Why education should engage in the inner curriculum of the mind

ABSTRACT Both contemporary naturalist and deconstructivist theories share the suspicion of invoking an emphatic subject in education while not being able to address the question of what education is for in a constructive and value-based way. However, while naturalist theory also focuses on the human mind and its evolutionary origins, deconstructivism is preoccupied with the social constraints of subjectivation. The following takes up the idea that a core value of education is the enhancement of human wellbeing by referring to Ergas’s call for a contemplative turn towards mindful education and relating it to naturalist evolutionary theory about the human mind. This attempt turns out to be promising because mindful education addresses the problem of wellbeing without postulating a non-naturalist realm of emphatic subjectivity. To take up the deconstructivist critique, socio-cultural problems that arise from the idea of mindful education and its relation to naturalist thinking are discussed.