When Hannah Arendt's article on the crisis of education was published in 1960, educational policy and research was highly influenced by the theoretical tendencies of human development and progress. In her article Arendt tried to counter this well established practice of individual development by stressing that children have been increasingly mediated as things which could be ordered systematically and taxonomically with a functional system that was administrable. Arendt's article was a reaction on the willingness to encapsulate every event (singularity) in ideas of growth or learning.With her perspective of the child as the introduction of something different Arendt tried to formulate a remedy against the above mentioned tendency and a possibility to change the existing order of things. Only by preserving the child from systematically and taxonomically development it would be able to counter the marginalisation of children, so she argued. Today, it seems that educational policies and research have accepted Arendt's call. On several places in educational theory and research we see that children are no longer be interpreted as deficit models but as active, competent protagonists in their own learning and developmental process. In relation to this there is a will for a "complete reformulation of the objectifying system of assessment and evaluation which drives the curricular and 'banking' system which serves it" (Kennedy, 1999, p.151). This could be an indication that Arendt's call has been taken seriously and that it has been set into reality. Although, this seems at the first sight a positive evolution, in our paper we will formulate some doubts. Following a Foucauldian governmental perspective we would like to investigate the (historical) figure for whom talking about the child as difference and possibility to change the existing order of things seems to be attractive.In a last part we will try to read Arendt's article for a second time: this time we will read her text no longer as a remedy but as a gift.Ontology of the present The figure for whom existential questions seems to be attractive has presented that the attempt to restore childhood as possibility to change the existing order of things, does not imply a rupture with the strategic configuration Arendt has critised. In stead, the current discussion on the child is accompanied by the establisment of a specific (strategic ) configuration - a configuration that regulates what in the current educational context can be seen and heard.Agamben, G. (1978) Enfance et histoire. Petite Bibliothèque Payot. Arendt H. (1985) Between past and future: eight exercices in political thought. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Arendt, H. (1958) The human condition. Garden City (N.Y). Doubleday Castels, M. (2003) The rise of the network society Malden :Blackwell. Foucault M. (1983) The subject and the power. In: H. L. Dreyfus & P. Rabinow (eds). Michel Foucault. Beyond structuralism and hermeneutics. With an afterword by and an interview with Michel Foucault. Chicago: University of Chicago PressKennedy D (1999) Reconstructing childhood. In H. Palsson, B. Sigurorardottir & B. Nelson (eds). Philosophy for children on top of the world, proceedings of the eight international conference of philosophy with children (pp. 139-154). Iceland: University of Akureyri. Masschelein, J. & Simons, M. (2006). The learning society and governmentality: an introduction. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 38, (4), 417-430. Vansieleghem N (in press) Public space in a networksociety. A note on the call for philosophy (public space) in education today. Research Community/ Networks and technologies. Dortrecht: Springer.