken]. One might think of the situation where a father grabs his daughter’s hand to stop her from chasing a ball rolling down the street. But think also of the situation where a teacher admonishes students who are talking about their weekend activities during a lesson. Discipline in this sense always means enforcing certain rules. The claim to validity associated with the respective rules is not at issue in the context of this basic form of education.

Discipline is necessary if children and young people are not yet able to act in light of their own judgments. Conversely, disciplinary education is subject to certain demands if newcomers are to be addressed as bildsam (see Herbart, 1806/1908, 95f.). Discipline operates negatively, that is, it prevents children and young people from acting in a certain way. In this sense, disciplinary education differs, for example, from behavioral conditioning, which seeks to generate dispositions to behave in a certain way, that is, to determine the newcomer’s will in specific respects. Furthermore, the claim is that discipline must end as soon as children and young people are able to subject their will to their own judgment and to act in this sense.

Teaching is the basic form of education in which children and young people are involved in a self-acting dealing with content (objects, topics). In teaching, newcomers are confronted with knowledge that is classified in a culture as worthy of being handed down, but which cannot be acquired in everyday interactions with people. Newcomers can learn how to use a smartphone to make phone calls, take photos or download apps in everyday interaction. However, they cannot learn through everyday interaction the technology that makes these activities possible in the first place. Any successful transmission of knowledge about the technological prerequisites of smartphones necessarily presupposes that everyday interaction is interrupted and transformed into the artificial form of education that we call teaching.

In contrast to discipline, as students newcomers are not prevented from acting, but are prompted to delve into and reflect on certain content through questioning and pointing activities [Frage- und Zeigeaktivitäten], in order to gain insight into something the adult generation considers significant: “Come closer, and have a look, this is fascinating! It is worthy of your effort. I invite you to engage with it” (Vlieghe & Zamojski, 2019, 527). This common reference of teachers and students to specific cultural objects is constitutive for teaching, and also includes a dealing with the rules that are enforced in the context of disciplinary education. In general, there are mutual dependencies between discipline and teaching. Education by teaching is dependent on education by discipline insofar as it requires a kind of order that makes teaching possible in the first place. This order cannot be established by teaching, but requires a form of education that does not thematize rules, but rather enforces them. Conversely, discipline is therefore dependent on teaching, because rules must not merely be enforced if education is to address newcomers as subjects. Rather, a form of interaction is required in which rules can be thematized, examined and – under certain circumstances – problematized.

In contrast to discipline and teaching, guidance is neither aimed at preventing newcomers from acting, nor at introducing them to knowledge and inviting them to critically examine it. Instead, guidance is meant to help children and young people to act in light of their own insights and judgments, that is, to support them in concrete questions of their own way of life in relation to the lives of others. Guidance in this sense can be said to occur, for example, when options for action are suggested to newcomers that they had not previously considered, when children and young people are asked to reconsider their own plans for action, or when newcomers are encouraged to put their plans into practice.

The fact that guidance should support children and young people in orienting themselves in their lives on their own judgments is consequent, if education is understood as enabling Bildung. As such, guidance is aimed not at standardizing the newcomers’ way of life, but at hel** them to search for, find and develop their own way of life. Addressing newcomers in this sense as bildsam must not be misunderstood as subjectivistic. If one assumes that self-determination requires a free space – space that is not necessarily given in the interaction between people, but that must be continually established and stabilized – then it follows that guidance must also strive to help children and young people develop the attitude of limiting themselves in order to also leave other people free spaces or to open up to them in the first place, to choose their way of life. Guidance then means confronting newcomers with the question of “whether what we desire is desirable for our own lives and the lives we live with others” (Biesta, 2017, 16). Such addressing is aimed at thwarting the self-centeredness of children and young people, as it were, thus opening up to them the possibility of distancing themselves from their desires and transforming them. If one assumes that living together in plurality presupposes people’s willingness and ability to limit themselves, then the interruption of the self-centeredness of newcomers can indeed be called “the fundamental educational gesture” (ibid., 17).

