Introduction

In this paper, I focus my attention on teachers’ lived experience in the time of Covid-19. Specifically, the study I am presenting explores the emotional impact the abrupt shift to online teaching had on teachers’ work and life throughout the various phases of the lockdown. I develop my argument by analysing teachers’ everyday work, using a qualitative approach, and constructing a small-scale empirical study. The study involved 13 teachers from different disciplines in secondary school (with students aged from 13 to 18). The research group, stemming from an in-service teachers’ educational course I conducted, was selected based on teachers’ interest and willingness to share and discuss their feelings and emotions. The study is based on a combination of in-depth interviews, dialogues and email conversations. Methodologically, my attempt is located in an emerging research horizon combining educational philosophy with empirical research (Feinberg, 2006; Mejia, 2008; Santoro, 2015; Shuffelton, 2015; d’Agnese, 2016; Hansen, 2017). However, in order to expose and justify my approach, a brief clarification about the way I conducted the research, and its background is needed.

Throughout my experiences as teachers’ educator, I have often encountered groups of teachers who passionately deal with their profession. Often, these teachers, given their deep commitment, were radically exposed to difficulties, frustrations, and failures, as well as, more than others, they could deeply feel the joy, passion and possibilities stemming from being-in-education. During the discussions staged in the courses I conducted, these teachers would often share insightful considerations and revealing feelings about several aspects of teaching, ranging from teachers-students’ relationships, curriculum, professional judgment, and side effects of passion and commitment. I would always take note of their interventions, and sometimes, at the end of the course, given the quality of interactions, I would stage research settings with the aim of systematically gathering such insights. However, at times, when comparing gatherings from experimental settings with the rough material emerged during the courses, I felt that something went lost. In those occasions, I was left with a subtle sadness and desire to recover the lost insights.

Of course, I cannot exclude that such a difference was due to a lack on my part to create an adequate experimental setting. However, I do believe that something more was at stake. Simply put, the matter teachers shared throughout the open time of discussions was something too slippery to reproduce in a dry experimental setting; the urgency they felt to communicate their deep feelings and insights was part of the matter they were sharing, and something hardly replicable on demand. Simply put, deep insights and emerging feelings are not at our disposal; if we wish to shed a light on the lived, bodily educational experience, we must carefully listen when and where such experience arises.

So, this time I decided to proceed in a different manner: I would have collected teachers’ witnesses, and insights in the instant they were produced, reserving myself the opportunity to deepen the most interesting aspects in the way and time teachers would have preferred: email, interviews via Google meet, WhatsApp messages and conversations. Of course, I informed the teachers from the very beginning about my research purposes and experimental setting. So, when something revealing was coming up to the surface, I invited the teacher involved to deepen her experience, focusing on her sensations and feelings, while exploring the possibility to further deepen her insights. Sometimes I also asked the teachers about an image or metaphor which should better convey the sense of the experience being shared.

Right from the outset, it was clear that difficulties, discomfort, and even suffering were important figures of teachers’ emotional state. Helplessness, dread, a “permanent sense of warning”, a “loss of oneself”—as two teachers described their emotions—were the prevalent mood of the online teaching experience. However, discomfort, anxiety and even angst were not the only feelings experienced by teachers I met. Along with these feelings—and, admittedly, to my surprise—some teachers also spoke about an “entirety”, a “fulfillment never experienced in their profession”, and even about “a deep sense of joy” and an “unknown freedom” in encountering their classes online. So, how should one make sense of such a diversity of emotions? Of course, one might argue that this question makes little sense, in that diversity of sensations simply relies on the diversity of persons and approaches—and, in a basic sense, this is true. One might even argue that teachers experiencing fear and angst when going online were simply unable to teach, for teaching also involves facing unexpected situations. However, it is my contention that much more was going on in teachers’ emotional horizon and lived experience. When listening to teachers, attempting to understand and unravel their emotions, I felt a common root: all those diverse and even opposite feelings were connected to a deep ethical engagement with students and profession, and the struggle to face an unknown situation in an unknown way. Otherwise stated, it was the entanglement between the unknown space in which teachers were thrown and their commitment and responsiveness to students that caused such a deep and diverse bunch of emotions. It is my hope that unraveling the common terrain where teachers were thrown, the feelings involved and the way they found—or not found—to deal with the new situation may help us to shed light on some aspects of teaching.

Philosophically, my attempt is phenomenologically developed, and is framed by Arendt’s and Heidegger’s thought. More specifically, I will analyse the cases drawing from three questions: a) Heideggerian understanding of “praesens” as the condition upon which the continuity between past, present and future arises (Heidegger, 1982/1927, 306-312); b) the variations of fear Heidegger points out in Being and Time and his analysis of angst (Heidegger, 1996/1927, 131-136; 173-178; c) Arendt’s thematization of action, beginning and the “startling unexpectedness” of living (Arendt, 1998/1958; 1977/1961).

The paper is organized in two parts. In the first one, I attempt to make sense of teachers’ sensations of discomfort and anguish through Heidegger’s thought. In the second section, I analyze feelings of joy and fulfilment via Arendt. In this section, I also give a hint about what the consequences of teachers’ gesture are for the formation of the educational community. I begin with the question of praesens, fear and angst as understood by Heidegger.

Praesens, fear and angst

In this section, I attempt to make sense of teachers’ sensations and feelings through Heidegger’s thought. The section is phrased into three steps: in the first one, I report some significant excerpts of teachers’ conversations and interviews; in the second step, I analyze praesens as the condition upon which “enpresencing” and the continuity between past, present and future may be understood (Heidegger, 1982/1927, 306-312); in the third step, I connect teachers’ witnesses with Heideggerian analysis of fear and angst (Heidegger, 1996/1927, 131-136; 173-178). I begin with teachers’ interviews.

Teachers’ interviews[1]

Silvia’s report[2]

“During the lockdown, I woke up with a weight on the chest, and a sense of permanent warning … I reached my computer, went online, and began the lesson. Sometimes it was not that bad. I could see their faces and I could imagine what was going on their mind… But there always was a gap I couldn’t fill. It was something like a permanent lack I was unable to compensate, and I felt guilty for that, although I knew it was not my fault. But this awareness didn’t help me make sense of my work.”

Luigi’s report[3]

“The Third B [Luigi’s class, ed.] had always been a hard class. But online it was even worse. When you see them and can interact face to face, you can draw their attention, make examples, use irony, or effectively reproach. When you are on Meet none of these things make any sense. Any reproach becomes comical… In two weeks, I find myself in a spiral… It was a total nightmare. Sometimes I was so panicked that I had to break up my lesson. I felt like I was going crazy… I had to call my wife just to speak with her and break that sense of anguish.” When asked about an image conveying such a sense of angst, Luigi reported about “an empty room, all dark, with my voice banging around… A total collapse.”

Gennaro’s report[4]

“When going online my prevailing feeling was that the class didn’t follow me… I was speaking in front of that screen with no evidence that someone would listen… I feel the right word for my experience is fear… It’s difficult to explain, but I felt the whole situation as an actual threat, and I couldn’t do anything to stop it ... At times, I couldn’t think, for if I did, I would have been paralyzed, in panic. I would just go on with my lesson trying to not think.”

Praesens

In Chapter One, Part Two of The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, when explaining the “temporal interpretation of being as being handy”, Heidegger introduces the question of praesens as the “horizonal schema of the ecstasis of enpresenting” (1982/1927, 303). As other basic Heideggerian questions—e.g., Temporality, existence, aletheia—the meaning and function of praesens is not so easy to capture—and in fact Heidegger, at the end of his analysis, states that praesens is “non-conceptually understandable.” (ibid., 309)

However, Heidegger furnishes a first indication of the meaning and function of praesens when stating that praesens is the condition upon which “presence and absence” present themselves to us (ibid., 304). Praesens is both the condition of possibility of the “beyond itself” (ibid., 304) and the condition of the possibility of the present, of the now. Moreover: praesens “as horizon” is the condition of “that which determines the whither of the ‘beyond itself’ as such” (ibid., 306). Even enpresencing, in Heidegger’s words, “understands itself as such upon praesens. […] Everything that is encountered in the enpresenting is understood as a presencing entity […] on the basis of praesens.” (ibid., 307). Praesens, then, is the very texture upon which world and things—emotions including —may be encountered, and the condition of the possibility of any understanding.

Based on this understanding, when analysing the statements from teachers I met, we may note that their words bear witness to a deep modification of the structure of praesens, of the horizon in which the very perception of students, themselves and teaching arise. Otherwise stated, any word, silence, gesture or act, any omission stands on the basis of such a modification. Even one’s commitment and projecting come to be felt upon such a different horizon, by means of which “anything like existent commerce with entities handy and extant becomes possible” (ibid., 309). This is also due to the relationship between praesens and temporality: given that Heidegger states that praesens is “already unveiled in the self-projection of temporality” (ibid., 309, emphasis added), such a deep structure goes hand in hand with temporality itself. The way in which temporality is given to teachers—or, in a Heideggerian vein, the way in which temporality temporalizes itself in teaching—relies on praesens, too.

Then, what happens to such a fundamental structure when one is “paralyzed, in panic” and cannot think at all? (Gennaro’s report) What if one is “so panicked… to break up” the lesson (Luigi’s report)? What if teachers in distress were to experience, using Luigi’s powerful words, “a total collapse of time”? In such a condition one is unable to think and act—to say nothing of projecting. Relationships are blocked, felt as threatening. The totality of gestures and emotions teachers feel and enact is under the shadow of such a curtain. Hoping, listening, projecting, awaiting, looking at, hanging back, inciting, caring, namely, the whole patrimony of comportments teachers enact in daily classroom activity is, as it were, swallowed by this unknown and disquieting kind of praesens; what Heidegger calls the “intentional comportments toward the futural” (1992/1928, 204) undergo the sway of this new texture of time-space, which, as I wish to display further, is permeated with feelings of alarm, fear and angst.

Teachers’ witnesses through Heidegger

Thus far, I have attempted to unravel the meaning of praesens as related to teachers’ words. In this second step, I respond to the question as to which modification of praesens teachers experience during pandemic. In a sense, I attempt to put to work Heideggerian analysis by connecting it to teachers’ words. My hope is that by filling Heidegger’s powerful phenomenological insights with the flesh and blood of teachers’ experience, we may shed a light on some deep aspects of teaching.

First to develop my analysis, two brief clarifications are needed. One of the strengths of Heidegger’s analysis of fear and angst is the exceptional rigor with which he describes the way these feelings inhabit and seize human beings. Heidegger’s description of fear, alarm, terror and angst as different states is exemplary in displaying how phenomenological analysis speaks from and to our body. However, it is exactly such a difference that is, at the same time, necessary and too rigid when compared with the modulations and the bustle of emotions experienced by teachers I met. Gennaro’s, Silvia’s, and Luigi’s words bear witness to a mess of feelings in which the distinction between, say, fear, alarm and panic is more a matter of nominalism than a means for understanding and penetrating their condition and emotional magma. The second clarification concerns the use of alarm, fear and angst as contiguous states—I take angst as also a modulation of fear. I understand that in Heidegger’s analysis angst is definitely distinguished from fear. Angst is a “fundamental kind of attunement” (1982/1927, 171), and in Heideggerian analysis it deserves to be treated differently. Since my paper is not concerned with Heideggerian phenomenology per se, I cannot delve into the argument, but it is clear enough that while Heidegger understands fear as a “mode of attunment” (ibid., 131), angst is framed as the “eminent disclosedness of Dasein” (ibid., 172). Moreover: in being implied in the fundamental questions of “being-toward-death” and “resoluteness”, we could say that angst is the door to the core of Being and Time. In my analysis, I will partially depart from this difference, for I will discuss angst as best suited to understand both teachers’ lived experience and important features of teaching. That said, let us begin with Heidegger’s phenomenological analysis. I will quote two passages from Being and Time describing fear and angst, and then provide my comment.

“The phenomenon of fear can be considered in three aspects. We shall analyze what we are afraid of, fearing, and why we are afraid […]. That before which we are afraid, the ‘fearsome,’ is always something encountered within the world, either with the kind of being of something at hand or something objectively present or Mitda-sein […]. What is feared has the character of being threatening. Here several points must be considered.

1. What is encountered has the relevant nature of harmfulness. […]

2. [H]armfulness […] comes from a definite region.  […]

4. As it approaches, harmfulness radiates and thus has the character of threatening.” (ibid., 133)

About forty pages further, in Chapter VI, Heidegger describes angst as “[t]he fundamental attunement” and the “[e]minent disclosedness of Da-sein”:

“That about which one has Angst is being-in-the-world as such […] What Angst is about is not an innerworldly being. […] The threat does not have the character of a definite detrimentality which concerns that is threatened with a definite regard to a particular factical potentiality for being. What Angst is about is completely indefinite […]. The totality of relevance discovered within the world of things at hand and objectively present is completely without importance. It collapses. […] The fact that what is threatening is nowhere characterizes what Angst is about […] But nowhere does not mean nothing […]. It is so near that it is oppressive and stifles one’s breath—and yet it is nowhere […]. In Angst, the things at hand in the surrounding world sink away, and so do innerworldly beings in general.” (ibid., 176)

When comparing Heideggerian analysis with teachers’ experience, we note that teachers’ words and emotional texture bear witness to both fear and angst. Gennaro, Silvia and Luigi encountered the fearsome within the world, in a definite context, and it is also true that such an “harmfulness radiates and thus has the character of threatening.” What is problematic in defining their experience as just one of fear is that harmfulness, rather than aiming “at a definite range of what can be affected by it”, extends to the whole professional and even personal experience. Even their sense of self when being-in-education was jeopardized by a deep change. Then, while Gennaro, Silvia and Luigi encountered fear in the realm of “innerworldly beings”, they clearly experienced a sinking away of the world: Gennaro’s inability to think, his paralysis and panic, bear witness to the fact that being-in-teaching as such was the source of his angst. What Gennaro experienced while being-on-line was a total breakdown of intelligibility; in his experience the ecstatic projection of Dasein felt down. Otherwise stated, both acting and thinking collapsed, and the world itself pulled back. And yet, such an angst, comes—as fear—from a well-defined region: being-on-line with his students.

Similarly, Silvia speaks of “a sense of permanent warning”. Such a sensation, as I understand it, is a kind of mix between alarm, as the precursor of fear, and something very similar to the “nowhere” and “nothing” of angst. It is an indefinite yet stinging sense of danger, which looms over at any time. In this case too, what Silvia experienced is a collapse of the former praesens and the irruption of a new kind of praesens—as Heidegger writes, we cannot lose praesens, for praesens, simply put, is what enables the possibility of experiencing something. (1982/1927, 310) When teaching online, Silvia felt severed from both students and her profession. Even the bodily sensations Silvia experienced were akin to those provoked by angst: the “weight on the chest” she felt when getting up is akin to the angst’s feeling described by Heidegger, one which “stifles one’s breath”. And yet, in this case too, the threatening comes from a well-defined region and activity.

However, amongst the experiences reported, the one which better displays the features of angst was that of Luigi. He spoke about a “total collapse”, a sense of panic which forced him to break the lesson and call his wife. Even the image he found “an empty room, all dark, with [his] voice banging around” is a powerful representation of such a pervasive yet unphatomable feeling. And yet, in this case too, Heidegger’s description is at the very same time, apt and partial. When speaking of angst Heidegger states that “[w]hat Angst is about is completely indefinite” and “[a]ngst does not know what it is about which it is anxious.” (1996/1927, 176) However, this was not the totality of Luigi’s experience. Luigi did know where angst came from, and he could exactly locate the source of his angst; and yet such a root—being-on-line-with-students—provoked a sinking away of the world or, in Heideggerian terms, of the “innerworldly beings in general” (ibid., 176). Luigi was not oppressed by this or that problem of teaching: Luigi was oppressed by the possibility of teaching as such. That which was threatening approached Luigi from a well-defined region—and yet, as Heidegger states, it also was “nowhere”.

