Why Do We Go to School?
The following is a lightly edited version of the keynote speech I gave at the Festivalul Digital Predau Viitor (Teach the Future Festival) in Romania on September 2nd 2025. The full keynote and the Q&A session that followed are available online.
I've been asked today to talk a little about, and hopefully offer some thoughts or answers about, the question of why we go to school. It's a question I've thought about a great deal as a teacher and educator, and as a philosopher. It's also a question I thought quite a lot about as a student when I was at school. There were definitely times, usually when I was standing on a frozen rugby pitch, in the middle of February, somewhere in the south of England, when I was asking myself, just why is it that we go to school?
I think, and I hope, my answer has changed a little since then. I'm not sure back then I would have given an answer I could repeat to you all today, but perhaps that's one of the great benefits of hindsight. I think my answer to this question is probably very simple.
We go to school to get an education.
Please bear with me, though. I know what you must be thinking: you've registered for this amazing education festival, you've logged in to hear this keynote speech early in the morning, and here I am offering you remarkable insights like "We go to school to get an education." But I really do think this is important.
Education is something much deeper, richer, and more complex, and more significant than merely teaching and learning. In fact, I would say that the point of education is not that students learn, the point of education is that students…
Learn something
For some reason
From someone
To say that school is for learning is to miss huge amounts of what school and education are really doing. Learning can happen in all kinds of places and in all kinds of ways - lots of modern technologies, from YouTube to AI, can be really valuable tools for learning. But that is different from education.
Learning is a part of education, but it's never the whole picture. The goal of learning is that we have some new knowledge or new skills, but the goal of education is connected with the kinds of lives we wish to live and the kind of world we wish to live in. That tells me that ultimately…
Education is how we come to live a well-lived life.
If we want to say anything about the importance of education, I think it is this. Education is trying to help us live a well-lived life. What that looks like for you, and for me, and for our students will inevitably differ, but that's not a problem. So long as we can keep to this central notion, that education is about living a life of flourishing. With all of that said, I think we can pin down some of the things we go to school for, some of the answers to that very first question, "Why do we go to school?".
If school is for education, and education is about living a well-lived life, then I think my first answer to the question is…
We go to school to get equipment for living.
I've called it equipment for living just because I think there are lots of kinds of things we might get from school. The most obvious, and probably most common, would be knowledge. We need to know things in order to be able to navigate the world and do things in it. But it would also be things like:
Skills - our ability to do things, from things as fundamental as reading and writing to things as complex as programming computers or running experiments.
Values - these would be the things we hold as important, things we see as significant in our lives and the lives of other people. Democracy, equality, kindness.
Attitudes - the way we respond to the world, the way we act and think. Self-expression, inclusivity, and a concern for the natural world.
Capabilities - these would be more fundamental things like empathy, creativity, and critical thought.
All of these are the equipment we need to live; to live any life, but especially to live a well-lived life. Some of these will change over time, and they will change from place to place, and culture to culture. They'll also change from person to person. Some might be pretty universal - literacy, numeracy, empathy, some might be much more specific. What is important is to see that it isn't just knowledge that matters - there's a whole range of equipment we need.
Education, in the last 4 or 5 decades, has heavily privileged this part of education, and has really focused on knowledge above all else. But if we don't have the skills to do anything with that knowledge, or the capabilities to live in the world, it's all for nothing.
That's why my second answer to "why do we go to school" is...
We go school to enter a social world.
This is about learning how to become part of a world that wasn't made for us, that exists beyond us, and contains lots of different people doing lots of different things. Of course, it's learning to socialise with our peers and to interact with teachers, but there's much more to it than just that. I'm also thinking about the cultural world we inhabit, the historical place we find ourselves in the world, and the traditions we are surrounded by. But also things like professions or industries, or vocations.
As an example, when I'm teaching philosophy to students, part of what I'm doing is also showing them "This is what a philosopher does", "This is how they think", "This is how they work." I'm making them part of that group of people.
We're also showing them and helping them understand how all of these bump up against one another, and overlap, and that there are layers and layers to society, with some cultures and traditions being radically different from our own, and some being much more similar.
This is one of the aspects that makes me say that whilst we can find learning in lots of places, and especially using technology today, we can't find education that way. Education requires us to be amongst people, for all the messiness and complexity that involves.
So far, I've spoken about going to school to get equipment for living and to encounter a social world, but there is also a huge personal dimension to school. As such, I would also say that…
We go to school to encounter ourselves.
In some ways, this might be the most important part of education, and the most important reason why we go to school. Part of this is in us learning about ourselves, and helping to construct our identity and sense of self. Part of this is experiencing our own independence, that we can make choices that have real consequences, and that's something we have to manage in our lives.
But it is also about experiencing our freedom - what freedom means, the responsibility that comes from freedom. How we might be free to do something, but that doesn't mean we should, and it doesn't mean we won't be met with resistance or opposition. This aspect of education and of school is less about who you are and more about how you are. How do I act? How do I respond? How do I think? How do I relate to others? How do I find meaning and purpose?
Most of the time, when we think or talk about school and education, we put the knowledge and skills, what I have called the equipment for learning, front and centre. Then we might think a little bit about the social dimension, and then probably very little about this aspect, learning and encountering ourselves. I think there are two important observations to make about that.