Educative Teaching and the Public School

Although teaching takes place outside the classroom, it is institutionalized in particular in the specific context of schools. School teaching must therefore be understood as a specific form of teaching that differs in several respects from both non-institutionalized and alternative forms of institutionalized teaching: It takes place at fixed times and in fixed places, teachers and students deal with the same subject matter over longer periods of time, the prerequisites and purposes of teaching are fixed, the rooms are provided specifically for teaching purposes, teachers carry out their activity professionally, etc. As Henz-Elmar Tenorth states, a “thematically bound communication” and – connected to it – a “subject-bound competence of the teachers and a performance evaluation according to curricular quality standards” can be regarded as central aspects for school teaching. However, if learning is to gain the “character of Bildung,” orientation to “subject-specific standards that societies agree upon and declare necessary” is not sufficient. If the task of teaching is to give students the opportunity to acquire the “cognitive and normative prerequisites for self-determined action in society” (Tenorth, 2016, 146), then one must consider that what is learned in the context of subject teaching [Fachunterricht] as such does not yet have any significance with regard to the way children and young people lead their lives in interaction with others.

Teaching that is understood as the initiation and support of Bildung processes must meet certain requirements – at least if one understands Bildung as a process of develo** the ability to self-determination in the confrontation with a resistant world. Bildung then means that a person learns to lead his or her life in a self-determined way, whereby such a process implies, among other things, the development of objective insights [sachliche Einsichten], one’s own value judgments [eigene Werturteile], and the ability to correspond to one’s own judgments in one’s actions (see Rucker, 2020, 56ff.). One can only speak meaningfully of a self-determined way of life if one acts according to one’s own judgments. Thus, we would not speak of self-determination if someone makes his or her own judgments but is not able to act upon them, that is, to actually lead his or her life in light of these judgments. To act according to one’s own judgments, one must make one’s own judgments in the first place. Thus, we would not speak of self-determination if someone agrees with positions or rejects positions without examining them and finding his or her own position. Finally, forming one’s own judgment presupposes objective insights. How would one want to position oneself in relation to an issue without being able to base one’s judgments on knowledge about the issue? To put it pointedly: “Bildung” is “knowledge” about culture “plus self-reflection,” and thus a process in which a person “brings him- or herself into play as a judging and acting subject in relation to his or her culture” (Brüggen, 1999, 60).

Against this background, teaching under the claim of Bildung must be conceived as educative teaching, in which students should not only acquire objective insights, but also be given the opportunity to consider the relevance [Bedeutsamkeit] of what they have learned for their own lives in interaction with others. This is due to the fact that teaching aims to free students for a life of self-determination, while the knowledge to be acquired is indifferent in its relevance for the lives of the children and young people. If it is not to be left to chance whether students relate acquired knowledge to their own way of life, it follows that the question of the relevance of knowledge must itself become a topic within school teaching (see Rucker, 2019, 649ff.).

Consequently, teaching under the claim of Bildung does not only mean an introduction to knowledge; it is also related to enabling students to lead a self-determined life, which includes supporting the development of one’s own positions. Conversely, the positions whose development is to be initiated and supported are mediated through an acquisition of knowledge. The students are to be enabled to position themselves on questions of a good life and living together in the light of objective insights.

It is the making of value judgments that provides a link between knowledge and the lives of the students. Against this background, educational teaching in public schools can also be understood as value-oriented subject teaching [wertorientierter Fachunterricht] – as a form of interaction in which students are summoned to ask questions about the relevance of what they have learned for their own lives and, conversely, to subject already developed value judgments to scrutiny in the light of objective insights. This task is not restricted to certain subjects, but represents an “interdisciplinary task,” which generally should be taken into account if “knowledge, attitude [Haltung] and possible action” are to be related to each other and thus support the “Bildung of the students” (Rekus, 1993, 196). In short: “Teaching is only ‘complete’ from an educational perspective if it relates the knowledge to be acquired to the value orientation of the students and thus contributes to a responsible way of living” (ibid., 199).