It is important to note that Luigi was forced to move on with a lesson which not just didn’t make any sense: he was forced to move on with a lesson which put such a loss of meaning in his body, pushing him to a limit possibility, namely, the death of his project. By drawing from Heidegger’s analysis of death, we could say that Luigi was experiencing “the possibility of an impossibility” (ibid., 330). His project, namely teaching, was impossible to pursue in the situation he found himself in, and yet the project was there, hideously disfigured, and it was throwing him in angst. By drawing from Thomson’s acute interpretation of Heidegger, Luigi was experiencing “a global collapse of […his] identity-defining life project”. However, what rendered Luigi’s experience so peculiar was that Luigi was experiencing the collapse of any projecting without being freed by projecting itself; he was experiencing a collapse of praesens, of the connection with temporality and wordly horizons, without the possibility of being released by the praesens of teaching. Otherwise stated, Luigi, in being a committed teacher, passionately chose the praesens and projecting that he has to endure. While human beings are thrown in “the possibility of an impossibility” which death is Luigi, in being committed to his students, was the author of his own “possibility of impossibility”.

Freedom, joy and fulfilment

Thus far, I have attempted to make sense of teachers’ experiences of fear and angst through Heidegger’s thought. In this section, I analyze a different range of emotions emerging from online teaching, namely, feelings of “entirety”, “fulfillment” and “joy”. I shall make my point by drawing from Arendt’s questions of action, beginning and “startling unexpectedness”. The section, as the first one, is phrased into three steps, respectively committed to a) reporting significant excerpts from teachers’ interviews; b) analyzing Arendtian questions of action, beginning and “startling unexpectedness”; and c) analyzing teachers’ emotional experience while sketching out the building of the educational community. I begin with teachers’ interviews.

Teachers’ interviews

Davide’s report[5]

“During the lockdown, I had to leave my study room to my son; thus, I worked in my bedroom. At the beginning it was awkward: in the background you could see the bed and clothes lying all over the room… I managed to put a background from Google tools, but for some reason it didn’t always work. After a while, I resolved to accept the situation, and began to joke about my mess… I began to feel a kind of coziness in that situation. I mean, not just my own coziness in being in my bedroom with a cup of coffee… I felt a kind of shared, common coziness… everyone in her bedroom or living room, with her cup of coffee, chocolate, juice or whatever… So, we decided to have coffee-break together. Some students would prepare toasts, others would even cook… It was strange, for we were separated, far from each other, and yet we were closer than ever. At some point I thought it would have been nice playing some music in the background when teaching. Classical music, rock, pop… we all felt a kind of togetherness in that strange situation… New connections began to emerge… I mean, connections among topics, among students, between me and them, between them and such new topics… At last, I felt students speaking with their voice. I mean, they began reading poetry, making personal comments writers… Everything was new in those months.”

Giovanna’s report[6]

“At the beginning it was bewildering… before the screen, speaking to everyone as ever, but in a very different way… You couldn’t know whether your students understood the topics… it was even difficult to understand whether they were there to listen. In some way, it was embarrassing. So, as a way out, I began to concentrate on the topic being explained.” When asked about her focus, Giovanna said: “I intentionally decided to exclude any thought about whether students were there and what they understood about the lesson. I began to delve into my topic. Should I find an image, I felt as a researcher at a microscope...” At this point I asked if one could label her lesson as a kind of study. Giovanna told, “yes, I was studying, but I was studying in front of my class!” When asked about the outcomes of her gesture, Giovanna said: “Unexpectedly, students were interested in such a strange lesson… They were following me… They began to interact and delve into the topics… I discovered a new way to teach… I experienced an unknown freedom by teaching online, from my bedroom.”

Action, beginning and “startling unexpectedness”

The questions of action, beginning and the “startling unexpectedness” (Arendt, 1998/1958; 1977/1961) are central to the understanding of Arendtian oeuvre. They are not just extensively treated by Arendt throughout her career; they are also the core from which many cherished questions unfold. Through them, questions of humanity, natality, existence, connect and illuminate one another in a web of significances that enriches the meaning of these themes, thus presenting an open and powerful conception of life. However, with my end in view, far from presenting a full-developed account of these themes, in this step I will present some features which may help shed a light on the excerpts I selected.

In The Human Condition, when discussing the common ground upon which action and speech should be understood and their “unique distinctness” within the wide range of “activit[ies] in the vita activa,” (1998/1958, 176) Arendt states that “action reveal[s] [human beings’] unique distinctness.” Through action, human beings “distinguish themselves instead of being merely distinct”. Action is the way “in which human beings appear to each other, not indeed as physical objects, but qua men. This appearance, as distinguished from mere bodily existence, rests on initiative, but it is an initiative from which no human being can refrain and still be human.” (ibid., 176-177).

Through this statement, Arendt overturns the meaning of action, with far-reaching educational consequences. For Arendt, by means of action, newness and human beings come into the world as such. In the Arendtian account, in fact, action takes place “between men,” and only through action may human beings’ “specific, objective, worldly interests” arise. These interests, in Arendt’s words, “constitute, in the word’s most literal significance, something which inter-est, which lies between people and therefore can relate and bind them together.” (ibid., 182) Then, for Arendt action is strictly related to the possibility human beings have to take upon themselves the responsibility, burden, and bearings of their distinctness. Without denying the well-known Arendtian concern about any attempt to find the essence “of human existence,” (ibid., 9) we may infer that, in Arendtian terms, action is essential for being human and that to take “initiative” is, for Arendt, something that characterizes human beings as such: by means of action, human beings come into the world accomplishing the newness to which they are destined. How and when such an initiative should be taken and enacted is left open and undetermined by Arendt. However, to enact ourselves on our own initiative is what makes us human. As Birmingham aptly noted, in Arendt action is grounded in the “archaic and unpredictable event of natality.” (2006, 3)

We should also note that for Arendt being human and being a beginner who performs her own beginning through action in a public space are one and the same thing. This is because the significance of action is twofold. First, action is central to understand and act freedom. As Arendt states, human beings “are free […] as long as they act, neither before nor after; for to be free and to act are the same” (Arendt, 1998/1958, 153); second, because action is essential to addressing and producing the new, and education reflects exactly such a broad and persistent commitment to newness. Through their capacity to act, human beings fulfill the promise contained in their birth: “The new beginning inherent in birth can make itself felt in the world only because the newcomer possesses the capacity of beginning something anew, that is, of acting.” (ibid., 9) Women and men are free because they are “a beginning” (ibid., 167).

At this point, I wish to highlight that the accomplishment of newness, its “character of startling unexpectedness” (ibid., 177-178), is not something added to human beings, something we as humans may or may not accomplish. As humans, we come into the world as “initium, newcomers and beginners” (ibid., 177). As Arendt states in The Crisis in Education acting “for the sake of what is new and revolutionary” (Arendt, 1977/1961, 189) for “the infinitely improbable which actually constitutes the very texture of everything we call real” (ibid., 170) is the first aim of education.

Such an understanding comes to reframe the interpretation and construction of one’s identity. Here, we should bear in mind that in Arendt the public and political space precedes and grounds individuality: according to Arendt, the subject reveals itself through its actions and speech, activities one may pursue only when one is connected to other human beings in the public arena. Then, it is not just that we cannot know in advance how our actions will be taken and understood by others, but rather that, more radically, through action one discloses oneself to oneself. That is to say, one comes to know who one is when acting and speaking, not before. Human beings thus come to know who they are through their ongoing engagement with others, in endless and ever-changing processes, whose structure and aims come to the fore in concrete situations of life.

According to Arendt, then, we may conceive of the educational space as one in which human life takes form in all of its features, not just as places where one acquires knowledge and competencies in order to face and manage the world. This is so for living is established in the dimension of togetherness. Failure to recognize such a public dimension of meaningfulness results in “modern world alienation,” that is, the “flight from […] the world into the self.” (Arendt, 1998/1958, 6) To clarify, the central point in Arendt’s understanding is that the uniqueness of human beings emerges by them revealing to others who they are through their actions and speech while, at the very same time, revealing to themselves who they are. Therefore, we cannot know who we are before such a revelation occurs. The dimension of educational community is thus the root from which both one’s being and becoming can grow, changing in unpredictable ways, accomplishing the “miracle” of natality.

Teachers’ witnesses through Arendt

At this point, we may put the question as to what kind of teaching and educational community emerge from Giovanna’s and Davide’s words. A first thing worth noting is that the lockdown interrupted the space-time of normal schooling, producing the conditions by which a different space-time was able to emerge. Such a different space-time, with everyone in one’s room with one’s belongings and private things, rather than creating a sense of distance and dispersion, created a new intimacy and nearness, in which private and public were not just mixed: private and public were unrecognizable in their own features, and, in a sense, their very split was useless for understanding the context, because a new environment emerged. As Davide effectively said, “everything was new”. In such new environment connections themselves were caught in a new web of meanings which transcended them, thus building a new community.

Such a newness also is a defining feature of Giovanna’s teaching. Albeit Giovanna’s response to embarrassment and discomfort was quite different from that of Davide, the arrival point was similar. The intentional neglect of students she enacted, rather than resulting in a kind of solipsistic teaching, resulted in a new, engaging teaching. Students were more involved than ever; from an exclusion of the community and even of communication, came out a the discovery of a new behavior towards topics being studied. Giovanna, in a sense, was teaching in a gap. So, which kind of terrain may come out from a gap, and which kind of meaning may be built and found, given that when teaching we are always-already in the presence of some meaning? In order to set up a tentative answer, I wish to focus on the pronouns used by Giovanna in her report. At the beginning of the interview, while openly speaking about the intentional decision to exclude any thought about the students, she reported: “I began to concentrate… I began to understand… I began to delve”. It is as if she had to exclude students in order to teach at all. At the end of her interview she stated, with a smile of surprise, “we discovered a new way to teach”. Students, unintentionally imitating her gesture, built a new community while building a new gesture for themselves. I do not wish to go too far, but I cannot help to wonder whether in that moment a community of friendship and research come to light (Lewis and Jasinski, 2021)

However, what is enough clear is that in both Giovanna’s and Davide’s case, through online teaching emerged an environment of intimacy, which deeply transformed students’ receptivity to both teacher’s words and the emerging community. Students became more sensitive, susceptible to transformations, open to what is being said. Davide’s sense of joy and discovery while giving lesson enables us to see how teaching is an ongoing pointing to that region in which education and community joyfully emerge, while Giovanna’s experience speaks about a sense of collective, ongoing delving into the topics being discussed. Their words bear witness to an educational experience in its own right, one in which a realm of joy, freedom, fulfilment and learning may emerge. “The fact of natality… the miracle that saves the world” (Arendt, 1998/1958, 246) is displayed in Davide’s and Giovanna’s witnesses. In this sense, education illuminates the territory between what is known and the open space of radical possibilities before us. It is exactly such an unpredictable space of pure, radical possibility that is worth exploring educationally.

References

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Abstract

This paper explores Bertolt Brecht’s view of the relationship between education and the theatre, with particular reference to his notion of the Verfemdungseffekt and gestus. Epic theatre aims to educate its audience into a form of critical, practical curiosity about the world. Positioning his theatre as being anti-Aristotelian, Brecht seeks to not only make social reality recognisable in the theatre. He wishes to render possible (through the V-effekt aesthetic) the observation of the social and aesthetic processes, which bring forth what we name our reality. I will show that Brecht’s pedagogical intention pivots around his (rather Aristotelian) view that pleasure resides at the heart of the theatrical mimetic task. This is a pleasure that does not however emerge from Aristotelian identification, but instead from theatre’s pedagogical task. Brechtian theatre wishes to make observable the coming-into-meaning of our ideas about, and representations of, the world. As a form of concept-making, theatre is hereby called to not erase individual experience in the name of representing higher ideals. Theatre is tasked instead to not obscure the uneasy congruence between the individual’s experience of the world and its ideal presentation (in the metaphors of art, science). The artist is to acknowledge this theory-practice connection in the imitations of the world that s/he creates, as well as in her/his conduct towards the audience. Theatre is not to aim to ‘govern’ the audience through its images by instructing them into a worldview. It is to position people’s innate capacity to reason and govern themselves at the heart of theatrical mimesis. The V-effekt acts hereby as an aesthetic pedagogy that is to forestall Aristotelian catharsis, and with that, the act of instruction into a fixed image of the world. The ‘dialectic (non-Aristotelian) theatre’ is to instead heighten the contradictions of a mimetic work that creates as much as it represents things, people and actions. As a consequence, the theatre leaves a productive, pedagogic gap that can only be ‘closed’ by the audience’s own consideration as to the truth of what is presented to them on stage. In other words, the pedagogical act is not to be fully controlled by the artist. Brecht’s somewhat anarchist educational tendency is hereby revealed in his concern with the artist’s role in creating the conditions for social virtues and human propensities to flourish. Attending to the productive conditions specific to the theatre, the artist is to care for its ultimately ‘superfluous’ creation of metaphors about human actions. Drawing on Brecht’s Me-ti texts (and editor Antony Tatlow’s editorial comments), I will also show how Brecht’s concern with the interdependent relationship between theory and practice echoes his own examination of the Marxist-Leninist doctrinal distinction between idealism and materialism. This includes its materialism’s assumption that the individual’s consciousness simple reflects matter (as ‘real being’), but cannot shape (or question) it. As a last step in the paper, I will look at actress Helene Weigel’s gestic acting in her role as Mother Courage. Her gestus of showing the complex process of Courage’s (self-)formation, productively illustrates Brecht’s pedagogical concern. The modern theatre is to not obscure, but make observable in mimesis, the ‘critical dialectical’ relationship between an individual’s conscious experience, their actions in the world, and the material circumstances they live in.

Brecht in Philosophy of Education Journals

Bertolt Brecht is certainly no total stranger to Philosophy of Education Journals in the Anglophone world. His work, however, is normally only touched upon relatively briefly, and placed as part of broader discussions around the nature and purpose of the arts (film, media literacy, socially engaged public arts) in/as education (Yun 2021; D’Olimpio 2014; Kellner 2021). More sustained engagement with Brecht’s work is rare. An exception presents Alan Scott (2013), who explores the role of Brecht’s estranged, realist theatre as a form of political education. (Applied) theatre-focused publications in turn engage with Brechtian theory and practice usually in relation to specific educational institutions and educational theory. Just to mention a few: Franks and Jones (1999) re-read Brecht’s theatre theory for its contribution to the pedagogic underpinnings of drama and media education. Russo (2003) applies Brecht to educational theory (esp. Vygotsky’s ‘zone of proximal development’), drawing a comparison between progressive education’s student-centred and Brecht’s audience-centred pedagogy. Otty (1995) connects Brecht’s Lehrstücktheorie to Freire’s conscientization and Boal’s theatre; and my own publications have looked at Brechtian theatre pedagogy as a ‘philosophical ethnography’, that prioritises a productive over a representational orientation in education research (Frimberger 2016; 2017). Rather than ‘applying’ Brecht to a particular educational context, institution, or putting his work in service of progressive theory, this paper is driven by a curiosity to explore Brecht as a philosopher of education on his own terms. But I first need to manage the readership’s expectations. ‘Brecht was not a systematic thinker tied to one specific mode of [textual] reflection, but rather he developed and tested his ideas across various literary and non-literary genres. As a result, many of his key insights are reiterated in multiple forms, for example: as dramatic dialogue, song text, journal entry, aphorism, prose fragment, and theoretical essay (…)’ (Wessendorf, 2016, p. 122). In other words, we will encounter Brecht the philosopher of education and his theatricum philosophicum (ibid), not in the systemacity of his ideas (alone), but only when reading his reciprocative theatricalisations of ideas in the same productive, interpretive stance, which he demanded of his audiences. Let us start the journey then with Brecht’s arguably most well-known piece of theory in the Anglophone world.

