My argument starts with an analysis of the logic of progress as it functions in educational theory, where progress is rendered in terms of emancipation. One of the key ways to theorise education emerged at the brink of Modernity – where the issue was to emancipate humans from the necessities (and dangers) of nature. It was the idea of modern science that promised means to conquer, control, and eventually exhaust the forces of nature (cf. Bacon 2003). Applying the logic of science to education, i.e. looking for causal relationships that govern educational processes in order to develop means of controlling them and inducing the desired effects, gave birth to what can be called the technical view on education. Today that view reduces education to learning (Biesta 2010) aimed at acquiring more and more functionalities which form the capital of an individual, and contribute to knowledge economy (Simons & Masschelein 2008), i.e. it is aimed at ‘extraction’ and exhaustion of the potentials of individuals (Lewis 2011), being therefore an educational variant of the economic paradigm of excessive growth. Educational theories of the critical type are usually opposed to such a view, however they originate from the same logic, although it is not the power of nature, but the power of the naturalisation of social relationships that one is supposed to emancipate from. Education in this view is a battleground for a society that would be just, equal, and liberated from oppression (Freire 2005; Giroux 2011). This struggle is advancing gradually, and so education is aiming at expanding the field of freedoms and opportunities. Therefore, as it is with the technical theories, also in this case we deal with the logic of progress understood through the concept of emancipation. In order to explore a possibility to go beyond this logic I will develop the idea of studying with a teacher, entailing a collaborative exploration of a part of the world indicated by a teacher as worthwhile the effort. I will argue that particular practices that studying with a teacher entails (focusing attention, taking a closer look, having, sharing and discussing ideas about what is perceived or experienced, disagreeing in relation to the studied thing, etc.) not only don’t assume progress of any kind, but also form a very particular way of living together (of humans and non-humans) that may be important to consider when struggling with hope in times of ‘no future’.

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