In order to clarify what is meant here by educational teaching under the claim of Bildung, I believe it would be helpful to distinguish this from teaching without value education [Unterricht ohne Werterziehung] on the one hand and value education without teaching [Werterziehung ohne Unterricht] on the other. Teaching without value education involves introducing newcomers to knowledge without asking them to evaluate the relevance of this knowledge for their own life in interaction with others. Such teaching would not be compatible with the claim to help adolescents to lead a self-determined life. However, we would speak of value education without teaching if children and young people were urged to perform certain actions without being given the opportunity to make their own judgments and to act in accordance with them. This possibility is denied to newcomers by the fact that they are not introduced to existing knowledge. Children and young people are unlikely to be able to position themselves in relation to facts about which they have no knowledge. For example, someone who does not know how the coronavirus is transmitted will hardly be able to judge the value of wearing masks. Against this background, the methods and means of value education without teaching are different: Instead of initiating and supporting value judgments, teachers use rewards and punishments to encourage newcomers to act in certain ways and to promote the development of specific attitudes. The task of hel** children and young people to lead a self-determined life is therefore also undermined by value education without teaching.

To summarize: Both teaching without value education and value education without teaching undermine the claim of Bildung. Teaching is dependent on value education, insofar as knowledge is indifferent with regard to the life of the student. Value education is dependent on teaching insofar as the student’s own value judgments are only possible if he or she has acquired knowledge about the issues that are to be judged. Without teaching, value education would only be possible in an affirmative sense. However, this problem cannot be solved by combining the introduction to knowledge with some kind of behavioral conditioning. Such a combination does not contribute to a non-affirmative orientation of school teaching. This would rather require that students are both confronted with traditional claims to validity and given the opportunity to relate to these claims. Educative teaching in this sense means introducing students to the practice of giving and asking for reasons, which enables a “justified rejection or acceptance” (Schilmöller, 1994, 352) of claims to validity in the first place.

Educative teaching that seeks to make Bildung possible is not solely aimed at qualifying and socializing students. Rather, such teaching is also and above all characterized by a task that Biesta calls subjectification (see Biesta, 2020). In my view, it would be misleading to regard qualification, socialization, and the “coming into present” of subjects as three separate tasks of educative teaching. Rather – as Biesta also explicitly states – these must be considered as mutually related to each other. Educative teaching introduces newcomers to traditional knowledge. However, such teaching is not limited to learning something; the students should also be given the opportunity to relate to what they have learned [sich zu Gelerntem in ein Verhältnis setzen]. Again, this does not mean that children and young people should not be confronted with values and norms. On the contrary, teachers present and represent these values and norms. But they should not do so in a way that enforces claims to validity. Rather, children and young people should be invited to examine claims to validity so that they have the opportunity to bring their perspective into play, to develop their own value orientation in the confrontation with traditional values and norms, and to be able to discuss their positions intergenerationally.

Dimensions of Non-affirmativity

Here I would like to systematically describe the non-affirmative orientation of educative teaching. For this purpose, I distinguish four dimensions of non-affirmativity. This framework should help us to distinguish more precisely what we mean by non-affirmative school teaching.

Objective Insight

Educative teaching proves to be non-affirmative insofar as knowledge is understood as answers to questions and the work on these questions is placed in the center of teaching. Teachers therefore must first make a subject matter questionable [fragwürdig] for and accessible [zugänglich] to the students, and then support the students in searching for and finding answers to their questions in the interplay of delving [Vertiefung] into and reflecting [Besinnung] on a matter. These answers are either methods themselves, developed in response to certain questions, or results of the use of specific methods. It follows that teaching must be realized in such a way that the “immanent-methodical character” (Klafki, 1985/2007, 123) of knowledge is taken into account by supporting students in following the path towards a certain knowledge in a simplified form. This means that the subject matter is not presented in a complete form; rather, the students are encouraged to discover the structure of the subject matter step by step.