Theatre as Knowledge

Brecht’s Short Organum for the Theatre (written in 1947/8) was produced at the tail end of his exile years, just before he settled in (post-WWII) East Berlin. The unusual title Organum (meaning ‘a body of principles’), written in 78 aphorisms - short pithy statements in prose – refers, in form and title, to renaissance scientist Francis Bacon’s 1620 book Novum Organum (2019). Brecht was likely attracted to making the link with Bacon and his empiricist natural philosophy, as a way of giving aesthetic expression to his own (implied) anti-Aristotelian ‘scientific’ position in the theatre (Brecht 1978, p. 205). Bacon’s interpretation naturae is considered the ground work for what we now think of as the scientific method. With its emphasis on empirical and rational observation, and methodical, inductive reasoning, it was composed as an ideological refutation of Aristotelian deductive logic as anticipation naturae in his Organon (2017). Brecht indeed shared Bacon’s concern regarding the authoritative finality of concept-making that can potentially result from a purely anticipatory approach, even when supposedly grounded in the scientific observation of the material world. This is reflected in Brecht’s own critical examination (from the 30’s) of the Marxist-Leninist doctrinal distinction between idealism and materialism; and its (practical, political-tactical) assumption (turned into dictatorship under Stalin), that consciousness is solely determined by matter as ‘real being’(Brecht, 2016, p.18). In Nietzschean (1873) fashion, Brecht reminds his fellow countrymen in particular of the danger of obscuring that theory and practice are interdependent. Knowledge, Nietzsche and Brecht would agree, might be best considered (playful) metaphor rather than eternal truth. And knowledge is to firstly serve life, rather than a narrow conception of (e.g. rational) truth. It is to aid our understanding as to how our human cultural productions - including our political systems and our concept-making - nourish (or stifle) our human capacity to live a flourishing life. Accordingly, Brecht warns his fellow artists to not forget (and deny in their artistic expressions) the pleasure of playful exploration that resides at the heart of our acts of knowledge production.

‘And here one again let us recall that their [the artists’] task is to entertain the children of the scientific age, and to do so with sensuousness and humour. This is something we Germans cannot tell ourselves too often, for with us everything slips into the unsubstantial an unapproachable, and we begin to talk of Weltanschauung [worldview/ideology] when the world in question has already dissolved. Even materialism is little more than an idea with us. Sexual pleasure with us turns into marital obligations, the pleasures of art subserve general culture, and by learning we mean not an enjoyable process of finding out, but the forcible shoving of our nose into something (…)’ (Brecht 1978, p. 204)

Education in the theatre is to be a joyful process of finding out about the world. It is not meant to be an act of moralising from the stage. It is no self-satisfied act of shoving one’s nose into how people live up to, fail, or can be best instructed into a set of universal norms. This applies even if these norms are evoked in the name of greater idea(l)s (‘culture’, ‘materialism’, ‘marital obligations’). Theatre, Brecht claims, would in fact ‘be debased’ if it tried to become a ‘purveyor of morality’ and failed to make its ‘moral lessons’ enjoyable - not only to people’s reason, but also to their senses (ibid, p. 180). In an earlier essay (written in the 1930’s), Brecht already highlights the inadequacy of art when it only anticipates the nature and workings of ‘the great and complicated things that go on the world’ (ibid, p. 73). Theatre is instead to draw on the insights and methods of the new sciences of his time (e.g. modern psychology).

‘People are used to seeing poets as unique and slightly unnatural beings who reveal with a truly godlike assurance things that other people can only recognise after much sweat and toil. It is naturally distasteful to have to admit that one does not belong to this select band. All the same it must be admitted’ (…) (ibid, p.73).

This is of course not to imply that, in Brecht’s view, art is science or that art should operate by the same means. Even if the artist makes use of the (new) sciences, in order to gain an understanding of an increasingly complicated modern world. The poet’s task is that of translating any such knowledge about the world into poetry. ‘Whatever knowledge is embodied in a piece of writing has to be wholly transmuted into poetry. Its utilization fulfils the very pleasure that the poetic element provokes (…)’(ibid, p. 74). In other words, the pleasure evoked by poetry is to be derived from aesthetic elements that are indeed shaped by the poet’s efforts to ‘penetrate deeper into things’. Most importantly however, this search for ‘truth’ is always to be undertaken with a view to the artist’s primary task: to entertain his audiences ‘with sensuousness and humour’ (ibid). Given Brecht’s eudemonistic emphasis, he echoes a rather Aristotelian premise. Theatrical mimesis allows artists and audiences to exercise their capacity for recognition and understanding; an activity, which is naturally pleasurable to humans (Poetics, 48b12-17).

Brecht’s anti-Aristotelianism

As part of his (self-styled) anti-Aristotelianism however, Brecht critiques a way of making modern art that represents an unchangeable world. He critiques a presentation of world that is either determined by invisible metaphysical forces or by individual motive forces alone - especially when these are represented as the result of (an already) fully formed moral character in-action (Brecht, 1987, p. 70). Brecht rejects certain poet’s overreliance on individual feeling and individual artistic intuition, when it is devoid of the commitment to investigate the complicated workings of those cultural productions that mark the (modern) world. These modern phenomena include the individual politician’s ‘lust to power’, embedded in the very workings of politics; as much as the coming into being of a (Nazi) propaganda newspaper (like the Völkische Beobachter); the workings of global capitalist business (his example is Standard Oil); as well as the complicated moral discourse around war-profiteering (ibid, p. 73). But Brecht’s antagonism towards Aristotle must also be considered as part of Brecht’s dialectical theatricalisation of ideas. Aristotle was by no means simply an ‘ideological opponent’ for him. Brecht in fact accords with Aristotle’s emphasis on theatre’s mimetic function. ‘Tragedy [drama] is not an imitation of persons, but of actions and of life’ (Poetics, 50a16f). Flourishing, for both Brecht and Aristotle, can only be achieved in action. And the imitation of such actions, as to how one flourishes (or perishes) in life and death, are the stuff of (both their) theatrical mimesis. As already hinted at, Brecht also affirms Aristotle’s eudemonistic premise. ‘Thus what the ancients, following Aristotle, demanded of tragedy is nothing higher or lower than that it should entertain people (...)’ (ibid, 1978, p.181). Brecht however refuses Aristotle’s position on the nature of this theatrical pleasure. And he differs with him also with regards to the kind of aesthetics that is to constitute a ‘plausible’ theatrical imitation of life’s actions. According to Aristotle, the well-constructed tragedy is to bring forth a pleasurable experience in the audience. It is to evoke empathy with the fate of the hero and the arousal of the tragic emotions of fear and pity, and their subsequent physical relief as catharsis (Poetics, 53b10f; 49b27f).

‘This [Brecht’s] dramaturgy does not make use of the ‘identification’ of the spectator with the play, as does the aristotelian, and has a different point of view also towards other psychological effects a play may have on an audience, as, for example, towards the ‘catharis’. Catharsis is not the main object of this [Brecht’s] dramaturgy. It does not make the hero the victim of an inevitable fate, nor does it wish to make the spectator the victim, so to speak, of a hypnotic experience in the theatre’ (Brecht, 1978, p. 78).

The pleasure of recognition, according to Brecht, does not reside in a theatrical mimesis that stimulates tragic emotions and their cathartic release, because it shows the world as it is. The pleasure of the poetic element, for Brecht, emerges from theatre’s pedagogical function. Theatre is tasked with not only making reality recognisable in the theatre (‘as does the aristotelian’), but with opening out for consideration to an audience the very aesthetic-social processes that constitute this imitated ‘reality’ in the first place. Through a theatrical mimesis that is to appeal to people’s reason and their senses pleasurably, Brecht aims to educate his audience into a disposition of a certain practical (critical) curiosity. The (aesthetic) gesture of showing/pointing to theatre’s double mimetic activity is hereby at the heart of Brecht’s Verfremdungseffekt. The (Aristotelian) theatre of illusion emphasises the spontaneous unfolding of actions in front of the audience, as if these happen for the first time. Brechtian Verfemdungs- theatre deliberately points to the fact that its theatrical activities are imitations of actions that have already taken place. It doesn’t hide the rehearsed nature of its performances or the fact that texts have been learned by heart. In fact, it aesthetically heightens theatre’s artifice. It brings forth the contradictory nature of its imitative work by revealing – and putting in juxtaposition (in acting, stage design, lighting, music) - its various processes of production. The Verfremdungseffekt does hereby not just serve an aesthetic but a social-dialectical function. It is to make striking and strange (to audience and actors alike) what is normally taken for granted about people and their actions in the world. In other words, it is to instigate a practical philosophical inquiry into human being (as a noun and verb). Theatre is to turn spectators (as well as actors, as we will see later) into observers and commentators on the very reality that is brought forth on stage. Asserting the pleasure that resides at the heart of theatre’s acts of knowledge production, the audience is invited to deliberate. How do social phenomema (like war, politics, business) and the concepts and discourses that give life to them map onto people’s everyday life actions, and their capacity to live a flourishing life therein? This philosophising audience is hereby conceived as ‘a collection of individuals, capable of thinking and of reasoning, of making judgements even in the theatre; it [epic theatre] treats it as individuals of mental and emotional maturity, and believes it wishes to be so regarded’ (p. 79).

(In)complete images of the world

Through the V-effekt, Brecht seeks to draw attention to the (often) uneasy congruence between our everyday, material experiences and their ideal representation. The dialectical theatre is to evoke reflection. How is it that explanations of the world can end up governing the very world and people that they seek to represent? As Brecht’s Daoist-inspired teacher Me-ti (2016) formulates it:

‘Judgements reached on the basis of experiences are not usually connected as are the events that led to the experiences. The combination of judgements does not amount to an exact image of the events that gave rise to them. If too many judgements are connected with each other, it’s often very difficult to reconstruct the events. It takes the whole world to come up with an image but the image does not include the whole world. It is better to connect judgements with experiences than with other judgements, if the point of the judgements is to control things. Me-ti was against constructing too complete images of the world’ (p. 50).

As editor Tatlow suggests, the Me-ti texts also echo Brecht’s own engagement with what happened to Marxism. Me-ti can be read (in parts) as a (poetic) reflection on ‘dialectical determinism’ (e.g. under Stalin; later the GDR) and its disregard of people’s ‘experience’ of socialism; including the control and censorship of individual ‘dissident’ productions (ideas, art) in the name of freedom from bourgeois rule (ibid, p. 21). Brechtian theatre’s key artistic-pedagogical premise then pivots around the (anti-Aristotelian) artistic distanciation (Verfremdung) of the audience’s full identification with the images of the world, presented in the world – and of course on stage. Aiming to forestall catharsis, Brechtian mimetic practice is to bring forth a stance of active observation and inquiry: into the productive relationships that constitute the coming-into-meaning of our images of the world. In order to serve such pedagogical aim, theatrical representation, as a form of concept-making that positions art as a form of knowledge, has to be also wary of its own anticipation naturae. In other words, the ‘scientific theatre’ must not sever and obscure the connection between theory and practice in its own imitations, so as not to ‘debase’ the theatre into a ‘purveyor of morality’ (Brecht, 1978, p. 180). Brecht seems indeed aware of the tricky balancing act required of the (modern) theatre. On the one hand, he does not wish to obscure that his theatre indeed pursues a pedagogical intention to influence the way that people attend to/intervene in the social world. And having a pedagogical intention of course implies that the theatre has a view-point. It has ‘moral lessons’ to convey, even if these are partial and not a closed Weltanschauung. On the other hand, Brecht is conscious of the danger. A pedagogical intention, when too willingly burdened by a theatre claiming a ‘higher status’, can too easily obscure that it is in the business of metaphor-creation. And as such, it can slide into normative impositions as to how people should think and act. Brecht was indeed accused of betraying his own ‘scientific’ principles, even by his admirers, such as the philosopher Paul Feyerabend (1991). Feyerabend lauded Brecht’s anti-ideological, dialectical approach to presenting knowledge in poetry (e.g. in his 1939 poem To those who follow in our wake). Feyerabend praised his poetry for the way it 'enlarges faults and lets different incommensurable jargons run side by side' (Feyerabend, 1991, p. 95) without harmonising different aspects into a more systematic account. But he also accused Brecht (many of his plays in particular) of humourless, Marxist intellectualism and, indeed, of moralising from the stage (ibid: p. 81; 143). Brecht then perhaps reminds himself, e.g. in is Organum. Epic theatre is not only tasked with making enjoyable the very act of inquiry into the workings of the social world. It is also called to acknowledge, through the kind of imitations it presents, that its audience is capable of reasoning and governing themselves. ‘There is such a thing as leaving mankind alone; there is no such thing as governing mankind’, as Oscar Wilde (2018, p. 15) formulates his view on the role of socialism for the attainment of individualism. Wilde points us to Daoist philosopher Chuang-Tzu. In the fictional persona of the Chinese elder in his Me-ti, Brecht equally evokes the Daoists’ dislike for (Confucian) moral teachings, critiquing the espousal of virtues as a way of organising and controlling populations.

‘There a few occupations, which so damage a person’s morals than the occupation with morality. I hear it said: You must love the truth, you must keep your promises, you must fight for the good. But the trees don’t say: You must be green, you must let the fruit fall vertically to the ground, you must rustle the leaves when the wind passes through them’ (Brecht, 2016 p. 70).

Too much normative imposition - ‘too much administration, whether moral or political is counterproductive’ to human flourishing, Tatlow (ibid) comments in his editorial notes. Me-ti’s reflections on the nature of morality echo Brecht’s own struggle with his theatre’s striving for a ‘higher status’ and the (perhaps) ever looming desire of becoming a ‘purveyor of morality’ to the masses. The temptation of the abstractions of Western thought (e.g. mirrored in Brecht’s own Marxism) is here counteracted with Daoist-inspired allegorical description. Nature’s drive to life needs no further justification in abstraction; other than a pointing to what nature does. The human capacity for life, Me-ti implies, is not spawned through normative imposition. It is fostered instead by creating the productive conditions for growth, so people can act freely on their innate capacities. This is however not a simple act of ‘leaving mankind alone’. Brecht clearly pursued a pedagogical intention to influence ‘mankind’s’ relation to social reality. He presumed that a better society has to be actively created, even if our human capacity for living a flourishing life is innate. As is evident, Brecht wished to radically challenge the institutions (artistic, political, economic) of his time, driven of course by his first-hand experience of fascism. Theatre was considered to play a part in creating the conditions for a socialist future. But as to what kind of social-ism was exactly to be endorsed on a political level was a recurring question over his life-time.

