We build our paper on Klafki's thesis on "opening up the world" (material education) and "creating openness in the individual" (formal education). This leads us to seeing education as responsivity. Material education creates domains to which we respond, and formal education specific abilities to respond. Question here if education is achieved if we respond to fixed domains, and if we do it in fixed ways? No, this is not real openness: Klafki postulates that it is the world which has to be opened up etc. Ethical aspect: Hannah Arendt (1971) on Eichmann writes about thinking as an activity which in itself could have the potential of preventing evil actions. Thinking is in Arendt an unconditional encounter with reality (the world). It is in this encounter that meaning constitution originates. Eichmann exemplifies the docile acceptance of an offer of meaning (Englund, 1986). The orders given to him direct meaning constitution, and simultaneously prevent all other alternatives. Eichmann is also a perfect subordinate for whom the very existence of the meaning offer means that alternatives cannot even be noticed. This directs us toward a picture of meaning constitution as constitution of a range of possibilities (Husserl, 1976) Nussbaum (1997) grounds education in the relationship to the other, by pointing at "narrative imagination", which makes the ultimate object of education the life histories of concrete persons, and the desired outcome (formal education), an "ability to think what it might be like to be in the shoes of a person different from oneself" (op. cit. p. 10f). This defines the background of education as the subject's responsivity to (1) something "different from oneself" and (2) something concrete. Eichmann (as described by Arendt) is responsive to orders only (which limits the content of his response to what is intended by the giver of orders). He is not taking the responsibility for neither the domain, the object of his response, nor the way of responding. His counterpart is the person deemed educated by Nussbaum - a person responding to the situation of concrete people, doing this by taking responsibility for both the object of the response and the way of responding. The content of this, educated, person's response is grounded in the other's life history - the other's rather than one's own. This leads us to the conclusion that educational outcomes are described by their relation to a context. The degree to which someone is educated is showing itself in the way this person responds to a concrete context. Thus, the educational process results in empowering subjects to respond to concrete situations. Here we can link education to competence. Dreyfus & Dreyfus (1986) define competence in terms of an ability to cope with concrete situations - thus, being able to respond to the context rather than obeying rules. Is an educated person automatically a competent person? The answer can be related to Nussbaum's definition, and to Husserl's description of meaning constitution. In both cases it is the concrete subject's relation to concrete objects (i.e. objects situated in concrete situations) which is decisive. Thus, one shows oneself competent in handling a situation. Aristotle defines a good builder as one who builds houses well. To continue, a well-built house is one which responds to concrete needs - a good builder would thus be one who responds to the needs of the (concrete) future inhabitants. Note that both education and competence presuppose the subject's responsibility for the relation with the situation. A description of this responsibility generates a description of power relations (is the subject entitled to responding and for taking responsibility?). This leads us to a discussion of the relationship between educational systems, working life (the economic sphere of life) and systems of governance. In that discussion we seek for alternatives to the present way of organising education, and try to question the role of curriculum in that relation. Arendt, H. (1971) Thinking and moral considerations: a lecture Social research, 38(3) pp..... Dreyfus & Dreyfus (1986) The mind over machine: the power of human intuition and expertise in the era of the computer. New York: Free Press Englund, T. (1986) Curriculum as a political problem: changing educational conceptions, with special reference to citizenship education Bromley: Chartwell-Bratt, Husserl, E. (1976) Experience and Judgement, Evanston: Northwestern Univ. Press, Nussbaum, M. (1997) Cultivating humanity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press