Educative teaching is recognizable by the fact that students are not only encouraged to understand the structure of a content, but are also asked to examine the validity claims that play a role in this context. This does not exclude phases of instruction [Unterweisung]. Conversely, it is quite possible to realize teaching as instruction, that is, in such a way that an examination of claims to validity is left out, which is why educative teaching should not be regarded as the normal case or even as a triviality. Phases of instruction must be justifiable in the context of educative teaching in relation to its task of enabling newcomers to gain objective insight, that is, they must be shown to be a necessary prerequisite for children and young people to become involved in a self-active dealing with the subject at all. For example, students must first be taught the names of the sides of a right-angled triangle before they can grasp the Pythagorean theorem and work through various possible proofs. Conversely, teaching in mathematics in which the corresponding proofs were left out would be judged as deficient – at least if Bildung should be made possible for students. In this case, the newcomers are denied the possibility to gain insight into the Pythagorean theorem, namely, to accept the associated claims to validity in freedom. To put it simply: “The learner should pick up [aufnehmen] and keep [behalten], in other words he or she should learn, in the elementary meaning of the word, but only accept [annehmen] as true that which he or she has tested and scrutinized” (Koch, 2015, 71).

This requires specific activities from the teachers. They must explore the students’ already acquired knowledge, bring them to clarify that knowledge, and finally connect to the clarified prior knowledge if it is to be expanded. In order to initiate and support such an expansion, teachers must ask questions and point to something that students do not yet “see.” In addition, they have to give and demand reasons, and finally summon their students to check the validity of the knowledge “imparted” in this sense.

The delving into and reflection on a subject matter imply the students’ confrontation with their own ignorance [Nichtwissen]. Experiences of difference in this sense are constitutive for the formation of judgment, because they are the trigger for the students’ search for orientation in the first place, in which – if successful – they find a knowledge that allows them to overcome their ignorance regarding a specific issue. Therefore, in educative teaching, newcomers are confronted with questions that serve as an occasion to deal with a subject matter and to find answers to these questions, that is, to “develop” knowledge by thinking for themselves.

The knowledge that is to be acquired has, of course, long been known and is, at best, rediscovered by the newcomers. Therefore, it is only appropriate that non-affirmative teaching is understood as an invitation to “think for oneself,” while at the same time the invitation is specified as help “to find knowledge independently” (Klafki, 1999, 115). This does not mean, however, that an introduction to knowledge cannot address children and young people as subjects. In this context, however, their participation [Mitwirkung] takes on a specific form. This consists in the fact that students are involved in a self-active dealing with a subject matter, in which the possibility opens up for them not to have to accept knowledge unquestioned, but to accept it because it proves to be convincing in an examination of validity claims. This is what I mean when I say that educative teaching under the claim of Bildung is aimed at enabling students to gain objective insight [sachliche Einsicht]. Such enabling of objective insight, in turn, means nothing else than inviting students to participate in the differentiation of their “circle of thought,” [Gedankenkreis], that is, addressing them as bildsam.

Own Value Judgment

Educative teaching can also be understood as non-affirmative in that students are summoned to make their own value judgments in light of objective insights. Teachers do not answer the question of how we should live and live together in order to force students to orient themselves towards these answers. Rather, educative teaching under the claim of Bildung is characterized by the fact that students are searching for orientation in questions of a good life and living together in order to find their own answers. In this context, of course, traditional answers also play a role; after all, newcomers should be given the opportunity to find their positions with regard to an already achieved level of addressing questions of the good life and living together. However, the respective answers – and this is decisive here – do not provide the standards by which orientation would have to be found. Rather, these answers to questions of the good life and living together become objects of discussion within a search for orientation that is open to the future, and in this sense they function as “problem answers to be critically thought through” rather than as “phenomena to be enforced” (Fischer, 1972, 132).

