In this paper I want to explore a tension between two ways of understanding the role of education, or more specifically, of teaching. On the one hand we could view the primary educational gesture as pointing (Biesta 2022), or bearing witness to something considered important, beautiful, or educationally worthwhile (Lewin 2014). This approach could be characterised as thing-centred (Vlieghe & Zamojski 2019) or world-centred (Biesta 2021). On the other hand, education seems to require more of the teacher. The activity of teaching, in this case, does not assume that the world speaks on its own because the subject matter is not just ‘out there’ waiting to be revealed; it must be made present through selection, arrangement, production (Lewin et al 2023). Both conceptions of education share the basic assumption that education is an intentional activity undertaken by an educator seeking to influence the relation between a student and (some aspect of) the world. Their divergence is best located in the extent to which the educator is active in making educational content present. World-centred education prioritises the activity of world: the pointing gesture withdraws at the point at which the student’s independent relation with the educational content is established. At that moment, the educator and student might be said to stand in equal relation to subject matter. By contrast, the idea that subject matter must be produced has been explored through different forms of didactic analysis: grammatization (Vlieghe & Zamojski 2019); didactic transposition (Chevallard and Bosch 2014); pedagogical reduction (Lewin 2019); the formation of pedagogical knowledge (Tröhler 2008). Acknowledging didactics does not negate the activity of the world but seems to presume that there is no uninterpreted presentation or revelation of the ‘world’. In that sense, the latter view retains a hermeneutic relation to educational subject matter. I argue that this tension is particularly significant for religious education (RE). RE often seems to concern aspects of the world considered divine, revealed or ultimate. On the other hand, if RE is an academic subject, then should it not be an anthropological enterprise “primarily concerned with studying people(‘s)… beliefs, behaviors, and institutions, rather than assessing “the truth” or “truths” of their various beliefs or behaviors” (McCutcheon nd)? The post-secular context invites reflection on the extent to which the educational gesture can ever simply let the world speak, or whether there always remain traces of anthropology in every form of pedagogy.

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