Existentialism and Education

Existentialism’s account of education follows from the underlying philosophy. If reality is what each person makes through their choices, then the purpose of education is to help students become who they will choose to be. The article works through what an existential education looks like, what the learner-centred approach really means in this tradition, and what the three commitments of choice, freedom, and responsibility require of a teacher.

What education is for

For existentialism, education is a pursuit of self-actualisation and personal fulfilment. The vocabulary is twentieth-century but the underlying idea is older. The student is not being educated to fit into a pre-existing role or to acquire a body of pre-existing content. The student is being supported in becoming the person they will become through their own choices and their own development.

The choice of subject matter, the existentialists insist, is a personal one for the student. Different students will become different people through different paths. The subjects that one student needs to study to develop into themselves are not the same as the subjects another student needs. A curriculum that imposes a uniform set of subjects on every student is in tension with the existentialist commitment to individual self-actualisation.

The contrast with the older models is sharp. Aristotle’s account treats education as preparation for citizenship in a particular kind of state. Adler’s account treats education as transmission of the great Western tradition. Dewey’s account treats education as preparation for life in a democratic society. The existentialist account treats education as the support for each individual student’s becoming themselves, with no further purpose required and no external standard to measure against.

The implication for a teacher is significant. The teacher cannot answer the question what should this student learn? by appeal to a standard curriculum. The answer depends on who the particular student is, what they care about, what kind of person they are becoming. The teacher’s job is to help the student work this out, not to impose a pre-set answer from outside.

Flashcard

What does existentialism take to be the purpose of education?

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Answer

Self-actualisation and personal fulfilment, with the subject matter chosen personally by the student

The student is not being educated to fit a pre-existing role or to acquire pre-existing content. They are being supported in becoming the person they will become through their own choices. Different students need different subjects because they are becoming different people. The teacher cannot answer what should this student learn? by appeal to a standard curriculum; the answer depends on who the particular student is.

The learner-centred approach

Existentialism takes a learner-centred approach to education. The phrase is now common in educational vocabulary, but the existentialist version of it is distinctive.

The learner-centred approach, in existentialist terms, takes into account the continuously changing nature of the learner. The student is not a fixed entity that the educator works on; the student is a changing being whose nature itself is in continuous development. What the student needs today is not what they will need next month, because the student of next month will be a different being from the student of today. The educator has to engage with the actual student in front of them now, while remaining alert to the changes that are continuously happening.

This is more demanding than the standard learner-centred talk suggests. A school that uses the phrase learner-centred but treats each year’s group of students as essentially similar to the previous year’s group is not learner-centred in the existentialist sense. The existentialist version requires attention to the particular student’s continuously changing condition, week by week and month by month, not just to a generic learner-centred curriculum.

The educator’s role in this approach is supportive rather than directive. The educator helps the student notice what is happening to them, what they are becoming, what choices they are facing. The educator does not tell the student what to be or what to choose. The student does that work; the educator’s job is to support it.

The role is harder than the older directive role. A directive teacher has clear answers to give; a supportive teacher has to help students arrive at their own answers, which is a slower and more uncertain work. The pay-off is students who have developed the capacity for self-direction that the existentialist commitment requires. The trade-off is real, but the existentialist judgement is that the pay-off is worth the trade-off.

Flashcard

What does *learner-centred* mean in the existentialist sense?

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Answer

Attention to the continuously changing nature of the particular student in front of you

The student is not a fixed entity but a changing being whose nature is in continuous development. What the student needs today is not what they will need next month. The educator engages with the actual student now, while remaining alert to the continuous changes. The role is supportive rather than directive: the educator helps the student notice what is happening to them and what choices they are facing, but does not tell them what to be.

The three propositions

The existentialist student lives by three propositions about themselves. The propositions are the working summary of the philosophy applied to one person’s life. The educator’s job is to help the student come to say each of the three truthfully.

