Education for life

The chapter asks big questions about macro, meso and micro aspects of our life and the life of the world, and the role of education in nurturing both. It goes on to explore how a practice of education called “study” (Wilson, 2020) may help inform a profound experience of life, which in essence constitutes a participative, creative, and poetic practice founded on the pull of love and beauty. This practice may help, however modestly, to release humans and the world into their vocation to be truly alive, with all the unpredictability and uncontrollability that implies. At the same time, the chapter critiques managerialistic, outcome, and employability-based views of Higher Education, and concludes they have the stench of death about them, ours, and the world’s. This chapter also briefly outlines some of the strategies the author has employed as an educator to cultivate study, especially through walking.