15315-wolbert

Summary 110 personal or family circumstances overshadow their interest in learning, and/or where the teachers face a (too) heavy teaching and administration load. The pressing questions here would be: how should teachers deal with these circumstances, and what would be ideal given these actual circumstances? In Chapter 4 the perspective changes from comparing forms of theorising to comparing theory to the ‘real’ practices it describes. It does not ask what role theory should have with regard to practices, but it rather describes aspects of a certain real practice, in this case parenthood, and asks what implications these aspects might have or should have for theory on education for flourishing. Chapter 4 argues that parenthood inevitably involves taking an existential risk. The chapter uses the distinction that German pedagogue Otto Friedrich Bollnow makes between attempts and (avoidable) risks on the one hand and existential (inevitable) risks on the other hand. The second type of risk is distinctive because the person who engages in an existential risk risks herself . Bollnow’s description of existential risk contributes to an understanding of child-rearing in relation to human flourishing in three ways. First, it contributes to the understanding of child- rearing and striving for flourishing as inherently uncertain, because it makes clear that parents cannot ensure that the child will become what they had intended in raising her. This does not necessarily mean that when the parents fail in raising her as they had intended, the child does not or cannot flourish, but it does mean that parents’ aiming for a flourishing life of their children must be typified as a Wagnis (taking an existential risk). Moreover, aiming for flourishing can also be seen as a Wagnis in a broader sense. When parents aim for a flourishing life for their children, all sorts of things will happen that are beyond the control of the parents (including but not limited to the child’s response to their parenting), because flourishing is for a significant part up to luck (as opposed to effort). Therefore aiming for the flourishing of children can, for that reason alone, also be seen as a Wagnis . Second, Bollnow’s understanding of Wagnis also contributes to a clarification of the ways in which the concept of risk is being used in educational theory and policymaking. Contrary to the way in which ‘risk’ in these discourses is usually interpreted – as something that should be avoided – there is a way in which risk in education is inevitable, namely in the way in which parents risk themselves in raising a child (to live a flourishing life). It is helpful to make this distinction in an educational context. Third, the idea of Wagnis leads us to recognise trust as a key concept in discussing risk-taking and child-rearing. The acceptance of vulnerability, of being ‘at risk’ in the above two senses, is what we mean by trust. 4 An emphasis on risk-avoidance can therefore be seen as an implicit denial of the importance of trust, while a conception of risk as an 4 Baier 1986.