Value-oriented teaching in this sense aims at develo** one’s own judgments and not at the unquestioned acquirement of given value judgments. The matter of which claims to validity associated with specific value orientations can be accepted and which must be rejected is treated as a question, that is, in such a way that no particular answer is established in advance as the correct one. In educative teaching under the claim of Bildung, students are not required to accept unquestioningly conceptions of a good life and living together. Rather, recognizing students as bildsam means opening up to them the possibility of interpreting, examining, problematizing, and – under certain circumstances – renegotiating traditional value orientations.

However, the development of one’s own value judgments must not be misunderstood in a relativistic way. This is because the positions that students are asked to develop are statements in relation to a resistant world. This resistance plays a role in value-oriented teaching not only insofar as students are encouraged to take a position in the light of objective insights. The resistance of the world also comes to the fore when others judge an issue differently. Therefore, summoning students to make their own value judgments does not imply that teachers have to accept every one of their judgments. Educative teaching should rather be interpreted as an attempt to avoid both Scylla and Charybdis by trying to banish the danger of relativism without standardizing the judgments of newcomers. The proposal is to confront students with a resistant world, to help them work through experiences of difference, and to encourage them to re-expose the positions they have developed to the resistance of the world.

For students, this confrontation with a resistant world includes a confrontation with the expectation that they take into account other people’s claim to freedom in their value judgments. However, it would be incompatible with the claim of Bildung if one were to thus conclude that it is necessary to commit students at least to those values expressing an endorsement for plurality. At this point, educative teaching aimed at enabling Bildung should rather be understood as an attempt to initiate and support processes of decentering in which the student is involved as subject. Such an attempt to open up the development of one’s own value judgment to include the perspectives of others, without standardizing them, essentially consists in confronting students with the question of whether their own positions can be justified with regard to the idea of equal freedom for everyone (see Rucker, 2021a, b). Such a confrontation is not only aimed at thwarting the self-centeredness of children and young people, but also opens up the possibility for them to step back from held views of a good life and living together, in order to examine and eventually transform them.

Many-Sidedness

“Many-sidedness” is the concept used in the context of the theory of educative teaching to respond to the fact that life and living together in modern societies take place under the conditions of complexity. Complex societies confront us in almost all areas with an irreducible perspectivity and with dynamics that are open to the future. In modern democratic societies, issues are described from different perspectives, without one perspective being able to claim general validity. Moreover, the interplay of perspectives is not fixed to a specific order. Orders emerge, are maintained and changed, and in this sense are always only temporarily stable. Modern society is complex because there is no known rule that would allow us to transform the interplay of perspectives into an order that is accepted by all and stable in the long run (see Rucker & Anhalt, 2017, 13ff.).

In modern democratic societies, an irreducible “difference of perspectives” has become established, leading to a “multiple coding of reality” (Nassehi, 2017, 61ff.). Different fields (politics, science, religion, art, etc.) have developed, each functioning according to its own rules, making it impossible to grasp the world as a totality. The reference to issues (also to modern society itself) is never possible as a “view from nowhere” (Nagel), but rather always from a certain perspective, under the conditions of a complex society.

In educational theory, this social development seems to have been anticipated early on. Johann Friedrich Herbart, for example, explicitly spoke of a “division of ways of life” (Herbart, 1810/1964, 78) and conceived of educative teaching with regard to the expectation of enabling students to develop a “many-sidedness of interest” (Herbart, 1806/1908, 122ff.). The concept of interest should not be interpreted hastily in a psychological way. In my opinion, Herbart also uses the term in the sense of “inter esse,” that is “to be in between.” I would like to interpret interest as the name for the fact that newcomers have learned to be “with the thing,” that is, have gained insight into a subject matter. Interest can be described as many-sided when insights have been gained not only from one perspective, but in the light of different perspectives, and the children and young people have developed the ability to understand and judge a matter not only in the horizon of everyday interaction, but also with regard to the broader horizons of science, art, politics and religion.

