For a <i>really</i> useful education: A dialectic of purpose

This contribution takes a dialectical approach to thinking about educational purpose. Using the liberal arts ‘trivium’ categories of grammar, rhetoric and dialectic, and drawing on the 19th century Chartist demand for ‘really useful knowledge’, Biesta’s three dimensions of educational purpose and Freire’s concept of conscientisation, I argue that usefulness, criticality and joy should be at the heart of educational purpose. We need to be open to different purposes including qualification, socialisation, subjectification, conscientisation, transformation and emancipation. Individual and collective purposes are mutually constitutive and the tension between them can be productive as well as joyful. Discussing and shaping a really useful people???s education should be a democratic and dialectical process, embracing different purposes and engaging us all in a continuous critical questioning of our world and our action in it, individually and collectively.