257 Basic Attitude and the Art of Living Together 8 of children in primary education?’ In the 15th meeting, the conversational community asked itself ‘what role a pedagogy of longing could have in the formation of students for a pluriform, fragmented society, as we also find today in education’. In these meetings, two characteristic features emerged from the deliberations. In the first place, the conversational community wants students to adopt a deliberate—and in that sense strong—attitude, to not turn their backs on society’s challenges but rather to actively respond to them. In the second place, it wants students to adopt a position of servitude and humbleness, which at first seems to be a relatively weak attitude. What was presented in Chapter 6 on subjectifying education and the shalom idea asks for the strong attitude that emerges from the person as a strong self. This can be tied to the keyword ‘character’. By contrast, what is presented in Chapter 7 on relational epistemology, wherein humbleness or humility was a crucial element, asks for the weaker approach. This can be tied to the keyword ‘longing’. Sub-section 8.1.1 will first introduce the keywords ‘attitude’ and ‘character’ a bit more, revealing how they emerged in the conversational community’s meetings in relation to both attitude formation and a person’s heart. Sub-section 8.1.2 then shows how the conversational community broadened its quest for attitude formation by paying attention to the keyword ‘longing’ and a pedagogy of longing. 8.1.1 Felt need for character formation Holistic education, especially in a context of fragmentation, aims to see and take into account the whole person and educate him or her simultaneously on the levels of heart, head and hands. This conclusion from Chapter 2, which presented WCD as a necessary instrument to combat reductionism in education, also emerged in the crucial 14th meeting of the conversational community, wherein subjectifying education, epistemological formation and attitude formation were identified as the three main topics of interest up to that point. (W)holistic education seeks to do justice to all three pillars in the context of education because it has a clear eye for the shortcomings of approaches that only focus on the acquisition or enhancement of skills or knowledge, not on the broad formation of the person for which knowledge and ability are an integral part. A (w)holistic approach, therefore, places (trainee) teachers in a position of tension with regard to the dominant education system. In the conversational community, the three main topics were initially presented using keywords derived from an educational vision statement by Tilburg University (2022). This statement presents Tilburg University as unique in the Dutch context due to paying more attention to character formation than other universities. Three key concepts helped the conversational community to
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