According to this reading, “many-sidedness of interest” represents the task of educative teaching to help students to learn to “recognize an issue in its objective complexity [in seiner objektiven Vielgesichtigkeit erkennen]” (Ramseger, 1993, 833) and – in connection with this – to further develop their already acquired ability to judge into a “many-sided ability to make value judgments” [vielseitige Werturteilsfähigkeit] (Rekus, 1993, 75). In this sense, “many-sidedness of interest” can be interpreted as a concept that takes into account growing up in complex societies. Without a correspondingly differentiated order of the relationship to the self and the world, it might be difficult, perhaps even impossible, to lead one’s life in a self-determined way in the context of such a society. On the other hand, Herbart was sure: “The man of many-sided culture [Bildung] possesses a many-sided equipment” (Herbart, 1806/1908, 258).

At this point, we can consider another dimension of non-affirmativity, which is related to the idea of a “many-sided Bildung” and – connected to this – the idea of a “many-sided teaching.” By drawing students into situations in which they are challenged to look at issues from different perspectives, the development of a multidimensional relationship to self and world is to be initiated and supported. Many-sidedness in this sense does not only involve changing perspectives in order to understand and judge issues in their different aspects. What is decisive here is that the development of the ability to relate perspectives to one another goes hand in hand with the fact that newcomers are given the opportunity to relativize claims to validity. This means that educative teaching can also be understood as non-affirmative in the sense that students are not committed to take certain perspectives, but are rather enabled to relate perspectives to other perspectives. By making “teaching” a space for “exploring different ways of looking at reality,” not only can “prejudices” be irritated; “[S]howing the world in the mirror of different perspectives” also allows one to relativize the “truth claim of a single perspective” (Dunker, 1999, 51). This, in turn, allows students to reject the expectation of recognizing a particular perspective as the only correct one by opening up alternative horizons of understanding and judgment. This dimension of non-affirmativity cannot be derived from, reduced to, or replaced by the previously discussed dimensions. Instead, the non-affirmativity that characteristizes a many-sided teaching proves to be original: An orientation towards many-sidedness challenges students’ fixation on specific perspectives by giving them the opportunity to consider alternatives and to strive for objective insights and personal value judgments in the interplay of perspectives.

Radical Consideration

The confrontation with a resistant world – whether through traditional knowledge or alternative value orientations – should open up the possibility for children and young people to emancipate themselves from determinations that they have acquired unquestioningly during their upbringing. Educative teaching summons newcomers to examine claims of validity in order to gain objective insight and reach their own judgments. However, this process of emancipation from unquestioned notions would still not be considered consistent if, in the context of an educative teaching, one did not also take into account that these reorientations themselves are based on specific presuppositions, which would have to be addressed, examined and – under certain circumstances – problematized. “Prejudices pervade our thinking, conditioning it and at the same time enabling it” (Ballauff, 2004, 75). From this follows: “Thinking must become its own opponent [Denken muss sein eigener Gegner werden]” if students are not to become “prisoners” of presuppositions “that initially allow us to ‘recognize’ [erkennen] but in which we thinkers are also already entangled [verstrickt]” (ibid.).

Ruhloff describes the task of drawing students into a radical consideration of validity claims and the arguments supporting them as enabling a problematic employment of reason (see Ruhloff, 2001). The argument in favour of hel** newcomers use their reason in a problematizing way is that educative teaching under the claim of Bildung runs the risk of turning into a “kind of higher order dogmatism [Dogmatismus höherer Art]” (Ruhloff, 2006, 295) if students are not also summoned to consider the presuppositions underlying specific claims and the arguments supporting them. Consequently, educative teaching cannot be restricted to enabling students to develop a “relatively well-founded and relatively extensive knowledge and ability to judge” (Ruhloff, 1979, 182). The development of objective insights and own value judgments does not necessarily lead to a reflection on one’s presuppositions. Therefore, students should not only be introduced to knowledge and be asked to form their own value judgments; they should also be summoned to a radical consideration in which “a specific practical or theoretical claim to validity” is “put under the reservation of the questionable validity of specific presuppositions” (Ruhloff, 1996, 293). In this sense, inviting students to a problematic employment of reason means opening up spaces for newcomers to form their own judgments by questioning seemingly fixed theoretical and practical judgments with regard to their presuppositions. To put it more pointedly: Only with the “examination of the presuppositions” that underpin the claims to validity of our theoretical and practical judgments and the “thinking through of possible alternatives” to these presuppositions “do we achieve Bildung in the sense of intellectual independence [gedankliche Selbständigkeit]” (Ruhloff, 2006, 293).