As Brecht’s exchanges with ‘dissident’ Marxist philosopher and life-long teacher Karl Korsch (2012), and his Me-ti texts (which were likely inspired by their discussions), reveal, Brecht struggled with Marxist-Leninist’s false idealist/materialist distinction. Dialectical determinism turned materialism into a ‘doctrine equated with Being, which consciousness simply reflects, but does not shape or question’ (Tatlow/Brecht, 2016, p. 25). And Brecht experienced of course the disastrous results of its politics. Many of his collaborators (e.g. the actress Carola Neher and director Asja Lācis), communists who had moved to the Soviet Union after the revolution were, under Stalin, branded Trozkyist spies and part of a literary opposition. Seen to undermine the higher purpose of (Soviet realist) art for the direct illustration of Marx's class laws (Paškevica, 2006, p.118f), they were imprisoned and forced into labour camps (Gulags). As Reinhold Grimm (1979) aptly summarises Brecht’s (necessarily tragic) political position:

‘The Marxist Brecht was faced with a terrible decision. In service of the final humanising of human beings, in which he believed, he either had to demand their total de-humanisation and objectification … or to question – even to negate - this ideology, his life’s and work’s prime value.’ (p. 100)

It might be argued then that Brecht reveals, in his pedagogical and aesthetic ideas, what we shall call a certain social- anarchist tendency (likely inspired by Korsch, 2012). In other words, he can be said to share anarchism’s pedagogical ‘faith in the idea that human beings already possess most of the attributes and virtues necessary to create and sustain such a different society, so do not need to either undergo any radical transformation or to do away with an ‘inauthentic consciousness’ (Suissa, 2010, p. 149). In fact, in Me-ti, Brecht comments on Marx’s observation that consciousness is shaped by being or ‘life’. e.g. the way we make a living. For him, this interdependency does not prove people’s in-capacity for reason or joy in life. Brecht simply points to the undeniable dependency between our ideas about the world and how we engage with it materially. He admits that Marx’s observation sounds rather depressing, but suggests pragmatically that ‘the simple realisation that all great works were nevertheless created in this dependency and that conceding this dependency doesn’t make them any less great, settles the matter’ (Brecht, 2016, 76). Brecht also argues that Marx’s principle of the dependency of thought won’t seem so depressing, when dependency on the economy won’t be felt as so oppressive anymore by people. Brecht’s unorthodox Marxist, perhaps anarchist, proclivity then takes shape in his pedagogical positions. He believes in the capacity to reason of his theatre-going audience. He emphasises theatre’s eudemonistic role. Brecht refuses to (fully) instrumentalise theatre for an abstract, ‘higher’ cause, disconnected from people’s individual experience. And he believes that too much (moral, political, social) governance stifles people’s capacity to be good, and live a flourishing life. A certain anti-teleological notion is equally articulated in his belief that the artist cannot control the pedagogical/political outcome of his artistic work. In other words, the exact pedagogical outcome between what is presented to an audience in the materiality of theatre, and the way that the audience interprets and acts (or not) on the insights thus gained, must remain unpredictable.

‘Not even instruction can be demanded of it [the theatre]: at any rate, no more utilitarian lesson than how to move pleasurably, whether in the physical [aesthetic] or the spiritual [moral] sphere. The theatre must remain something entirely superfluous, though this indeed means that it is the superfluous for which we live. Nothing needs less justification than pleasure’. (Brecht, 1978, 180-181) 

The conditions for change can be created, and the effects of this (indirect) education can be of course ‘hoped for’. But it is firstly in the careful attending to the productive conditions particular to the theatre – e.g. when (co)-creating the aesthetic imitations of theatre’s ultimately ‘superfluous’ and necessarily playful metaphors - that the artist can hope to influence his audiences. In other words, Brecht draws attention to what it means for an artist to partake in the (indirect) creation of conditions (e.g. in the theatre) for the purpose of ‘social virtues and human propensities to flourish’ (Suissa, ibid) – in a way that does not deny the relation between theory and practice. Tatlow (Brecht, 2016) reminds us (p. 53) hereby of the very purpose of the Verfremdungseffekt. It is to not only invite inquiry into the productive relationship between theory and practice in ‘other’ acts of cultural production. The V-effekt is to render possible the questioning of Brechtian theatre’s own artistic and pedagogical ways and means of presenting the world on stage. The audience is to be invited to read and judge: do theatre’s metaphors still ‘move pleasurably’ and ‘superflously’? - or have they hardened into a Weltanschauung? Are the images disconnected from the particularity of their emergence in (everyday life) practice, and the question of people’s flourishing therein? Do they seek to organise and govern the world in their own image? Do they create the conditions for social virtues to flourish? If Brecht himself honoured, or failed, his own principles has of course been discussed (see e.g. Arendt, 1948; Feyerabend 1975; Bloch et al. 1977). What can perhaps be stated for the purpose of this paper, is Brecht’s intention. Tatlow gets to its heart in his editorial footnote to Me-ti: ‘Brecht disliked any (artistic) practice without space to question its aesthetic intentions. In such a world you either manipulate or are manipulated. To provoke such questions was, of course the purpose of the so-called estrangement effect (Brecht/Tatlow, 2016, p. 53).

Gestus in Mother Courage

Having established the pedagogical role of Brecht’s ‘anti-Aristotelian’ aesthetics, I now wish to illustrate its coming-into-meaning in the acting practice of one of his closest collaborators: the actress (and his wife) Helene Weigel. In accordance with Brecht’s key idea, that the ‘producer of ideas’ should not obscure the reciprocative translations between theory and practice, I will focus on a practice example from Weigel’s portrayal of Mother Courage (in the eponymous play). Brecht wrote the play in Swedish exile in 1939, in just over a month, as a furious reaction to Hitler’s occupation of Warsaw, Poland. Due to the looming Scandinavian occupation, the play was premiered, in Brecht’s absence, in neutral Switzerland (Zürich) in 1941 (Brecht, 2015, p.181). Unable to assert his directorial influence, Brecht was disappointed that his play seemed to have evoked an unwanted Aristotelian catharsis in the audience. They had read Mother Courage (as Brecht wrote in his journal) as a ‘hymn to the inexhaustible vitality of the mother creature’ (ibid); a mother who victoriously thrives in the face of an inescapable fate (‘war’). When returning to Europe in 1947/48, he immediately revised the script to make Courage a less sympathetic character. She was not be so easily assimilated as an unchanging mother archetype. Her social behaviour and attitude were to provoke more uneasy questions as to the processes of her (self)formation. The result of the script changes led to the 1949 production in East Berlin at the Deutsches Theater, whose success firmly placed epic theatre on the (East) German arts scene’s map. Like all of Brecht’s plays, Mother Courage is historicized, in order to shine a new light on contemporary issues. It tells a story from the past. Mother Courage is set in 17^th century Europe during the Thirty Year War; one of the most destructive wars in European history, fought over struggles for political hegemony and religious allegiances. The play explores the complicated (dialectical) process of moral (self)formation set in motion by our concrete ways of engaging with each other and the physical world around us. It deals with the complexity of formative processes in situations when finding ourselves in de-humanizing social structures  that are not of our own making. In other words, it explores what (moral) formation means in those conditions that are not conducive to the flourishing of social virtues and human propensities. The play follows the fortunes of Anna Fierling known as Mother Courage. A feisty canteen woman with a keen sense for business, she is determined to feed herself and her children, and make a good living, by selling provisions to soldiers on the battlefields of Europe. We first encounter Courage pulling her cart loudly and proudly and ready for business. Over the course of the play and her various business dealings, we see her lose all her three children - Schweizerkass, Eilif and Kattrin - to the very war that she hoped to make a profit from. And surprisingly, at the end of play, even after her money has run out, her children have all been killed, and peace has arrived, she still pulls her cart towards what she hopes will be the next (profitable) battlefield. ‘A play is therefore more constructive than reality, because in a play the situation of war is set up as an experimental situation, for the purpose of giving insight; that is the spectator assumes the attitude of a student – provided the type of performance is right’ (Brecht, 2015, p. 221). When watching a play as an experimental educational situation, the audience is to have enough distance from the events and characters on stage. They are to compare, and criticise, the various influences that form human behaviour, as well as to consider the implied alternatives. The art of incorporating the V-effect into the art of acting was hereby a key way of making this observation of the character’s (self-)formation possible.

‘When s/he [the actor/actress] appears on stage, besides what s/he is actually doing, s/he will at all essential points discover, specify, imply what s/he is not doing; that is to say, s/he will act in such a way that the alternative emerges as clearly as possible, that this acting allows the other possibilities to be inferred and only represents one out of the possible variants (…) whatever s/he doesn’t do must be contained and conserved in what he does. In this way, every sentence and every gesture signifies a decision; the character remains under observation and is tested. The technical term for this procedure is ‘fixing the “not ... but”.’ (Brecht, 1978, p. 137).

Gestus describes the various ways that the actor makes manifest these ‘not…but’ moments in the art of acting. She is to show the complicated and contradictory social influences and personal decisions that have lead to the character’s (self)formation. Gestus is brought to presentation through gestures, postures, tone of voice, facial expression, ways of handling props, and standing in relation to other characters on stage. As such, it is an expression of a ‘social attitude’ rather than of the character’s fixed psychological make-up. ‘Human behaviour is shown as alterable; man himself dependent on certain political and economic factors and at the same time as capable of altering them’ (ibid, p. 86). Not all of the actor’s gestures embody gestus of course. It is only those gestures which act as social gests; ‘the social gest is the gest relevant to society; the gest that allows conclusions to be drawn about the social circumstances’ (ibid, p. 105). Brecht explains:

‘(…) one’s efforts to keep one’s balance on a slippery surface results in a social gest as soon as falling down would mean ‘losing face’; in other words losing one’ s market value. The gest of working is definitely a social gest, because all human activity directed towards the mastery of nature is a social undertaking, an undertaking between men. On the other hand, a gest of pain, as long as it is kept so abstract and generalised that it does not rise above a purely animal category, is not yet a social one…The “look of a hunted animal” can become a social gest if it is shown that particular manoeuvres by men degrade the individual man to the level of a beast (…)’ (ibid, p. 104-105).

Helene Weigel’s gestic acting is documented in Ruth Berlau’s extensive 1949 production photographs for the Courage Modellbuch (Brecht, 2015). They illustrate how gestic acting productively translated, and with that also co-created, Brecht’s pedagogical intention. Gestus renders observable the non-teleological - what Tatlow (Brecht, 2016, p. 29) calls ‘critical dialectical’ - relationship between an individual’s conscious experience and the material social world they find themselves in. There are many of Weigel’s fine acting moments documented in the modelbook. Given the limitations of the paper, I will focus on the ‘mute scream’ sequence in scene three. It is here where we learn that Courage's honest son Swiss Cheese has been arrested and is about to be executed by the enemy army (the Catholics). He did not hand to them the regiments' cash box of the besieged army (the Protestants), which he was entrusted with as their paymaster. The honest Swiss Cheese, when realizing that the enemy was trailing him, threw the cashbox in the river. Captured by the army, he is now suspected of keeping it hidden somewhere. He is threatened with execution. The camp prostitute Yvette, a sympathetic friend of Mother Courage, wants to help her to get her son back. She uses her intelligence and wit to convince the officer (called ‘One Eye’) responsible to court martial Swiss Cheese to let him free - for the price of 200 florins. Yvette also arranges for an admirer to buy her Courage’s cart as a gift, so the ransom can be paid. Courage agrees to the asking price of 200 florins and sells Yvette her beloved cart. Courage is aware of the urgency of the situation. But she also realises that she and her daughter Kattrin will run the risk of becoming destitute, when losing their way of making a living. Secretly, she had hoped that her son had hidden the cash box somewhere. She had hoped that she would be able to use that money to buy back her cart later. But when she learns that honest Swiss Cheese was in fact (again) too honest, and threw the cashbox in the river, she makes the decision to haggle over the demanded ransom. Finally, she offers 120 florins instead of 200 for his release. At the key turning point in scene three, Yvette has raced three times to haggle with the officer holding Swiss Cheese captive. Yvette is furious at Courage’s stubborn refusal to pay the full asking price, regarding it as a straightforward betrayal of her son.

‘YVETTE comes running in.
Yvette: They won't do it. I warned you. One Eye was
going to drop it then and there. There's no point, he
said. He said the drums would roll any second now
and that's the sign a verdict has been reached. I
offered a hundred and fifty, he didn't even shrug.
I could hardly get him to stay there while I came
here.
MOTHER COURAGE: Tell him I’ll pay two hundred. Run!
YVETTE runs. MOTHER COURAGE sits, silent.

The CHAPLAIN has stopped doing the glasses
I believe—I've haggled too long.
In the distance, a roll of drums. The chaplain stands
up and walks toward the rear, mother courage re-
mains seated. It grows dark. It gets light again,
MOTHER COURAGE has not moved. YWETTE appears, pale’ (Brecht, 1966, p. 63-64).

Yvette runs off once more to see if she can save Courage's son by offering the full price. Meanwhile, we see Courage and the Chaplain sit in silence, motionless. In the distance we hear drumming - the sign that Courage' son is now being executed. And here, the mute scream sequence starts.

(Brecht, 2015, p. 211f.)

Two minutes of silent screaming by the actress. Her mouth is wide open, head raised, but no sound is heard. In the only bit of dialogue in this sequence, Courage admits her mistake: ‘I reckon I bargained too long’ (p. 64). The chaplain gets up silently and goes to the rear. Mother Courage remains seated. Her face is a screaming mask. She must have sat there for a long time, as the stage grows dark. The drumming stops. Then the stage grows light once more. Her son is dead. He has been executed. Yvette was too late. Mother Courage is still sitting in the exact position, when Yvette arrives. She tells her, full of righteous anger, that Courage got what she asked for. Courage already knows. Her hands are balled fists placed firmly on her lap. Courage is used to getting her way. In scene one, we witnessed her confident entrance. Her head was held high, loud singing voice, proud purveyor of provisions for soldiers. She knows how to get a good deal in a bad situation. She is used to traversing the theatres of war with cunning and humour - coming out the other side with a purse full of money. But here, we see, again, that all her learned behaviour; all the routines and talk and smart moves have their limits. They could not save her son. She did not calculate that she could not bargain with war. As the audience we are rightly exasperated with her. Does she not get it? Why does she still think she can win this one? Why does she still measure the value of her children's lives against the value of money? But things are complicated. Courage implored Yvette:

‘I need a minute to think it over, it's all so sudden. What can I do? I can’t pay two hundred. You should have haggled with them. I must hold on to something, or any passer-by can kick me in the ditch. Go and say I pay a hundred and twenty or the deal's off. Even then I lose the wagon.’ (ibid, p. 62).

Courage is scared of destitution and she is certain as to what will prevent it. She just has to keep back some coins to ensure a new start, even if the cart is lost. The common sense decision leads to her son's execution. In the mute scream sequence, the actress Helene Weigel shows us Courage's behaviour, in all its contradictions. She heightens the ambiguity of her attitude, rather than solving it. In her acting, she in fact points the audience to Courage’s split persona – as business woman and mother. Courages urgently wants to liberate Swiss Cheese; she haggles for the price of his freedom. But she haggles because she knows that, otherwise, she and her daughter could end up homeless. And, as a result of her hesitation to pay the full price, her son gets killed. And she suffers; unspeakably perhaps (the mute scream). She is aware, for a brief moment at least, that she has bargained too long. She knows that her decision had deadly consequences. But her scream is silent. It does not manifest audibly. The audience cannot fully empathise with the mother's pain and experience catharsis. Courage's scream acts as a social gest. It allows the other possibilities, and outcome, of her action (i.e. paying the full price) to be inferred. In the last image, Courage’s pain mixes with anger at the loss of her son, perhaps at her own behaviour, perhaps – finally - at the circumstances that she was unwillingly forced into, and left her seemingly no decision? (We cannot be sure – what would we have done?). Is she going to learn from this and curse the battlefields? But then, her silent scream recedes and her usual stubbornness is returning. In the next moment, she takes her daughter’s hand to comfort her. At the same time, she also denies her son’s identity when asked to identify his dead body, so as not be associated with a traitor. Courage acts as pragmatic as ever. The contradiction between trader and mother has not been resolved in Weigel’s acting. The theatre of war will go on for Courage. In the mute scream sequence, Helene Weigel’s gestic portrayal turns the audience into observers of the complex process of human (self)formation, in all its variables. She invites the audience to reflect on how our social-material being impacts on our behaviour, our decision-making and even our enacted values. But she also provokes us to consider what it might mean to act on our capacity to reason, and to trust and learn from our individual experience. How does one live without re-enacting the very circumstances that stifle and extinguish our human capacity for life?

