Today, we are witnessing how politicians, policy makers and researchers criticize education for social ills such as poverty, inequity, and social injustice. What is comic in this regard is that despite this critique there exists a universal belief in the importance of the western liberal educational system in which social illness, in its various forms, can be freely and openly questioned, resolved, and cured (Fendler, 2018). That is one of the reasons why education continues to “serve as a point of civic pride, a showplace for our [universal] ideals” (Labaree, 2008, p. 448). But no matter how many well-intended efforts are ‘invested’ in and ‘performed’ via systemic education, it will never be able to live up to the universal beliefs and promises that are attached to it. While education persistently fails to eliminate social inequality, exclusion, and unfairness, many politicians, policy makers and educators stubbornly continue to perceive such ‘failures’ as temporary delays—bumps on the road to social redemption. It is thought that these bumps that can be overcome by means of politically initiated reforms and research based in(ter)ventions in society in general and in education in particular (Slater, 2014). What this paper argues is that we must acknowledge and address the inherent inconsistencies, impossibilities, and ‘failures’ that are unavoidable parts of education itself. The intent is not to identify problems to be solved but to create a different relation to education in order to expose and derive insight from its failures. So, we ask: How might we confront education’s failures/impossibilities? What might be gained in the attempt to do so? To explore these questions, we engage in practices of profane play (Agamben, 2007) and ‘true comedy’ (Zupančič, 2008). By analyzing examples from the research literature and the media, we illustrate how impossibilities and failures can be exposed when universal beliefs such as equality, inclusion and fairness are performed in concrete (educational) practices. On that basis, we argue how the subversive potential of comedy and play can “bring relief, dissolve tension, and offer the opportunity for a break from the [educational order and] norm” (Black, 2021, p. 223). Comedy gives us pause to think and do things otherwise and thereby ‘fail better’ with the educational task, as Bibby (2011) suggests.

Agamben, G. (2007). Profanations. New York: Zone Books. Bibby, T. (2011). Education – An ‘Impossible Profession’? London: Routledge. Black, J. (2021). Race, Racism, and Political Correctness in Comedy: A psychoanalytical Exploration. London: Routledge. Fendler, L. (2018). Educationalization. In. P. Smeyers (ed.). International Handbook of Philosophy of Education, (pp 1169-1183). Springer International Handbooks of Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72761-5 Labaree, D. F. (2008). The winning ways of losing strategy: Educationalizing social problems in the United States. Educational Theory, 58(4): 447-460. Slater, G. B. (2015). Education as recovery: neoliberalism, school reform, and the politics of crisis. Journal of Education Policy, 30(1), 1-20. Zupančič, A. (2008). The Odd One In: On Comedy. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.