The ends of public schools and why society needs teachers

In this paper we intend to imagine, by way of delimitation, and perhaps a detour of spaces that appear to be emptied from their significant presence, the role of teachers in society where recent developments challenge political and cultural foundations of education in its shape we had known as implicated in the construction of modern states in Europe; in society where one often hears of the end of public school. However, the notion of the end will be problematized here as well, and we will reflect not so much on the end, but on a complex occurrence of multiple ends of public schools. These reflections suggest a peculiar ontology of ending, of a time of exhaustion when things slip out of our hands and no aims can be seen clearly on the horizon. And, as according to what we have announced here, ends appear as multiple here, we shall suggest four overlapping ontologies of ending. Clinging to the ambiguous meaning of the word, we shall try to position the figure of the teacher within this ending ontology, drawing the ends of their work (now read as aims) from the ends of public school. Perhaps, in the world where we witness the end of nature, the end of security, the end of future if one might risk to put it succinctly (Szkudlarek, 2017), this is, ultimately, the only way of thinking of ends of teachers' work.