There’s a certain look you develop after a few decades in education. A kind of squint. Part suspicion, part fatigue, part “Please don’t say ‘21st century learning’ again.” It’s the look of someone who has taught with passion, researched with hope, and been burnt by the same five ideas recycled every ten years with new acronyms and worse clip art.
Call it cynicism if you like. I call it clarity.
I’ve seen schools beg teachers to differentiate for 30 kids with wildly different needs while giving them the same scope, sequence, and 47-minute period as everyone else. I’ve watched policymakers slap on new frameworks like stickers on a cracked bumper and then wonder why teachers still “aren’t doing it right.” I’ve been in rooms where we pretend that throwing in some Tech will save education, as if poor pedagogy becomes brilliant when it’s on a screen.
We want teachers to foster critical thinking, but not question the mandated assessments. We want them to embrace innovation—but not if it challenges the uniformity of outcomes. We tell them to be flexible, but penalise them when they don’t tick the right boxes. We want education to be about creativity and compassion, but benchmark it to NAPLAN every other year. And the kicker? It’s not just the system’s fault. It’s not just bad leadership or uninformed policymakers or undercooked teacher prep. The real problem—the one that makes cynics of the best of us—is that education itself is a fundamentally conflicted enterprise.
Enter the late Kieran Egan. In a deceptively simple argument, he puts his finger on the pulse: Education is Difficult and Contentious because we are trying to do three incompatible things at once.
- Socialise children—help them fit into the world as it is.
- Educate them—give them access to humanity’s accumulated knowledge.
- Individuate them—support their personal development, expression, and agency.
All noble goals. All necessary. But try to pursue all three at once—in the same school, in the same classroom, with the same 45-minute lesson plan—and you’ve got yourself a three-way philosophical cage match.
Want to teach students the canon of Western literature? Great… until it clashes with inclusivity goals. Want to develop a student’s creative voice? Excellent… until it gets in the way of standardised test prep. Want to build social cohesion and shared norms? Perfect… until it conflicts with honouring individual identity and cultural specificity. Now multiply that by the 30 unique learners in every classroom. Multiply again by 13 years of schooling. And stir in a rotating cast of reformers, ministers, consultants, and startup ed-tech prophets.
Let me show you what I mean:
Contradiction #1: Social Promotion vs. Academic Standards
We want to socialise students, to keep them moving with their age group, build friendships, and avoid stigma. So, we promote them even when they haven’t met the academic standard. But we also say we’re about rigour and high expectations, which sort of falls apart when a student who can’t read at grade level is suddenly writing essays in Year 9. It’s not laziness. It’s that we’re serving two masters: academic integrity and social cohesion. And no one wants to admit they’re in conflict.
Contradiction #2: The Curriculum Is Crowded (Because It’s Everyone’s Job)
The academic knowledge camp says: teach the canon, cover content, uphold standards. The individual development camp says: prioritise creativity, well-being, adaptability. The socialisation camp says: kids need financial literacy, consent education, driver safety, digital citizenship, CPR, conflict resolution, world religions, tax basics, and how to grow tomatoes in a milk carton. So, we cram everything into the curriculum and tell teachers to “integrate it.” The result? Morale’s low, capacity’s gone, and we keep piling on like it’s not.
Contradiction #3: Inclusive Education vs. One-Size-Fits-All Assessment
We say we value individual development. We believe every child can learn. We want inclusive classrooms. Then, we assess all students with the same tasks, under the same constraints, and in the same time frame, and compare them using the same indicators It’s not malice. It’s denial. And the system’s the one snapping under it.
Contradiction #4: Student Voice vs. Policy Compliance
We tell students they’re leaders. We invite them to “co-design” learning. We ask for their feedback, survey their engagement, and tell them their voice matters. Then we hand them a uniform policy written before they were born, ban hoodies, dictate sock length, and shut down their ideas with: “Because that’s the rule.” The result? Students learn pretty quickly that their “voice” is welcome as long as it’s polite, on-brand, and easy to ignore.
What Egan offers, and many reformers don’t, is not a prescription, but a diagnosis. The contradictions you feel in your gut as an educator are real. They’re not a failure of effort or planning or passion. They’re baked into the structure. Education isn’t a puzzle to be solved. It’s a paradox to be managed, so let’s stop chasing silver bullets and start designing for the messy, contradictory reality we actually live in.
Let’s be honest: there is no clean solution. But there are ways forward; not answers, but directions.
1. Stop expecting one-size-fits-all reform to work.
Trying to balance three purposes in one curriculum will always be clunky. So, stop pretending otherwise. Allow for layered, localised approaches. Let schools lean into different priorities depending on their community context.
2. Equip teachers to navigate tensions, not resolve them.
We don’t need more silver bullets. We need teachers trained like diplomats, philosophers, and designers. People who can think critically, ethically, and adaptively inside contradiction… Professionals. If we’re going to ask them to juggle socialisation, academic rigour, and individual growth, let’s at least give them the independence (and time) to do so.
4. Focus less on programs and more on principles.
The latest tech or toolkit might be helpful, but only if it aligns with core values. Before adopting the next “solution,” ask: Does this help us socialise? Educate? Individuate? All three? At what cost to each?
5. Be honest about trade-offs.
You can’t do everything. If you emphasise creativity, something else gets less airtime. If you double down on academic rigour, you may lose some play. That’s not failure, it’s decision-making. But let’s at least be transparent about it.
So am I a cynic. Who knows, who cares? I’m someone who’s spent enough time in this game to know the rules are contradictory, and who still turns up every day anyway. I’ve seen the chaos, and I still believe it’s worth shaping because sometimes, in the middle of the mess, you still see sparks.
You see the kid who finally gets it. The lesson that lands. The former student who stops you in the mall and says, “Thanks.” You teach a lesson that’s chaotic and brilliant and nothing like what you planned, but everything the students needed.
Egan doesn’t promise us a solution, but he does offer a frame for staying sane, and maybe even staying hopeful in a profession built on contradictions. If naming the contradictions makes me sound cynical, fine. I’ll take it. But the truth is: I say these things not because I’ve given up, but because I haven’t. I just think we’d be a lot better off if we stopped pretending education is a neat little system that only needs a tweak or two. It’s a three-headed beast, and it always has been. And maybe the best we can do is learn how to ride it with some skill and a healthy dose of humour.
Maximising Student Potential 