Abstract

Education is marked by conflicting demands and expectations from state, society and individuals. Views of what education and schooling should be for are plenty and vary across time and place. However, one reoccurring hope of people as human beings, this book argues, is to live a good and maybe even a 'beautiful life'. Drawing on Wilhelm Schmid's notion of the art of living, this book explores how an Education for a Beautiful Life can make a meaningful contribution to some of today's complicated conversations, such as (student) wellbeing, social equity, equal educational opportunity, individual and social good, and the purposes, aims and ends of education and schooling. Written in a time of increasing challenges through rapid technological innovation, shifting political landscapes, global migration, and changing work requirements, this book offers new insights to the question of what education is, and what it can do for people to navigate the challenges of our time by developing their own art of living and pursuing the hope of a good and beautiful life.