Against this background, teaching would only be understood as non-affirmative if students are asked to “think and judge for themselves in a way that is critical of dogma and reason” (Benner & Hellekamps, 2004, 970; my emphasis). Consider a lesson in which the COVID-19 pandemic is addressed. Non-affirmative teaching in this case would not only mean hel** students to gain insight into specific knowledge about the coronavirus in virology or epidemiology. Nor would it only address the controversial question of how to deal with the pandemic politically and encourage students to form their own value judgments, or be limited to confronting students with different (scientific, political, economic, moral or religious) perspectives on the issue. Rather, such teaching would also aim at summoning newcomers to reflect on the presuppositions underlying certain theoretical and practical judgments – for instance, by addressing the possibilities and limits of a virological or epidemiological perspective on the pandemic, or by confronting the egalitarian conception of justice underlying certain political decisions with a nonegalitarian one.

These considerations are based on the assumption that we always take a certain perspective on facts, and that in modern societies different perspectives have developed that cannot be put into a hierarchical order. The knowledge that children and young people acquire within educative teaching and the value judgments that they develop in this context are always related to certain perspectives. For example, to discuss an issue in terms of physics is different from asking about the history of a discovery in physics, or from assessing possible moral consequences of such a discovery. This fact would have to be addressed in educative teaching in an age-appropriate way, so that students could recognize a certain perspective on an issue and assess the possibilities and limits of the respective perspective in relation to alternative ones. If this specific change of perspective is left out, the students would refer to issues from a certain perspective but the reference itself would remain unthematized and thus at the same time removed from the students’ judgment. This would deprive children and young people of an important insight, namely, that no single perspective allows for a complete grasp of an issue. This insight might help newcomers develop, beyond the classroom itself, a certain immunity to attempts to win them over to a supposed “central perspective” and thus to undermine the polycontexturality of modern societies (see Günther, 1979).

Conclusion

In this chapter, I have developed a description of non-affirmative school teaching and embedded it in a general theory of non-affirmative education. Conceptualizing school teaching as educative teaching under the claim of Bildung can be seen as a specific proposal with which educational science can react to the expectation of providing an educationally justified orientation framework for school development and consulting on school development.

Of course, the school is not only an educational institution, but also, and perhaps even primarily, a social problem-solving institution [gesellschaftliche Problemlöseinstanz] (see Klafki, 1989). This means that schools are first and foremost institutions in which teaching, studying and learning processes are made permanent, which are of fundamental importance for the transmission of culture – precisely because they impart knowledge that cannot be acquired in everyday interaction. Educative teaching is therefore based on the assumption that the introduction into knowledge, which is institutionalized in schools, does not per se contradict the idea of addressing students as subjects – at least if “the appeal to tradition does not become a substitute for the examination of claims to validity” (Heitger, 1984, 42) and thus undermine the “freedom to take a stand vis-à-vis tradition” (ibid., 44).

At the same time, it should have become clear that educative teaching represents an orientation of school teaching that can by no means be regarded as realized today. Such a conception of school teaching rather fulfills the function of a guiding idea of school development and the consulting that supports it. One must take into account the fact that school development is a self-dynamic process in which consulting can play only a supporting role. To “implement” educative teaching at a given school is thus at best only possible to a limited extent. For research, therefore, the question arises as to what the preconditions, possibilities and limits of a development of an individual school are, for which educative teaching is relevant. For research, however, there is also the question of a school development consulting, which is not only directed at initiating and supporting development processes in general, but seeks to support the development of an individual school in specific, namely, in educational, respects.