The first is choice. The student says to themselves: I am a choosing agent, unable to avoid choosing my way through life. The proposition has two parts. I am a choosing agent: the student recognises themselves as the source of the choices that shape their life. Unable to avoid choosing: the student recognises that even not choosing is itself a choice. A person who tries to escape choice by refusing to decide is still deciding, and the consequences fall on them just as they would on any other decider. The escape route does not exist.

The second is freedom. The student says: I am a free agent, absolutely free to set the goals of my own life. The freedom here is not the freedom from external constraint that political philosophy talks about. It is the existential freedom to set the goals of one’s own existence. No external authority can tell the student what to want, what to aim at, what to make of their life. The student has to set the goals themselves. The freedom can feel like an unwelcome weight, but it is real and cannot be given away.

The third is responsibility. The student says: I am a responsible agent, personally accountable for my free choices as they are revealed in how I live my life. The responsibility is the other side of the freedom. Since the choices were the student’s, the consequences are the student’s too. There is no one else to blame for what the student has made of their freedom; there is also no one else to credit for what they have made well. The accountability is total.

The three propositions together describe a person who has accepted the existential condition. They have stopped pretending that someone else is making their choices, that someone else is setting their goals, or that someone else is responsible for their life. They have taken on the weight that being human turns out to involve.

An education that helps a student come to say the three propositions truthfully has done the work the existentialist tradition wants. An education that leaves the student unable to say them, still pretending that other people are making the choices, still avoiding the freedom, still ducking the responsibility, has failed, however well it has performed on the conventional measures.

Flashcard

What are the three propositions an existentialist student lives by?

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Answer

Choice, freedom, and responsibility, each accepted as personally true

(1) I am a choosing agent, unable to avoid choosing my way through life; even not choosing is itself a choice. (2) I am a free agent, absolutely free to set the goals of my own life; no external authority can set them. (3) I am a responsible agent, personally accountable for my free choices; the consequences fall on the chooser. The three together describe a person who has accepted the existential condition.

What an existential education looks like

Putting the pieces together, an existential education has a distinctive shape. The student is treated as a developing existence whose definition is not pre-set. The teacher supports the student in working out their own choices, freedoms, and responsibilities. The curriculum is shaped to what this student needs to become themselves rather than to what some generic curriculum has prescribed.

In practice, an existential classroom often includes long conversations about what the student wants, what they value, what they think they should do. The conversations are part of the curriculum, not a distraction from it. They are how the student practises the choices that the existentialist commitment requires.

The classroom also includes opportunities for genuine choice with genuine consequences. The student is not given the appearance of choice (which book to read first when both are required) but real choice (whether to study this subject at all, what direction to take a project in, how to spend their own time). The choices have to be real to do the existential work; fake choices teach the student that choice is a charade.

Mistakes are treated as part of the work. A student who chooses wrongly and pays the consequence has learned something important about choice, freedom, and responsibility. A teacher who tries to protect the student from the consequences of their own choices is undermining the very work the education is for. The protection has to be only against truly catastrophic outcomes; ordinary mistakes are where the learning happens.

The existential approach is hard to combine with standardised schooling. Standardised schooling presupposes that the same education is right for every student, with the same content, the same pace, the same evaluation. The existential approach presupposes that each student is becoming a different person and needs a different education. The two approaches do not naturally fit together. Where they have been combined, the combination is usually a compromise that gives partial space to the existential commitment within a largely standardised framework.

A B.Ed. student today does not have to choose between full existentialism and full standardisation. The realistic position is to absorb the existentialist insight that students are becoming individual persons who must own their own lives, and to bring as much of that insight as possible into whatever school setting they end up working in. Even a heavily standardised classroom can be more or less respectful of the student’s existential condition. More is better than less, even when full is not on the table.

Flashcard

Why is existentialism hard to combine with standardised schooling?

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Answer

Standardised schooling assumes the same education is right for every student; existentialism assumes each student is becoming a different person who needs a different education

The two approaches do not naturally fit together. Where they have been combined, the combination is usually a compromise that gives partial space to the existential commitment within a largely standardised framework. A realistic teacher absorbs the existentialist insight that students must own their own lives and brings as much of it as possible into whatever school setting they end up working in.