The aim of this article is to question philosophically the term of « kindness », which is more and more often used and institutionalised within the education spheres. Behind the apparent simplicity of the concept, and the eventual facility of talking about benevolent education and parenthood, there seems to be a certain notional blur which could interfere with the intercomprehension within an educational community. Combining authority and kindness, be it in theory or in practice, requires to fully understand the stakes of those two notions, which can be considered as meta-educational (likely to enrich the whole educational relationships in one way or another). First, we evidence kindness does not mean weakness nor complacency nor soft domination, though those notions are often assimilated (part 1). Then, the idea is to address what kindness is not limited to, and why it is judicious not to assimilate it to simple care (part 2). Contrarily, it seems relevant to propose a wide acceptation and stabilised definition of kindness (part 3), together with a certain ethics for the daily appropriation of this idea as part of the educational activities.