References

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Abstract:

The aim of this paper is to highlight both the educational and the aesthetic significance of the subject matter in the didactic relationship between teacher and pupil. This is done through a reading of two texts, one written by the 19^th century educationist and German philosopher Johann Fredrich Herbart [1776-1841], and one written by the contemporary philosopher and political theorist Jacques Rancière [1940-]. The reading is rooted in the humanistic tradition in Nordic educational research, and the methodological design is inspired by philosophical hermeneutics. The texts deal with the significance of what in both texts is described as the “third thing” in the relationship between a teacher and a pupil, and an artist and its spectator. This third thing represents, in both texts respectively, the subject matter. As we interpret the texts there is an interesting resonance and similarity between Herbart’s and Rancière’s ideas. Rancière describes this third thing as something that is owned by neither the artist nor the spectator and something that mediates an interest of which no one is in full control. Herbart describes the third thing as something with which the teacher and the pupil are at the same time occupied, and he claims that this shared activity is something that distinguishes teaching from other educational relationships. Objects of art and teaching, such as a play, a novel, a poem, or a specific subject matter are always part of some specific socio-cultural context or horizon, which give them a specific meaning and value. However, the objects of art and teaching, in both their aesthetic and educative sense, should always be seen as carriers of something more than that and both Herbart and Rancière bring insights that help us understand the practices of art and teaching as something beyond functions such as socialization, qualification, learning and development. By emphasizing this third thing between the pupil and the teacher it is possible to reimagine both the educative and aesthetic values of those timeless things around us, such as objects of art and education, that give life a meaning beyond our limited socio-cultural desires, interests, concepts, and identities. Teaching, from this “fusion of the horizon” of Herbart and Rancière, could thus be seen as an activity created by the heterogeneity already integral to the essence of the subject matter, something that always creates situations of disputes and dissensus among those who share an interest in it. As such, this reading is not only a fusion of the horizon between Herbart and Rancière, but also between aesthetics and Didactics, and hopefully opens discussions about the educative potential of both objects of art and teaching, and how a shared interest in such objects opens both art and education for dialogs that cut across different interpretations, generations, cultures, individuals, etcetera.

Full paper:

Herbart with Rancière on the educational significance of the “third thing” in teaching

Erik Hjulström (MDU) & Johannes Rytzler (MDU)

In this paper, we present a reading of two texts, one written by the 19^th century educationist and German philosopher Johann Fredrich Herbart [1776-1841], and one written by the contemporary philosopher and political theorist Jacques Rancière [1940-]. Both texts deal with the significance of the “third thing,” a thing in between, which appears in the relationship between a teacher and a pupil, or in Rancière’s case, in the relationship between an artist and a spectator. This third thing represents, in both texts respectively, the subject matter, as an object of interest, shared by the participants in a specific situation. The aim of the paper is to highlight both the educational and the aesthetic significance of the subject matter in the didactic relationship between teacher and pupil. The theoretical framework of our paper is rooted in a humanistic tradition in Nordic educational research (Kvarnbekk, 2011), and the methodological design is inspired by philosophical hermeneutics (Kemp, 2005). By reading Herbart together with Rancière on the significance of the “third thing” in the didactic and aesthetic relationship, our hope is to highlight an educative dimension in Rancière’s philosophy of emancipation and an emancipatory and aesthetic dimension in Herbart’s didactical philosophy. In a hermeneutical fusion, in the Gadamerian sense, between the horizon of Herbart and that of Rancière, we believe that something important can be said about what it is that makes teaching educative in a radical and aesthetic sense.[1] By educative we mean in this context not a transmission of knowledge, skills, and norms from someone more knowledgeable to someone less knowledgeable. Instead, and in relation to “the third thing,” i.e., the subject matter, educative signifies that which can open and transform the relationship between a teacher and a pupil into something unforeseen and transformative. We are for that reason also addressing the bigger philosophical question of what it is that makes teaching educative, and why education needs teaching. As this is a question that we as writers have often discussed, this paper does not only offer a fusion of thoughts between Herbart and Rancière, but also between us as writers and philosophers of education. The paper could therefore also be seen as a didactic experiment where we intend to explore and expose our shared interest in a specific subject and question. As such, the paper explores what can happen when such an “inter-esse” is used productively in, what Carl Anders Säfström (2005) once described as, “the productive moment of teaching.” (p. 23, our translation)

Didactics, and the triadic relationship

The late 19^th century educationist John Adams (1897) once wrote that “Verbs of teaching govern two accusatives, one of the person, another of the thing; as, Magister Johannem Latinam docuit – the master taught John Latin.” (p. 16). The book, from which the quote is taken, was titled The Herbartian Psychology Applied to Education. There, Adams tried to introduce both a Herbartian and German perspective on teaching for an Anglo-Saxon audience. Adams explained why this double accusative, or double knowledge as he also called it, is important:

Not so long ago it was considered enough to know Latin. Nobody denies that the master must know his subject nobody but Jacotot, that is, for he maintains that the master need not know even that. But while all the world agrees to treat the French educationist as a crack-brained theorist for his gallant attempt to free the master from the drudgery of learning what he has afterwards to teach, no outcry was raised at the neglect of John. To know Latin was regarded as all-sufficient. John was either taken for granted or held to be not worth knowing. (p. 16)

According to Adams, a teacher is always in need of a double knowledge, as the teacher needs to know both their subject and their pupil to find a point of contact between them.  This double knowledge could be seen as the foundation of both the Herbartian theory and German didactics as they identify the relationship between the pupil and the content as the key question in didactical thinking (Roth, 2000). Michael Uljens (2017) has defined teaching as the practice of showing something as something to someone. However, when German didactics is translated into English this emphasis on the something showed to someone often becomes understood as part of the teacher’s knowledge and activity. This already happens when the German term Unterricht is translated into the English equivalents teaching or instruction. Teaching and instruction are terms connoting something that a teacher does or has, i.e., the activity and knowledge of the teacher. However, what the English terms lack in relation to the German term Unterricht is the prefix unter. This unter is the equivalent of inter in English and points towards an activity between the teacher and the pupil in relationship to a shared interest, question, or content.  This could be the reason why there is a much stronger emphasis on the subject matter, and the pupils’ and teacher’s relationships towards it, in German didactics compared to its Anglo-Saxon counterparts. In German didactics, the triadic relationship, which consists of the teacher’s and the pupils’ interaction with the subject matter and with each other, is seen as the key element in teaching. This triadic relation has often been highlighted in discussions concerning the educative substance [Bildungsgehalt] of the content (Uljens, 1997; Künzli, 2020). The central task in a teacher’s lesson planning, or what Klafki (1995) also has called didactical analysis, is how the specific content of the lesson can have an educative value for the pupils. Otto Willman is often recognized as the one who made this the central task of a teacher’s didactical thinking (Uljens, 1997). However, as Uljens (1997) explains, Willman’s ideas were criticized for over-emphasizing the subject matter and its educational value. Nohl and Weniger, and later Klafki, according to Uljens, emphasized the relationship between the content and the specific pupil’s own lifeworld, and claimed that the educational value was to be found within not only this relationship, but in the social aspects of the interaction between the participants of a lesson (see also, Klafki, 1995). Instead of placing the educative substance (or value) in the subject matter itself, it was now recognized in each pupil’s social and critical interest and reflection in relationship towards it (Månsson & Nordmark, 2015). Such a shift of focus, from the subject to the pupil, from education to socialization, has similarities to John Dewey’s educational theories and his critique of both Herbart and the German tradition for its emphasis on, what he called, a recapitulation of traditional subjects, thought and ideas (Dewey, 1913; 1916, see also Hjulström, 2020).

From teaching to social learning

These kinds of social ideals of education together with the emphasis on the different life-worlds of the pupils had a profound influence on 20^th century educational thinking (Dunkel, 1970; Stormbom, 1986). It especially changed the ideas on what should be seen as the most important relationship in the didactic triad between teacher, pupil, and the subject matter. Such a shift has, according to Michael Oakeshott (1972/2001: 84ff), led to a substitution of “education” to “socialization”, where everything that should happen in a classroom is reduced to some specific instrument of political, democratic, economic, and/or ideological values. What seems to get lost in this shift, we claim, is the educational significance of the subject matter but not in terms of a conservative recapitulation of some specific disciplinary knowledge, viewpoint or understanding. What is getting lost is the educational significance of the subject matter that is released in the relationships of teaching. This “essence” or ontology of teaching as Vlieghe and Zamojski (2019) have described it, has nothing to do with knowledge-transmission and the adoption of the pupils' life-worlds to the world of the adult generation (i.e., conservatism). Nor does it turn teaching into only an adaptation of the subject-matter to what for instance Gert Biesta (2017) has described as the pupil’s own “egological” lifeworld, desires, and personal knowledge (i.e., constructivism). Rather, supported by our readings of Herbart and Rancière, we will show that teaching is a specific form of human co-existence, where “the third thing,” i.e., the educative essence of the subject matter plays a crucial part.

Herbart on the “third something” of teaching

Herbart is often recognized as being the founder of educational science (Hilgenheger, 1993). Although he and his influence on educational theory have been criticized for depicting a too mechanistic view on educational practices, his extensive writing on the concepts Bildsamkeit, Tact and Erziehenden Unterricht has gained interest within contemporary educational philosophy, and since the 1990s there is a renewed interest in Herbart’s theory of education (English, 2014; Uljens, 1998; Siljander, 2000). Of special interest in this paper is primarily the latter concept, Erziehenden Unterricht,[2] by German educationists recognized as Herbart’s most import and the only concept he himself invented (Herbart, 1893). Erziehenden Unterricht is a concept that connects important aspects of didactics and pedagogy, teaching, and education (Hopmann, 1998; Hopmann & Riquarts, 2000). According to Norbert Hilgenheger (1993), the concept paved the way for a new paradigm in educational theory by making teaching the primary, instead of a secondary educational question. Before Herbart, questions of education and teaching were handled separately, and teaching [Unterricht] was seen as less important than education [Erziehung]. Herbart challenged this view. Instead, Herbart took an interest in what it is that makes teaching not only educative, but more educative than other educational relationships. In The Science of Education [Allgemeine Pädagogik] Herbart (1806/1904) explains this himself writing, “The concept of instruction has one conspicuous mark which will afford the simplest starting point for our course. In instruction [Unterricht] there is always a third something with which teacher and pupil are at the same time occupied” (p. 227f). This “third something” is what makes teaching more educative than other educational relationships, such as government, discipline, fostering and other dyadic relationships according to Herbart.  

In every other function of education […] the pupil is immediately in the teacher's mind, as the being upon whom he has to work, and who must maintain a passive attitude towards him. Thus, what causes the teacher's labor on the one hand the knowledge to be imparted, on the other the restless boy supplies the basis of division between instruction and education proper. (p. 228)

In the above quote, Herbart uses the difference of activity and passivity to make a distinction between teaching and other educational relationships. In teaching, “there is always a third something with which teacher and pupil are at the same time occupied” (p. 228). This third something is the specific subject matter. In Herbart’s didactics, the aim of teaching is not to transfer knowledge and skills to a passive pupil. Instead, “to create and develop […] interest is the task of instruction” (Herbart, 1841/1908, p.120). To Herbart, this interest does not only mean an interest in a specific subject. Instead, the aim of teaching is the creation of what Herbart called a “many-sided interest.” However, such an interest consists of an interest in a diversity of subjects and for that reason teaching must start with the creation of an interest in some specific subject. With such an emphasis on the creation of an interest in the subject matter, Herbart made another important shift in the theory of education and teaching. Herbart explains:

It is […] a familiar precept that the teacher must try to arouse the interest of his pupils in all that he teaches. However, this precept is generally meant and understood to denote the idea that learning is the end and interest the means to attain it. I wish to reverse that relationship. Learning must serve the purpose of creating interest. Learning is transient, but interest must be lifelong (quoted by Hilgenheger, 1993, p. 657)

There is a crucial difference between interest and learning that Herbart uses in this quote. Learning, as Kant (1790/1989) described it in his Critique of Judgment, can foremost be seen as a reproduction of someone else’s knowledge, ideas, and skills. Learning, for that reason, is always limited by a model and some specific, understanding, and socio-cultural horizon. From such a position, knowledge is also foremost understood as mere information and a collection of that which is known. According to Herbart (1841/1908), such a view,

does not suffice; for this we think of as a supply or store of facts, which a person might possess or lack, and still remain the same being. But he who lays hold of his information and reaches out for more, takes an interest in it. (p. 44)

By stressing, this “more”, and the will to go beyond not only what we know, but also what we are, Herbart emphasized interest in a subject matter as something different from learning as a reproduction of someone else's knowledge. Interest is an interest in that which cannot be reproduced in a subject matter, it is an interest in its persistent questions. The essence of the subject could for that reason be understood as something that creates an “inter-esse”, and a free play of imagination and understanding between those who share an interest in it. To Herbart, who took inspiration from Kant (1790/1987; see also Beiser, 2014), such an immediate interest in a subject matter is also an aesthetic interest, a disinterested interest in something other for its own sake, and something that can create a free play of imagination and understanding in those who share this interest. Here, Herbart emphasized the importance of other individuals who share an interest in relation to which they still have their own understanding and interpretation. A difference of understanding that, instead of being a didactical problem, becomes an educational asset. In other educational relationships the educator has its interest in the “educand” and in their development as a person of good knowledge, values, and behavior. The educator then exercises their power over the educand by deciding what is worth knowing, how to behave and how to judge what is good. Such a relationship is governed by the educator’s own interest, norms, ideals, and socio-cultural history. In educative teaching, however, it is not the teacher’s interest and norms that govern the practice. Instead, it is their interest in the subject matter itself – the “inter-esse” – that is the guide. The purpose of the teacher, as a creator of interest according to Herbart, is not to govern what to know, and how to behave because that would reduce teaching to discipline and fostering. Rather, it is to incite an interest that can transform the relation of who is a teacher and who is a pupil in their shared relation to the subject matter, and to each other. As such, teaching does not become a quest for a specific truth and agreement that would freeze the subject and its questions in time. It is an interest in that third something, placed between teacher and pupil. We now turn to Jacques Rancière, and his writings on the significance of the third thing in the relationship between not only teacher and pupil, but also between the artist and its spectators.
 

