 Is it really formative? Towards a topic of training 
When, why and according to what criteria can we say of a system, of a device that is educational or formative? What are the argumentative locus, the rhetorical “topoi” of our judgments on training? And on what philosophical principles are they based? Dewey has endeavored to make explicit the educational principles and criteria of the contemporary educational experience. It will be a question of whether this framework makes it possible to base the approving and critical judgments made by trainers, trainees or external evaluators on training courses. Education, for Dewey, is an experience, a praxis, open to other experiences and to the experiences of others which can only fully develop within a framework of social democracy. This education is divided into three objectives: development, culture and social utility. I will articulate these objectives to training’s triangle model and its three logics: training someone (logic of personal development), to something (didactic logic), for something (logic of socio-economic adaptation). The goal would be, from this articulation, to define a system of rhetorical locus, a repertoire of arguments (Aristotle) serving to feed critical judgments in matters of training. I will try to illustrate this model on three types of training: professional teachers training, personal development training and university training. By focusing on critical judgments, it would be a question of understanding, in what Freud's words, the profession of trainer or educator of adults is an impossible profession, or at least perceived as such.