The first is that these three things can't be separated. Whenever you do something that impacts one of them, you impact the others. The moment I teach students about World War II, I'm inevitably impacting their sense of their identity, the historical and cultural world they are part of, and the ways in which they see themselves as human beings.
It's for that reason that I would say education isn't one single thing. It is made up of parts, and when we influence any part of it, we influence all of it. This is because...
Education is multi-dimensional.
As educators, then, we have to remember this whenever we teach, whenever we design a curriculum, or plan a lesson. We can never deal with these three things on their own; they will always be intimately woven together.
If we only focus on one or emphasise one, we have an imbalanced approach and can end up doing harm to the other aspects of education. An excessive emphasis on achievement, on grades, on knowledge, has a negative effect on the students’ ideas about who they are. It leads to excessive pressure, mental health issues, problems of identity, failure, and meaning in one’s life. The solution isn't to get rid of knowledge in education, or to only focus on students and their well-being. It's to find a balance.
The second observation I would make about education having these three parts is that we should flip the usual hierarchy. If the student, and their subjectivity, their freedom aren't put first, it's no longer education, because they're no longer people - it's now just managing objects. Very quickly, it just becomes learning and at the far extreme, that becomes indoctrination. Doing this requires teacher judgement - this is the expertise, experience, and professional competence of educators.
This means that the decisions made are of the teacher, and not based on following protocols or policies, or applying some theory or methodology. Because the situations that call for the teacher's judgement are always new, particular, and complex.
But there is one other dimension to education, I think is incredibly important - one that makes it not just meaningful and impactful, but unique in the lives of students. For this, I would say...
We go to school to get what we couldn't ask for.
Education is not simply about giving students what they know they want or say they need, but about moving them beyond what they already know they want. They can ask for what they want from ChatGPT, YouTube, or Skill Share.
What education offers is totally new horizons, new opportunities, and reflection on what they feel or think they want or desire. It's surprising them, interrupting them in their lives and the way they think. Giving them what they would never have been able to ask for themselves. What they never knew they needed, what they never knew existed. This is why students can't be customers and why education can't be totally student-centred or student-led.
All of this means that good education will always be slow, difficult, frustrating, and unreliable. This is what Gert Biesta terms
“The beautiful risk of education.”
We don't know for sure it's going to work. And we can't know for sure. Because it's all about human beings, being human beings, being with each other, and figuring out their freedom, their needs, and their lives. Doing it all through communication, through language.
The more we try and control that, streamline that, make it efficient, and repeatable, and reliable, the less it will work, because then we're not really dealing with human beings any more, we're dealing with objects or, worse, numbers. If you take the risk out of education, you take the education out of education. The desire to make education strong, secure, predictable, and risk-free is, in a sense, an attempt to wish this reality away.
But it is exactly these imperfections and uncertainties that make education possible. That makes education sustainable. Because it sees people as people. It's for that reason that I would argue...
All questions about education are existential questions
because they are about how to live.
Whenever the people with clipboards and spreadsheets show up, the people with policies, practices, and protocols. This has been forgotten.
It's the very thing, I think, that makes so many teachers do what they do; it's at the heart of what makes education what it is. It's what makes a school radically different from an online course, a YouTube series, or talking with ChatGPT - all of which can be great for learning but can't give us an education.
Because it's with human beings, coming together, that school can be what it most needs to be. So I will give you one last answer to that question, the answer that matters most to me, I think.
We go to school to “find a way to be at home in the world.”
This is a phrase from the brilliant German-Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt. I think maybe it seems quite gentle, at first, maybe a bit romantic, the idea of finding a way to be at home in the world. But when we let that idea sit with us, we see it's really quite incisive, really powerful. It cuts to the heart of what we're all striving for, and I think here might be no more important philosophical question in a lot of ways.
I should end, I think, with a few words about how we can make this happen because otherwise I would feel like I'd left you with nothing but big ideas - no matter how important those ideas might be.
First of all, we must make opportunities. Whenever you can, wherever you can, nudge your teaching, your colleagues, your school, in this direction. When you rewrite a lesson, redesign a curriculum, work with a colleague, take every opportunity you can to really connect with what education is about and what it's for. These different aspects of education. Look for balance and put students' freedom as human beings front and centre.
Doing this lets you build your gains. A tiny move here, a tiny move there, given enough time and enough people, builds to really impactful change. Sustainable, long-term change is rarely about overnight success; it comes a little at a time - until it’s a torrent, an avalanche. And then it can't be ignored.
To do all of this, I would say there's nothing more transformative than finding your people. The ones who also want to make a difference. Who sees the problems and their solutions the way you do. They might be in the classroom next to yours, they might be the other side of the country, or the world, but finding your people and building support, and encouragement, and inspiration, is unfailingly rewarding.
We also must push for change where and when we can. That might be within your own schools or communities, or on a higher level, a national level, but change is slow, it is resisted, and it is difficult. We have got to push - and push hard. We have to be change agents in the world.
And last of all, keep the faith. It won't be non-stop success or endless joy; it'll be tough at times, but keeping the faith, remembering why we are doing what we're doing, and what education is really about, how we're helping other human beings live good, meaningful, well-lived lives, helps us keep that fire burning.