Rancière on the “third thing” of both teaching and the theater

In the book The Ignorant Schoolmaster – Five Lectures in Intellectual Emancipation (1991), Jacques Rancière, recounts the story of how Joseph Jacotot, uses a bilingual version of the book Télémaque as an educational device for his Flemish speaking students to study the French language (something that they also did with an unexpected success, according to Jacotot himself). Through the pedagogical adventures of Jacotot, Rancière starts to question the very foundation of educational practices and their explanatory logic. Even if the book could be read as an allegory of how society’s institutions reproduce societal inequalities, its pedagogical insights gained interest in unexpected audiences, especially among artists and people with an interest in aesthetics. Consequently, Rancière was invited to art-schools to discuss the book and started himself to think about the relation between intellectual emancipation and the role of being a spectator. In his text The Emancipated Spectator, one finds an elaborate discussion on the democratic pitfalls and potentials of spectatorship. There, Rancière (2009) begins by questioning the distinction between activity and passivity, a distinction that always has created problems for artists who address the role of spectatorship, thus, developing his own thoughts on intellectual emancipation, especially in relation to what it means to share a common interest in a specific play, poem, or other objects of art, and how a democratic community can take shape through the activity of sharing this interest in such objects.

Spectatorship is in fact an implicit theme in The Ignorant Schoolmaster, to be found in Rancière’s intricate elaborations on the prerequisites of intellectual emancipation – work, will and attention. To Rancière (1991), the key to intellectual emancipation is to be found in what he calls “the reasonable will”, which is the activity of paying attention to a radical exteriority of the linguistic order. It is through the disciplined activity of paying attention one becomes an active spectator and thus becomes aware of and can work with this exteriority, in close relationship with a teacher who verifies this work (Rancière, 1991; Rytzler, 2017). In The Emancipated Spectator (2009), Rancière develops this democratic notion of the spectator by placing them at the heart of the discussion of the relation between art and politics. For the accusers of theatre, being a spectator was bad for the following reasons: a spectator is ignorant and passive and is separated from the capacity to know and the power to act. This means that theatre is bad by definition since it enacts scenes of illusion. Rancière describes how the reformers of the theatre tried to address this problem in two different ways, both as attempts to transform the passivity of the spectator into activity. In the first attempt, the spectator is a scientific observer, put in front of a mystery where a certain distance was needed for the spectator to refine their gaze. In the second attempt, the spectator is drawn into the magical circle of theatrical action, reducing the distance, and thus making them abolish the position of the viewer. Here, Rancière starts to question the network of equalities (audience/community, gaze/passivity, exteriority/separation, mediation/simulacrum) and oppositions (collective/individual, image/reality, activity/passivity) that underpin the principles of the spectacle as separation. The theatrical spectacle tries to teach the spectators how to cease being spectators and to become agents of a collective practice, very much like teachers wanting their pupils and students to be self-active learners (Rytzler, 2017). Here, Plato is one of the earliest and perhaps most famous accusers of both theatre and teaching and their pacification of spectators and pupils. However, even his attempts to emancipate them were doomed to fail. This pedagogical paradox, imaginatively explored in The Ignorant Schoolmaster, is that in teaching practice the distance between teacher and pupil will always be reinstated in each effort to reduce it. Thus, even Socrates becomes a stultifier when he cannot hide his own teaching superiority in the Menon-dialogue (Rancière, 1991; Todd, 2003). To avoid this paradox, or rather by using it productively, Rancière focuses on the relationship between spectatorship and the event of intellectual emancipation, through his critique of different attempts to reform the theatre. The problem with these attempts was their way of abolishing the distance between spectacle and spectator, as this distance is based on the definition of a certain distribution of the sensible that sets out false logical oppositions between viewing/knowing, appearance/reality, activity/passivity, i.e., oppositions between capacities and incapacities. Pupils, as spectators, are discredited in advance by this a-priori definition. However, Rancière finds a way out of this vicious circle of stultification in formulating the central thesis of The Emancipated Spectator:

Emancipating begins when the opposition between viewing and acting is challenged, when we understand that the self-evident facts that structure the relation between saying, seeing, and doing themselves belong to the structure of domination and subjection. (Rancière, 2009, p.13)

Viewing becomes active if we see it as a transformation of this distribution of positions. It is possible to be at the same time a distant spectator and active interpreter. Spectators can therefore create their own poem, through that which has been presented to them. In emancipative teaching, teachers make it possible for the student to learn something that they themselves might not know about that which they teach. The fundamental problem for artists and teachers is that, even if they want to abolish the distance between the spectator/student and the teaching content, they also claim to know and define what distance that should be abolished and how the pupil should learn to think, interpret, and become active in relation to this content (conservatism) or to themselves and their own social-cultural backgrounds (constructivism). However, in an emancipative relation, both the aim and the content of the lesson, as well as the intention of the play or the poem is recognized as something that is not just a question of transmission of an intended meaning, or that the real truth lies in each spectator’s own interpretation. Instead, there is, in a genuine subject matter as well as in a play or poem, that which Rancière describes as a third thing, something that appears in between those who try to understand what it is. Rancière explains,

[T]here is […] the distance inherent in the performance itself, in so far as it subsists, as a spectacle, an autonomous thing, between the idea of the artist and the sensation or comprehension of the spectator. In the logic of emancipation, between the ignorant schoolmaster and the emancipated novice there is always a third thing - a book or some other piece of writing - alien to both and to which they can refer to verify in common what the pupil has seen, what she says about it and what she thinks of it. The same applies to performance. It is not the transmission of the artist's knowledge or inspiration to the spectator. It is the third thing that is owned by no one, whose meaning is owned by no one, but which subsists between them, excluding any uniform transmission, any identity of cause and effect. (Rancière, 2009, p. 14f)

In the quote, Rancière identifies “the third thing” as that which challenges the opposition between an artist and the spectator that is created in the theater. In the theater, and in all other situations where at least two people share something significant to them both, everyone becomes a translator of that which is being shared. This is because the third thing, even if it is created by someone with some specific intention and purpose, also has something which escapes its ability to be reduced to some specific interpretation. It is, on the one hand, “unfamiliar to both” and “owned by no one” and, on the other hand, owned by everyone as an object of attention and interest. It is in this shared ownership of, and attention to, the third thing between them that it is possible to “verify together that which the pupil has seen, what she has to say about it, and what she thinks about it.” (Rancière, 2009, p.15). What Rancière’s discussions on emancipated spectatorship add to his notion of intellectual emancipation, is an aesthetic understanding of the democratic element in teaching practice. He detects a communal power in the relationship between the people on stage/the teacher and the people in the audience/the pupils. However, this power is not a product of them sharing the same event. Rather, it is the power of equality of intelligence that turns it into an event of subjectification. This event is possible because the emancipated spectatorship involves both an acknowledgement of the essence of the third thing and a recognition of everybody’s capacity to engage with and to speak of this thing. Here we find an extension of the notion of “the democracy of the book”, something Rancière (1991) introduces in The Ignorant Schoolmaster (see also Vlieghe & Zamojski, 2019). By gathering around an educative object, such as e.g., a book, a certain communal power is unleashed. This through the capacity of the anonymous, the power of associating and dissociating, and everything else in relation to that third thing which is shared between teachers and students (Rancière, 2009). The individual student is always a spectator but every spectator, especially if we understand this democracy of the book in a radical sense, is already a unique (i.e., irreplaceable) spectator, allowing the book, the poem, or the mathematical theorem to exist regardless of any pre-conceived cultural context or tradition. Emancipation is the blurring of the boundary between those who speak and those who listen, between the individuals and the community. An emancipated community, to Rancière, is a democratic community of narrators and translators, trying to make sense of the third thing, the truth of which never can be spoken, only felt (Rancière, 1991). It is also in this aesthetic event of intellectual emancipation/spectatorship we find the point of contact between Rancière and Herbart.

The educative, aesthetic, and political value of the “third thing” in Herbart and Rancière

As we have interpreted the texts by Herbart and Rancière, there is an interesting resonance and similarity between Herbart’s quote about the third “something” between the teacher and pupil, and Rancière’s quote about the third thing between the artist and the spectator. More accurately, by reading the two quotes together, we can detect a fusion of horizons between Herbart and Rancière as well as between aesthetics and Didactics. We interpret these quotes as reminders of the educative and aesthetic potential of that third thing, which in teaching lies between the teacher and the pupil, and which in art lies between the artist and the spectator. Rancière describes this third thing as something that is owned by neither the artist nor the spectator and something that mediates an interest of which no one is in full control. Herbart describes the third thing as something with which the teacher and the pupil are at the same time occupied, and he claims that this shared activity is something that distinguishes teaching from other educational relationships. Objects of art and teaching, such as a play, a novel, a poem, or a specific subject matter are always part of some specific socio-cultural context or horizon, which give them a specific meaning and value (c.f., Popkewitz, 2004). Neither the teacher nor the artist can avoid filling the content with some specific meaning and intention, something that is part of their own horizons. Vlieghe and Zamojski (2019) describes this closure of a subject-matter as its “pedagogical content” (pp. 55), and such a reduction of the subject to its specific content is a crucial part of school-teaching and forms the basic functions of didactical discourses (e.g., the transmission of some specific meaning or understanding). However, the objects of art and teaching, in both their aesthetic and truly educative sense, should always be seen as carriers of something more than that. Vlieghe and Zamojski (2019) use Heidegger to describe this “more” as that thing which transcends some specific meaning, interpretation, or horizon. This thing is what we interpret as the “third thing”, addressed in both of the texts by Herbart and Rancière. It is the heterogeneous essence, or timelessness that gives “the objects” of art and teaching their educative and aesthetic values.  Even if there is a possibility to reconstruct and find some specific artist’s or teacher’s meaning, intention, and own interpretation, there is still to be found, in these types of objects, something – a third thing – that transcends the possibility to give them a final and “true” meaning. In educative teaching, that thing is something that is “put on the table”, as Masschelein and Simons (2013) have described it, and thus makes a specific “pedagogic subjectification” possible. This subjectification works as a verification of the equality of the participants, through that “thing” in the subject matter which disrupts both the institutional relationships between teacher and student, and the didactic discourse which reduces a subject matter to something transferable (Simons & Masschelein, 2010). This is what makes teaching, and the third thing of the subject matter educative, at least if we by teaching understand it as an educative unterricht, as something pointing at this between – the inter esse – which goes beyond the socio-cultural limits and horizons of the participants. As such, a play, a novel, a poem, or a specific subject matter become shared objects of interest, but not in the form of some specific knowledge and understanding aimed at being transmitted from the one who knows and understands to those who lack true knowledge and understanding.

The thing

Objects of art, and subjects of teaching, in their educative and aesthetic sense, are not foremost intended as transmitters of knowledge and experiences to passive onlookers. They are instead intended for active “at-lookers” [Anschauung] in the Kantian sense, who are not passively just looking, but who are interpreting and creating meaning from their own imagination and understanding. It is important to acknowledge that it is for that reason all the constituents of the didactic relationship become equally important, not only the pupil’s activity as a self-directed learner or the teacher as a model, and inspiring enthusiast. Teaching is about the activity created by the heterogeneity already integral to the essence of the subject matter, and which always creates situations of disputes and dissensus among those who share an interest in it (Rancière, 1999). This is a crucial difference to the emphasis on learning as an autopoietic process in different constructivist learning theories as indicated by Siljander (2000). But it is also different from the interpretation of Ranciére as emphasizing, through Jacotot, teaching as some kind of being with the world, or as an adoption of concepts as Biesta (2017) has described it. Following both Vlieghe and Zamojski (2019), and Masschelein and Simons (2013), but also the German didactic tradition stemming back to Herbart, it is the thing of the subject-matter which matters in both teaching and education. The third thing which in both the didactic and aesthetic relationship is connected to the inter of an “esse”, of that thing that is part of no one, and thus also open for everyone. That does not mean that the teacher’s and the pupil’s activities need to be the same, and that their knowledge and interest are quantitively and qualitatively equal. The teacher of a subject matter, as well as an artist, or a writer of a play or a poem is important as mediators of the will to interpret, to imagine, to discuss and to dispute. They put things on the table and create openings in that which seems closed. Such a teacher is not an assessor of the pupil’s understanding and knowledge, but instead someone who invites someone else to share their interest. A sharing that is not about who knows, and who does not, but about an adventure in the will to go beyond what we know about that which we share an interest in. When sharing such an interest, the traditional opposition of knowledge between a teacher and a pupil is challenged as this interest cannot be measured as a difference between teacher and pupil. Instead, the relationship between them becomes a relationship between individuals who share an equal interest in something other than themselves. A thing in or of the world which speaks to, and calls, both teacher and pupil into awareness and action.

Summary: The significance of the “third thing” in teaching

The aim of our paper was to highlight both the educational and the aesthetic significance of the subject matter in the didactic relationship between teachers and pupils. It is important in this discussion to make a distinction between a subject matter in the aesthetic sense, as both Herbart and Rancière highlight, and a subject matter as a school subject. As a school subject, a subject is framed by some specific disciplinary knowledge and as a specific idea of the distribution of ways of knowing, doing, and acting formulated in a syllabus or learning objectives and made into a hierarchy of different both quantitative and qualitative measures that can be used to assess a pupil´s performance in relationship to such a hierarchy. The school subject is for that reason often used as a tool for something else than the subjects intrinsic educational and aesthetic value. Teaching is, according to Herbart (1841/1908), only educative when it is the subject matter, and the dialog around it for its own sake, that is governing the situation. It is this dimension in the subject matter we understand as its aesthetic dimension. A dimension which separates the subject from its instrumental value, and specific and limited socio-cultural understanding. With Rancière, and his aesthetic interpretation of intellectual emancipation, we can further understand the educational significance of the subject matter. By introducing the subject matter as that third thing, to which no one can claim ownership, it is freed from its role in reinstating a hierarchy of intelligences. Instead, it cuts through the domain of senses, and deconstructs its own role as a school subject and calls for attention and action. Although such events - educative events, to speak with Herbart and emancipative events, to speak with Rancière - can and do happen in schools it is not what schooling seems to be intended for today, and it is not what is understood to be the purpose of either school teaching or the schoolteacher. It is within this context the need for a rediscovery of the third thing in teaching, beyond the confines of what Biesta (2014) has described as the aims of qualification and socialization, we think our reading of Herbart together with Rancière is important. Both writers bring insights that help us understand teaching practice as something beyond its function for socialization, qualification, learning and development. By emphasizing that third thing between the pupil and the teacher it is possible to reimagine both the educative and aesthetic values of those timeless things around us, such as objects of art and education, that give life a meaning beyond our limited socio-cultural desires, interests, concepts, and identities.

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Abstract

The advent of Covid-19, a new and highly contagious form of Corona virus, in late 2019 led to an unsurprising rejuvenation of appeals to traditional knowledge, with some rather bizarre assertions and recommendations. The purported democratisation of knowledge and truth has also been perceived to affect secondary and tertiary education, arising in particular from the enforced switch to online learning in the wake of the outbreak of the pandemic. Thus, Ephraim Gwaravanda and Amasa Ndofirepi, in their introduction to an edited volume on African university education in times of Corona, seem to suggest that the nature of knowledge is changing. They argue, with Stephen Downes and Jane Gilbert, that “‘important’ or ‘valid’ knowledge now is different from prior forms of knowledge, particularly rationalistic and empiricist accounts of knowledge. The internet is seen as providing multiple and democratic sources of knowledge, thereby enriching students from a variety of knowledge paradigms. New technologies allow for the de-institutionalisation, de-marginalisation and deconstruction of knowledge.” They quote Gilbert’s reference to Manuel Castells as arguing that “knowledge is not an object but a series of networks and flows. The new knowledge is a process[,] not a product … it is produced not in the minds of individuals but in the interactions between people …” The authors then reiterate Gilbert’s reference to Jean-François Lyotard’s view that “the traditional idea that acquiring knowledge trains the mind would become obsolete, as would the idea of knowledge as a set of universal truths. Instead, there will be many truths, many forms of knowledge and many forms of reason. As a result, the boundaries between traditional disciplines are dissolving, traditional methods of representing knowledge (books, academic papers, and so on) are becoming less important, and the roles of traditional academics or experts are undergoing major change.” Among the questions that arise, according to the authors, are the following: “What forms of justified true beliefs arise in the context of online learning? What are the online epistemic opportunities and threats for the African university student?” Apart from attempting to address these questions, this essay will formulate a few of its own, arising especially out the assertions quoted above: What does “de-marginalisation of knowledge” involve? What are “democratic [and undemocratic] sources of knowledge”? What could be meant by “a variety of knowledge paradigms”? Why would “the idea of knowledge as a set of universal truths” and the “idea that acquiring knowledge trains the mind … become obsolete” with the advent of new technologies? Finally, the chapter investigates the relational conception of knowledge and truth suggested by Gilbert and Castells, with special reference to tertiary education on the African continent.

