The PISA study has shown that Germany is also in an educational crisis. At the same time, traditional education is no longer in demand in the tests, which are more focused on the ability to read an instruction manual and implement it practically rather than on understanding literature. For centuries, there was a unified European education. From the early Middle Ages to the first third of the 20th century, every significant innovation spread across the entire continent with little delay. The era in which the philosophical, artistic, and scientific tradition was alive, and in which a canon of education was binding, seems to be over - and yet both are formative for our current culture. The newly reignited debate about the canon is an indication of this. Following the definition of the terms "education" and "canon," Manfred Fuhrmann describes the reception.