The German education crisis is not only one of institutions, it is primarily one of ideas. Everywhere, only the symptoms are being treated, with the well-known consequences: Everyone involved is overwhelmed, the teachers, the parents, the children anyway, even the politicians. The cardinal error is that the current educational reforms lack a cultural guiding idea. "Employability" is the order of the day instead. But an education that only ever wants to make people "fit for" something, that does not ask about their interests and talents, will not even bring the dreamed-of market success. "Philosophy of a Humane Education" provides the impetus for a new social understanding of what education means: for us, for our future, our image of man.