Introduction

The advent of Covid-19, a new and highly contagious form of corona virus, in late 2019 led to an unsurprising rejuvenation of appeals to traditional knowledge, with some rather bizarre assertions and recommendations. The president of Madagascar introduced a health drink called ‘Covid Organics’, which is manufactured on the basis of the local Artemis plant and supposedly strengthens not only the immune system but also offers protection against numerous viruses, fever and especially lung disease. After being distributed among school children, shipments were made to several other African countries. In India, the Ayurveda ministry announced shortly after the first Corona cases were made public that traditional medicine can help against Covid-19. Following criticism, the statement that it offered a cure was retracted and replaced by the suggestion that alternative medicine could strengthen the immune system. Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro issued a recommendation on Twitter to use a herbal mixture as a cure, while China’s president Xi Jinping claimed that 90% of all recovered Corona patients had received traditional Chinese medicine. Similar claims were made by Bolivia’s deputy minister for traditional medicine, Felix Quilla Muni, who recommended steaming with a mixture of eucalyptus and chamomile. In Indonesia, the demand rose for red ginger, resulting in a drastic increase in market prices, as in the case of curcuma powder in Sri Lanka, following which the government set an upper limit. Nepal’s prime minister Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli recommended steam therapy and drinking hot water. Surely the most bizarre claim came from the recently unseated US president and self-proclaimed expert on medical treatment and health care, who suggested that American citizens inject or imbibe disinfectants. Needless to remark, demand for disinfectants rose exponentially in the United States.

The purported democratisation of knowledge and truth has also been perceived to affect secondary and tertiary education, arising in particular from the enforced switch to online learning as a result of the outbreak of the pandemic. Thus, Ephraim Gwaravanda and Amasa Ndofirepi (in their introduction to a forthcoming volume they have co-edited) seem to suggest that the nature of knowledge is changing (see also Bates 2019, chapter 2.7). They argue, with connectivists like Stephen Downes (2007) and Jane Gilbert (2005), that

‘important’ or ‘valid’ knowledge now is different from prior forms of knowledge, particularly rationalistic and empiricist accounts of knowledge. The internet is seen as providing multiple and democratic sources of knowledge, thereby enriching students from a variety of knowledge paradigms. New technologies allow for the de-institutionalisation, de-marginalisation and deconstruction of knowledge.

They quote Gilbert’s reference (2005, 35) to Manuel Castells (2000) as arguing that

knowledge is not an object but a series of networks and flows. The new knowledge is a process[,] not a product … it is produced not in the minds of individuals but in the interactions between people …

The authors then reiterate Gilbert’s reference (2005, 35) to Jean-François Lyotard’s view (1984) that

the traditional idea that acquiring knowledge trains the mind would become obsolete, as would the idea of knowledge as a set of universal truths. Instead, there will be many truths, many forms of knowledge and many forms of reason. As a result, the boundaries between traditional disciplines are dissolving, traditional methods of representing knowledge (books, academic papers, and so on) are becoming less important, and the roles of traditional academics or experts are undergoing major change.

Gwaravanda and Ndofirepi end their introduction by posing these questions: “What forms of justified true beliefs arise in the context of online learning? What are the online epistemic opportunities and threats for the African university student?” In what follows, I will try to respond to these questions, before formulating a few of my own, arising especially out the assertions quoted above.

“What forms of justified true belief arise in the context of online learning?”

In posing this question, Gwaravanda and Ndofirepi acknowledge the traditional philosophical definition of knowledge-that (i.e., propositional, theoretical or factual knowledge) and its three necessary components, belief, justification and truth.[1] Epistemology as a normative field of inquiry (i.e., concerned with what qualifies as ‘knowledge’) reflects the classical philosophical understanding of knowledge. According to Socrates, in Plato’s Meno (1970, 65),

True opinions, as long as they stay, are splendid and do all the good in the world, but they will not stay long – off and away they run out of the soul of mankind, so they are not worth much until you fasten them up with the reasoning of cause and effect. ... When they are fastened up, first they become knowledge, secondly they remain; and that is why knowledge is valued more than right opinion, and differs from right opinion by this bond.

And in Plato’s Theaetetus (1978, 909) the (rhetorical) question is, “... how can there ever be knowledge without an account and right belief?” Relevant distinctions are made here between knowledge and belief, between mere belief and well-warranted (or adequately justified) belief, and between true belief and justified true belief. The inquiry here is essentially normative, for example, evaluating beliefs and belief strategies, investigating what beliefs are trustworthy enough to be acted on, how researchers should validate their findings, what forms of argument and what kinds of justification are acceptable, who (if anyone) counts as an epistemic authority, etc. This is by no means an exclusively Western or Eurocentric understanding, contrary to what Gwaravanda (2019, 3) maintains. In Yoruba, too, pertinent distinctions are made between gbàgbó (belief; the subjective/private/personal component of knowledge) and mò (knowledge in the sense of ‘knowledge-that’). Barry Hallen and J.O. Sodipo (1997, 81) observe that

gbàgbó that may be verified is gbàgbó that may become mò. Gbàgbó that is not open to verification and must therefore be evaluated on the basis of justification alone (àlàyé, papò, etc.) cannot become mò and consequently its òótó [truth] must remain indeterminate.

If Gwaravanda and Ndofirepi had asked, “What forms of knowledge arise in the context of online learning?”, the response might have mentioned both knowledge-that and knowledge-how, i.e., practical or skill-type knowledge – knowing how to conduct independent research and how to access primary and secondary sources, requisite computer skills, digital literacy and internet intelligence, and so forth, and perhaps even acquaintance- or familiarity-type knowledge. The question, “What forms of propositional (theoretical/factual) knowledge arise in the context of online learning?”, however, is nonsensical since there is only one form: knowledge-that. Perhaps the authors mean something different – for example, what forms of justification, truth or belief arise in the context of online learning. Inquiring into different forms of justification makes excellent sense.[2] Thus, we commonly distinguish not only between different degrees and different contexts but also between different kinds of justification: observation, self-evidence, reason, introspection, testimony, memory, deductive and non-deductive reasoning etc. The idea of different forms of beliefs also makes good sense. Beliefs vary not only in degree of strength and in intensity but also in duration: beliefs may be fleeting, longer-lasting or indeed life-long. They may be rationally held, or they may be irrational and non-rational. They might be guided by our emotions and by our moral convictions, as well as by our rational commitments and logical reasoning. The question of ‘different forms of truth’, on the other hand, is a bit more difficult to get a handle on. David Bridges (1999) has argued, quite compellingly, that different theories of truth might be seen to fit different areas of knowledge or (educational) research models – without implying relativism about truth. For example, the correspondence theory of truth seems to have its natural home in at least some of the empirical sciences, while the coherence theory of truth pertains, for example, to mathematics and symbolic logic. The pragmatist theory of truth (with utility as its characteristic mark; i.e., a proposition is true if it is useful to believe) is appropriate for technology and certain applied sciences, whereas the consensus conception of truth has a distinct appeal in the realm of social and political decision-making and is also relevant in matters of aesthetics and taste. So, perhaps in online learning the pragmatist theory of truth has particular purchase – without the status of truth as the objective component of knowledge thereby being compromised in any way, or knowledge itself being in a state of constant flux.

Tony Bates’s (2019, chapter 2.7.4) “difficulty … with the broad generalisations about the changing nature of knowledge is that there have always been different kinds of knowledge … Thus while beliefs about what constitutes ‘important’ knowledge may be changing, this does not mean that the nature of academic knowledge is changing. Gilbert argues that in a knowledge society, there has been a shift in valuing applied knowledge over academic knowledge in the broader society, but this has not been recognised or accepted in education (and particularly the school system). She sees academic knowledge as associated with narrow disciplines such as mathematics and philosophy, whereas applied knowledge is knowing how to do things, and hence by definition tends to be multi-disciplinary. Gilbert argues ([2005,] 159-160) that academic knowledge is:

‘authoritative, objective, and universal knowledge. It is abstract, rigorous, timeless – and difficult. It is knowledge that goes beyond the here and now knowledge of everyday experience to a higher plane of understanding. … In contrast, applied knowledge is practical knowledge that is produced by putting academic knowledge into practice. It is gained through experience, by trying things out until they work in real-world situations.’”

Bates adds (op. cit.), “Other kinds of knowledge that don’t fit the definition of academic knowledge are those kinds built on experience, traditional crafts, trial-and-error, and quality improvement through continuous minor change built on front-line worker experience …”

In the extract quoted above, Gilbert and Bates distinguish between propositional (academic) and practical (applied) knowledge. Of course, the different senses of knowledge may overlap. Thus, language skills may be characterized in terms of propositional, practical and acquaintance-type knowledge: if I know (i.e., if I am acquainted or familiar with) a particular language, then this implies that I can speak and/or read it, and that I know what the words I am using mean and refer to. Similarly, if I know how to do online research, then I know that I need to activate certain search engines, and that I am familiar with the pertinent commands and functions, etc.

“What are the online epistemic opportunities and threats for the African university student?”

Gwaravanda and Ndofirepi presumably see the internet and online technology “as providing multiple and democratic sources of knowledge, thereby enriching students from a variety of knowledge paradigms”. The “new technologies”, online learning and increased connectivity arguably provide distinct epistemic opportunities since they “allow for the de-institutionalisation, de-marginalisation and deconstruction of knowledge”. But what does this mean? Clearly, each of these ideas needs to be critically scrutinised – they cannot be taken for granted, as I will show in the following sections. A quick and obvious answer to the question regarding online epistemic opportunities will highlight students’ exposure to a wide range of theories, viewpoints and ideas, opportunity to conduct independent, self-governed research and to select sources, and so forth. With epistemic opportunity comes epistemic responsibility, however: being clear about the trustworthiness of the respective sources, awareness that ‘liking’ a particular theory, point of view and idea is not the same as that theory being correct. The twin responsibilities of pursuing truth and avoiding error remain uppermost among the epistemic commitments of the university student, in Africa as elsewhere.

Regarding the latter part of the question, an “epistemic threat for the African university student” that comes to mind is conceptually linked to what Miranda Fricker (2007, 1) has called “hermeneutical injustice”, which occurs “when a gap in collective interpretive resources puts someone at an unfair disadvantage when it comes to making sense of their social experiences”. Hermeneutical injustice involves a general failure to marshal the conceptual resources necessary to understand and interpret information, research findings and knowledge claims. If students have not been given the tools to make sense of their own situation, then this will place them at an epistemic and cognitive disadvantage. However, I suspect that the issue on the African continent, with regard to online learning in post-normal times, is not so much the lack of conceptual-interpretive resources as the dearth of material resources (computers, laptops, notebooks, iPads, inadequate connectivity) – which raises questions of social and distributive justice rather than epistemic and cognitive justice.

I also worry that an over-emphasis on traditional or local knowledge, and on indigenous knowledge systems, may have this very effect of marginalisation. As Elizabeth Rata (2012, 107-108) contends, “the turn to localised cosmologies, where knowledge of the world is tied to the experience of that world, limits access to one of the most important resources in the contemporary world: the knowledge developed in the scientific disciplines”. She adds (108), “Localised knowledge contributes to re-racialising social groups into pre-modern forms of organisation, confining people to the limited and limiting world of experience”. Discussing “the consequences for education of the shift to localised knowledge”, Rata considers the

working class, and in particular the re-ethnicised section of the working class, [to be] doubly disadvantaged. These groups are incarcerated into a never-ending present as schools [and universities] fail to provide the intellectual tools of objective thinking and its medium in advanced literacy that lead to an imagined, yet unknown, future. Indeed, supporters of ethnicised knowledge specifically reject objective knowledge, with indigenous writer Linda Smith (1999) referring to ‘objectification (as) a process of dehumanisation’ (39).

Rata’s blunt but compelling conclusion is that “the localisation of knowledge in the curriculum is disempowering knowledge” (2012, 120; see also Horsthemke 2021, 90).

What does “de-marginalisation of knowledge” involve?

Broadly, epistemic marginalisation refers not only to the unequal provision of knowledge and of epistemic goods (like hermeneutical tools, to be able to make sense of one’s situation), but also to the failure to acknowledge knowers and their legitimate claims to knowledge. Given the experience of ‘indigenous’ Africans of physical and mental oppression, it stands to reason that de-marginalisation of knowledge would have as educational priorities matters of transformation and redress, processes that are inextricably bound up with epistemic justice. Epistemic justice refers to the fair and equal distribution of epistemic benefits and burdens: it involves due acknowledgement of individuals as knowers with corresponding rights and responsibilities. In her influential account of epistemic injustice, Fricker (2007) distinguishes between two types of epistemic justice, testimonial and hermeneutical justice. In order to bring about “collective social political change” (8), what is required at a testimonial level is “reflexive awareness of the likely presence of prejudice”, and this “anti-prejudicial virtue is the virtue of testimonial justice” (91-92). Testimonial justice, says Fricker, is “both ethical and intellectual in character, at once a virtue of truth and a virtue of justice” (124). Thus, apart from being able to rely on the competence and sincerity of speakers (72), i.e., African students, and apart from sensitivity (ibid.) and empathy (79), “hearers [online instructors] need dispositions that lead them reliably to accept truths and to reject falsehoods” (115). “Hermeneutical justice, like testimonial justice, is a hybrid virtue” (174). It is an original virtue of both truth and justice. Testimonial justice involves accepting the credibility of students’ knowledge claims, just insofar as these claims are not only believed sincerely but also justified and true, while hermeneutical justice involves a general effort of marshalling the conceptual resources necessary for understanding and interpreting these knowledge claims. The result is that African students are supported in their self-development and in the realisation of their full human potential: in “becoming who they are” (5).

If educational and epistemic concerns and priorities arise from different forms of social life, then those that have emerged from a social system in which a particular race or group has been subordinate to another must be suspect. In addition, given the (especially vicious) history of physical and psychological colonisation on the African continent, it is plausible that one of the educational priorities will be to educate against development of a subordinate or inferior mindset, as well as against a victim- and beggar mentality – despite the continuing economic crisis and low level of economic growth. Given, too, the ravages of the disease on the continent, education about pandemics has special resonance: Covid-19 (like HIV/AIDS) does not only snatch away educators; it also leaves children orphaned and students infected.

If what has been established above is correct, then the solution to the problem of epistemic marginalisation cannot be to revert to traditional, local or cultural knowledge, or to indigenous knowledge systems. It is, rather, epistemic empowerment on a different level, viz. to ensure advanced literacy, to provide the tools for active, critical engagement, deliberation and debate.

What are “democratic [and undemocratic] sources of knowledge”?

