Abstract
Lyotard defines being postmodern as an ‘incredulity toward metanarratives’.
Such incredulity includes, in particular, skepticism vis-à-vis Enlightenment
ideals like autonomy. Motivated by such skepticism, several educational
scholars put into question education for autonomy as it is practiced in the formal
settings of national school systems. More specifically, they criticize that practices
of autonomy education can have certain normalizing and ideological eects
that undermine the aim of creating autonomous subjects. This article examines
these critiques of education for autonomy and argues that they are best understood
as calls for reforming educational practices, and not as outright rejections
of education for autonomy. Thus, since the allegedly ‘postmodern’ critiques of
autonomy education cannot be plausibly understood as radical ruptures with Enlightenment
ideals, the article concludes that these critiques represent (merely)
constructive self-critical reflections on what Habermas dubbed the ‘unfinished
project of modernity’.