The subject-person of adult education in the crisis of modernity

The philosophical and theoretical background of this article is the recent debate in conventional education, highlighting problems with the subject-person of education (e.g., Oelkers, 1987). This debate has its origins in the questioning by philosophers of the project of modernity, of its future (e.g., Habermas, 1985; Wellmer, 1985), and of its subject-person (e.g., Frank et al., 1988). The philosophy of education is affected by this debate primarily for two reasons: first, the subject-person is at the core of the project of modernity and therefore of the inseparably linked idea of conventional education. Second, modernity is in itself an educational project (e.g., Oelkers, 1983), for, if education fails to bring forth the enlightened and emancipated subject-person, modernity also fails. Therefore, if there is today, as is generally admitted, a crisis of modernity, conventional education and its conception of the subject-person, as well as the corresponding learning model are inevitably affected. This also applies to adult education, in so far as adult education refers to models of the subject-person that are still deeply rooted in conventional education.