Education is often thought to be a vehicle for developing those characteristics seen to be essential for building a strong democratic culture. However, if democracy is not merely a set of procedures to be learned and implemented, but a political struggle that continually seeks to transform public life, then this raises some serious questions about education’s role in the democratic project. Drawing on the concerns raised by radical democratic theorists (Mouffe, Laclau, Rancière, Critchley), this presentation outlines some of the antagonisms that exist between institutionalized forms of education and the democratic project, conceived of as a space of struggle and dissensus. By putting into question any easy equation between democracy and education, I aim to propose some new directions for rethinking the relationship between them.