The aim of my paper is the analysis of the conditions and of the social prerequisites of education for moral subject in an age characterized by the post-nationalist global challenges (ecological, cultural and economic globalization). In the globalized and fragmented context of the late modern situation there are not evident basis for one’s identity-construction and moral orientation. Compared to their parents’ generation children and adolescents are forced to deal with more diffuse and insecure social reality both within society and on the global sphere. In spite of these threats education with its aims of sustaining and developing democracy requires the horizon of hope. To understand the requirements of current education and its relation to the hopeful prospects of the whole society we need both the theoretical understanding about the “essence” of education and multi-leveled empirical investigation on the real educational situations and the conditions of one’s identity formation. Education has some kind of double “essence” as an intersection of socializing aims and individuation. In this double meaning education is doomed to the tension of conservation and creativity. However, the plain conservation does not cultivate either society or individual. For preserving and developing the basis for one’s good living and personal growth while sustaining and developing democratic society we need the idea of transcendence. By this concept I mean that education in its most ideal sense provides us with a wider vision, one that transcends the restrictive boundaries of our own particular society. Therefore, in the ideal level of education, there must be a harmony between individuation and socialization, creativity and conservation. Education must be understood at least relatively autonomous area in its relations to any other phenomenon in the society, so that it will not be reduced to only the means of political, economical or religious aims. The specific ontological quality of education is ethically and politically crucial because it gives us argumentative foundations for defending both the unique value of childhood and the principles of democracy beyond commercial and other instrumental tendencies.

On the first level of my paper I will use Edmund Husserl’s idea of regional ontology, and Dietrich Benner’s concept of human practices for defending the specific ontological and ethical quality of education against instrumental tendencies for making it plainly the means of utility, accountability and competitivity. On the second level I will focus my critical analysis on the instrumental tendencies in educational practices. Recognizing the radical changes in the moral sphere of education I will describe the ideological shifts in educational governance. The ideological breakings from the state (Finland) as virtue-based totality to the post-war welfare society and during the last two decades to the market-driven situation form the socio-historic background of my analysis. My core interest is to analyse the changed conditions of forming her or his personal and moral identity and life prospects in the different context of education, for example in school and military education. At the same time I will defend education, teaching and teacher education against pure technological tendencies.

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