The Paradox of Educationalization: Semantic Expansion and the Structural Limits of Modern Education

Abstract In this article, I develop a systemic theory of educationalization based on Niklas Luhmann's social systems theory. I define educationalization as a process of semantic expansion through which education absorbs a wide range of societal themes, overextending its structural capacities. Analyzing social, factual, and temporal dimensions of meaning, I argue that educationalization constitutes a structural paradox. As society tasks education with resolving problems originating in other systems, such as economic inequality or environmental crises, educational organizations become simultaneously indispensable and insufficient. This contradiction fuels recursive cycles of reform, where the system reaffirms its relevance through its inability to fully satisfy external demands. Ultimately, this article suggests that educationalization is a constitutive condition of modernity. Rather than solving the problems it absorbs, the system manages social contingency by rendering contradictions observable, ensuring its own institutional permanence through the persistent deferral of fulfillment within a permanent state of reform.