A father tells his toddler not to touch a hot pan. A teacher explains a mathematical formula to her pupils. A scholar comments on a student’s text. Pedagogically acting persons, non-professionals or experts, apparently practice diverse gestures of display that demonstrate what should be seen or learnt. The main idea of Prange’s Operative Pedagogy is that practical pedagogy can be referred to as the gestures of display that demonstrate what should be seen and learnt. Prange (2005) defines pedagogical practice (in German ‘zeigen’, showing) as pointing at a thing by verbal-discursive or gestural means, with the aim of making it understandable for another person. — In the structure of pedagogical demonstration in a classroom, usually, the object to be shown, the teacher, and the pupils all serve as means to a certain end: the unequivocal teaching-to-learning-transfer. A pedagogy reaching its goals counts as successful. ‘Failing’ pedagogy is often set under some kind of pressure to improve in order to attain the right outcome. The assumption behind this pressure departs from the idea that pedagogy and learning goals need to be congruent with the learning effects. — Is pedagogical demonstration nothing but a technology that can be improved, e. g. by tools that may even replace the personal dimensions of education? This article interprets this assumption as operationalist. It proposes a means of broadening the concept of pedagogical demonstration, highlighting showing in educational contexts as being inseparable from the individuals involved. The intention of this paper is to contribute to a further theoretical development of classroom education and Didactics, as well as to Arts Education by reflecting upon the concept of pedagogical demonstration as meaning-making. In the process, it also seeks to lift the veil from the conditio humana, even if only a little bit (In Les Misérables, Victor Hugo ([1862] 2015) describes the conditio humana as arising in the face of barbarity and decay.