Education, youth work and youth care confront many challenges which are interpreted in many different ways and receive various responses. However, one type of response seems to be widely applauded: education and care should be tailor-made or become so: tailored to children and youngsters, to their talents and their lifeworld. This call for tailor-made education and care is often accompanied by an emphasis on the need for the development of talents and on the value of feeling-well. In this contribution we indicate how this response entails an approach to education as form of socialization. I.e. as practices that assist the (re-)production of a particular societal regime which calls upon us to conceive of ourselves as entrepreneurs and to permanently take care of our profile. The experience of a meaningful life risks thereby to become exclusively dependent on social recognition and comparison. In so doing tailor-made education risks to deny youngsters the chance for a pedagogical workplace i.e. a place where the world is presented and disclosed to them in such a way that it can provide them with a measure outside of themselves and allows them an experience of a meaningful life in relation to the work which is taking place there.
Pedagogiek, 39 (3), 349-366.