The emerging European Higher Education Area (EHEA) is not perfect (González Geraldo, 2011; González Geraldo et al, 2009) neither is the competence based education it promotes (Gimeno Sacristán, 2008)

In this proposal we have obtained evidences against a technocratic educational perspective which is just focused on planning in papers what should be done in class without knowing the actors of the process: teachers and students mainly.

We believe that teachers educate their students first with what they are, then with what they do, and only after this, with what they say (Mañú y Goyarrola, 2011, p. 15)

From a Spanish sample of a grade in social education, we have gathered the perception of teachers and students regarding each of the competences worked in the modules taught during the first year. Competences which were biased from the very beginning since they are allowed or not, by law, in the modules of every new grade in Spain and, accordingly to the harmonization of the EHEA as one of the five senses of the Bologna Process (González Geraldo et al, 2009), we assume that in Europe as a whole, but in different similar ways.

This technocratic educational perspective, inherited from a misunderstood positivist stream, could lead us to think that rankings, in terms of observed and measured learning outputs, are more important than people. Than planning competences would lead us, directly, to the expected learning when, definitely, things are much more complex when we deal with human beings.

Having said that, we really believe, as Habermas did, that education belongs to the world of life and spirit, and although everything can be valued, not everything is possible –even desirable- to be submitted to a quantitative assessment (Habermas quoted in Gimeno Sacristán, 2008, p. 29) Following this rationale, maybe we are not successful when we try to distinguish the important from the urgent in higher education within the EHEA, because, what makes higher education, higher? (González Geraldo, in press) In other words, and perverting the question proposed by Bauman (2008): Does ethics –really- have a chance at university?

Maybe both questions could have a relation with the loss of faith and passion of some good teachers (Day, 2007) who maybe found that university could not be their element (Robinson, 2009) With this proposal, we try to figure out, from a theoretical point of view, what is more important: competence based teaching –and eventually its learning- or education of people?

There is something that forces us to think that Tony Judt could be right when he started his last book saying that: “Something is profoundly wrong with the way we live today” (Judt, 2010, p. 11) If education is the last movement of the philosopher, as Dilthey said (Pérez Serrano, 2002), we should act in consequence because, as the same Judt emphasizes at the end of the already quoted work: “Philosophers, it was famously observed, hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it” (Judt, 2010, p. 149)

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