It is important to distinguish carefully between multiple and democratic sources of knowledge provided by the internet and online platforms, and indiscriminate postings of opinions, prejudices and ‘alternative facts’. ‘Post-truth’ politics and conspiracy theories (e.g., regarding Covid-19) are not democratic: in fact, they are quite the opposite. If the internet and online platforms become echo chambers rather than sounding boards then the real dangers are obvious. Studies indicate that children, teenagers, students and also adults are increasingly unable to distinguish between news and fake news, between a scientific study and a sponsored advertisement. (The latter is usually marked by the indicator ‘sponsored content’.) What makes this even more remarkable is that the internet also greatly facilitates the cross-checking of received information. People have always been gullible and easily persuaded by data and statistics, however fabricated. Thus, the ‘digital intelligence’ so frequently attributed to learners and students is a bit of a myth, or at least only half-applicable. This points to the urgent need for courses promoting internet intelligence and digital literacy, which many schools and universities have now begun to offer.[3]

What are the implications for the curriculum? Not included, at least not under the guise of ‘knowledge’, should be mere beliefs or opinions unanchored by reason/s, bald assertions, superstitions, prejudice, bias – in fact anything that involves myth, fabrication and constitutes an infringement on the cognitive rights of learners and students. However, it may be pedagogically and epistemically useful to teach these qua beliefs, opinions, assertions, superstitions, prejudice and bias. This would no doubt strengthen students’ reasoning and critical thinking abilities, something I take – without adducing reasons – to be desirable. While something might be said for teaching strategies that are not directly truth-promoting, like playing devil’s advocate or trying on an argument for size, good practice is arguably modelled by educators who pursue truth and who are truthful and sincere in their interactions with others.

Yet, it is no longer enough to present knowledge, to make facts available. Especially in times of increasing online instruction, there is also a need for second-order elucidation that – over and above transmission and mediation of contents – also provides information about their origin, how they came to be, and that advertises its criteria of rationality. Classical gate-keeping must be accompanied by “gate-reporting” – which goes beyond selection of relevant information and knowledge to include also making one’s selection criteria transparent, providing information about one’s sources, and self-reflective, dialogically oriented justification of relevance, plausibility, and claims to objectivity. Simply put, academics and teachers have to explain again and again how they work and why they say what they say. Gate-reporting also has to be used, without false modesty or politically correct restraint, to counteract disinformation, moral and political manipulation, and the like.  

What could be meant by “a variety of knowledge paradigms”?

The term ‘knowledge’ has been employed in some kind of rhetorical inflation, thus obscuring rather than clarifying important issues and distinctions. Over the centuries, arguably beginning with Socrates and Plato (and manifest in other philosophical traditions, as I indicated earlier), epistemologists have reached a general agreement about a basic division, that between knowledge and belief. A related distinction has been made between normative and descriptive inquiry, regarding beliefs and knowledge. How, then, do these distinctions bear on the idea of “a variety of knowledge paradigms”?

Acquisition of knowledge is sometimes, mistakenly, confused with how people acquire beliefs. This understanding of ‘knowledge’ serves an essentially descriptive function – and belongs less in philosophy than in the so-called ‘sociology of knowledge’ (what might be called, more fittingly, the ‘sociology of belief’) and perhaps in the psychology of learning. Finally, ‘knowledge’ is sometimes employed as a description of a set of beliefs – a description of the specific content of beliefs that are held, or are accorded the status of being knowledge, by ethnic or cultural groups (see Levisohn and Phillips 2012, 44-55). ‘Various knowledge paradigms’, in this usage, are simply those differing sets of beliefs held by different communities and, again (as in the first descriptive sense), have little to do with ‘knowledge’.

It follows that there is a number of senses in which ‘variety of knowledge paradigms’ might be (and indeed has been) used, denoting

• a variety of beliefs and belief systems,
• a variety of research method(ologie)s,
• a variety of research questions,
• various researchers and their cultures, and
• various epistemologies and epistemological perspectives.

Although the reference to ‘knowledge’ in the first four of these examples is arguably inappropriate (in that philosophers do not understand ‘knowledge’ in any of these ways), the use of ‘variety’ is uncontroversial. Beliefs and belief systems vary, as do research methods (although this should not be taken to imply some kind of methodological relativism, as advocated – for example – by Linda Tuhiwai Smith; 1999) and research questions. Similarly, there is considerable variation in researchers’ backgrounds, their individual and cultural identities, interests, and objectives. The ‘variety’ in question becomes more controversial, and indeed problematic, in relation to ‘epistemologies and epistemological perspectives’. This, says Harvey Siegel (2012, 73), goes to the ‘heart of the matter’.

‘Variety of knowledge paradigms’ in the sense of different normative theories of knowledge (which are concerned with what ought or ought not to be called ‘knowledge’) makes good educational sense, i.e., in terms of introducing learners and students to foundational – rationalism, naturalism, empiricism, positivism – and non-foundational epistemologies: postpositivism, antifoundationalism, pragmatism, relativism, feminist standpoint epistemology, postmodernism, constructivism, and the like. However, whereas defenders of empiricism, rationalism etc. typically think that only one epistemology can be correct, the case of so-called ‘multicultural’, ‘localised’ or ‘indigenous epistemologies’ is strikingly different, in that they are all considered equally valid. Why is this problematic? The problem is that this understanding of ‘knowledge paradigms’ leads in the direction of relativism. While none of these ‘multicultural’, ‘localised’ or ‘indigenous knowledge paradigms’ can be critically interrogated[4], it is also impossible for them to achieve “normative status [or validity] beyond their specific group of origin” (Levisohn and Phillips 2012, 49). If it were logically possible to establish relativism as correct, then there would be no way to elevate African women’s knowledge paradigms above European androcentric knowledge paradigms. Racist and sexist ‘epistemologies’ would be no less valid than “Afrocentric feminist epistemology” (Hill Collins 1990). In all these instances, however, the reference to ‘knowledge paradigms’ and ‘epistemologies’ is philosophically unsound. Racist and sexist worldviews constitute no epistemologies, no paradigms of knowledge: they are threadbare collections of questionable beliefs, dubious values and prejudices. But only a non-relativist can coherently and consistently can judge them so. This observation also has a bearing on the next set of points I wish to make.

Why would “the idea of knowledge as a set of universal truths” and the “idea that acquiring knowledge trains the mind … become obsolete” with the advent of new technologies?

Some of the conclusions Gilbert (2005, 35) draws from Lyotard’s view (1984) are compelling, especially in times of diminishing contact or face-to-face instruction. “Traditional methods of representing knowledge (books, academic papers, and so on)” are, indeed, “becoming less important” – or at least they are increasingly being replaced by online and electronic sources, e-books, e-articles, podcasts and film clips. The “roles of traditional academics or experts”, too, “are undergoing major change”. Academics, experts and authorities are increasingly assuming the roles of facilitators, designers and producers of online resources, creative directors of audio and video clips, and the like. Conversely, as I have shown above, students are required to assume greater control of their learning, with correspondingly increasing epistemic responsibilities and obligations as quasi-independent researchers. But does all this really follow from the premises that “the traditional idea that acquiring knowledge trains the mind would become obsolete, as would the idea of knowledge as a set of universal truths”, that “there will be many truths, many forms of knowledge and many forms of reason”? It is difficult to accept these premise-statements.

Acquisition of knowledge continues to be the mainstay of education, and mental training is all but inconceivable without it. Of course, it is not a matter of rote learning and regurgitation – but education has not been about unthinking reproduction for a long time, even on an African continent plagued by centuries of instructional force-feeding and information-bulimia. Education is all about the reflective and critical assimilation of knowledge, learning to apply it creatively in previously unfamiliar, new contexts, and establishing parallels, links and connections with other learning areas, disciplines and problem contexts. 

What about the alleged obsolescence of “knowledge as a set of universal truths” and the prediction that “there will be many truths, many forms of knowledge and many forms of reason”? Bates (2019, chapter 2.7.5) asserts (against Gilbert, it seems) that

while academic knowledge is not ‘pure’ or timeless or objectively ‘true’, it is the principles or values that drive academic knowledge that are important. Although it often falls short, the goal of academic studies is to reach for deep understanding, general principles, empirically-based theories, timelessness, etc., even if knowledge is dynamic, changing and constantly evolving. Academic knowledge is not perfect, but does have value because of the standards it requires.

There seems to be a confusion here between knowledge and the object of teaching, i.e., the information that is being transmitted in academic and other instructional contexts. Bates appears to characterise the latter here. In simple terms, teaching-that does not imply knowing-that. One may teach what is false. Nor does learning-that imply knowing-that. One may learn what is not true. No serious academic or scientist thinks that what s/he teaches or has discovered is anything more than provisional. Sometimes (in fact, very often) it stands the test of time, sometimes it does not. It is furthermore difficult, if not impossible, to make sense of the assertion that “knowledge is dynamic, changing and constantly evolving”. If this, too, constitutes knowledge (and surely Bates must claim it does), then this bit of knowledge will, by definition, be “dynamic, changing and constantly evolving”. Unless Bates wants to claim that all knowledge is changing etc. except the knowledge that it is changing etc. But then why should there not also be knowledge that is constant and unchanging? It would appear that universalists are on considerably stronger ground than anti-universalists.

What about the assertion, “there will be many truths, many forms of knowledge and many forms of reason”? Will this be one truth, one piece of knowledge, one form of reason among many? If so, why should this be veritistically, epistemically and/or rationally compelling for anyone who does not share this view?

A relational conception of knowledge and truth

Gilbert (2005: 35), as we saw, refers to Castells (2000) as arguing that

knowledge is not an object but a series of networks and flows. The new knowledge is a process[,] not a product … it is produced not in the minds of individuals but in the interactions between people …

This understanding resonates with what is arguably characteristic of African (and other traditional or indigenous) conceptions of knowledge, viz. a strongly relational element that is also found in African ontology and ethics. This is also captured in the verdict, “Indigenous knowledge has a trans-generational, communal and cultural nature”.[5] Further examples abound. Thus, Ladislaus Semali and Joe Kincheloe (1999: 51) refer to the ‘metaphysicality’ of indigenous knowledge systems, “based on the forces that connect people to one another”. R. Sambuli Mosha (1999: 214) asserts that “Whatever is known, and passed on as knowledge, is known in the context of its relationship to life and the world”. And Rodney Reynar (1999: 290-291) points out that indigenous knowledge “is indigenous precisely because it is incorporated in a way of life.” It “does not derive its origins from the individual but, rather, in the collective epistemological understanding of the community”. This understanding of knowledge relations and knowledge communities then serves to validate indigenous insights and multitudinous ways of knowing, alternative conceptions of knowledge and a great “variety of knowledge paradigms”.

A charitable and generative reading of Gilbert’s (and Castells’s) view would seek to dissociate it from both self-undermining relativism and self-marginalising culturalism. But this would almost certainly require stripping this account of knowledge of any references to flow or fluctuation, indigeneity, and social and cultural construction. How then could one make logical and epistemological sense of knowledge being produced “in the interactions between people”? Coming to know is understood as a process of persons developing insights in relation with one another and with all that exists. This indicates not only an intimate relationship between knower and known, between what it is to know and what it is to be known, but in effect also a communalist understanding of knowledge: I know because we know. Or, A knower is a knower because of other knowers.[6] This also gives new meaning to the idea of an online community, where educational and epistemological priorities are determined by exposure to a common threat (in this case a new, highly contagious and often lethal virus) – and also by shared opportunities of debate, mutually beneficial deliberation and critique, sober and measured reflection, and also joint resistance to the global pandemic.

References

Bates, Anthony W. 2019. Teaching in a Digital Age: Guidelines for Designing Teaching and Learning. https://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/ 

Bridges, David. 1999. “Educational Research: Pursuit of Truth or Flight of Fancy?” British Educational Research Journal 25(5): 597-616.

Castells, Manuel. 2000. The Rise of the Network Society. Oxford: Blackwell.

Downes, Stephen. 2007. “What Connectivism Is.” Half An Hour, February 3. https://halfanhour.blogspot.com/2007/02/what-connectivism-is.html

Fricker, Miranda. 2007. Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Funtowicz, S.O. 2021. “A Quick Guide to Post-Normal Science.” Integration and Implementation Insights, October 19. https://i2insights.org/2021/10/19/guide-to-post-normal-science/

Gilbert, Jane. 2005. Catching the Knowledge Wave: The Knowledge Society and the Future of Education. Wellington: New Zealand Council for Educational Research.

Gwaravanda, Ephraim Taurai. 2019. “An Epistemological Critique of the African University Education System.” Education Systems Around the World. Intech Open: 1-11. https://www.intechopen.com/online-first/an-epistemological-critique-of-the-african-university-education-system

Gwaravanda, Ephraim Taurai and Ndofirepi, Amasa P. 2020. “Towards Knowledge Pluriversality in African Universities.” In African Higher Education in the 21^st Century: Epistemological, Ontological and Ethical Perspectives, edited by E.T. Gwaravanda and A.P. Ndofirepi, 57-73. London/Boston: Brill/Sense.

Gwaravanda, Ephraim Taurai and Ndofirepi, Amasa P. forthcoming. “Introduction.” In Coronavirus and Online Learning in Universities in Africa: Philosophical Reflections, edited by E.T. Gwaravanda and A.P. Ndofirepi. London/Boston: Brill/Sense.

Hallen, Barry and Sodipo, J.O. 1997. Knowledge, Belief, and Witchcraft: Analytical Experiments in African Philosophy (2^nd edition; 1^st edition 1986). Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Horsthemke, Kai. 2020. “Epistemological Issues in African Higher Education.” In African Higher Education in the 21^st Century: Epistemological, Ontological and Ethical Perspectives, edited by E.T. Gwaravanda and A.P. Ndofirepi, 38-56. London/Boston: Brill/Sense.

Horsthemke, Kai. 2021. Indigenous Knowledge: Philosophical and Educational Considerations. Lanham: Lexington Books.

Levisohn, Jon and Phillips, Denis C. 2012. “Charting the Reefs: A Map of Multicultural Epistemology.” In Education, Culture and Epistemological Diversity: Mapping a Contested Terrain, edited by C.W. Ruitenberg and D.C. Phillips, 39-63. Dordrecht: Springer.

Lyotard, Jean-François. 1984. The Post-Modern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Mosha, R. Sambuli. 1999. “The Inseparable Link Between Intellectual and Spiritual Formation in Indigenous Knowledge and Education: A Case Study in Tanzania.” In What Is Indigenous Knowledge?: Voices From the Academy, edited by L.M. Semali and J.L. Kincheloe, 209-225. New York & London: Falmer Press.

Plato 1970. “Meno.” In The Complete Texts of the Great Dialogues of Plato, translated by W.H.D. Rouse, W.H.D. and edited by E.H. Warmington and P.G. Rouse, New York, Toronto & London: Plume.

Plato 1978. “Theaetetus.” In Plato – Collected Dialogues, edited by E. Hamilton, E. and H. Cairns, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Rata, Elizabeth. 2012. “The Politics of Knowledge in Education.” British Educational Research Journal 38(1): 103-124.

Reynar, Rodney. 1999. “Indigenous People’s Knowledge and Education: A Tool for Development?” In What Is Indigenous Knowledge?: Voices From the Academy, edited by L.M. Semali and J.L. Kincheloe, 285-304. New York & London: Falmer Press.

Semali, Ladislaus and Kincheloe, Joe. 1999. “Introduction: What is Indigenous Knowledge and Why Should we Study It?” In What Is Indigenous Knowledge?: Voices From the Academy, edited by L.M. Semali and J.L. Kincheloe, 3-57. New York & London: Falmer Press.

Siegel, Harvey. 2012. “Epistemological Diversity and Education Research: Much Ado About Nothing Much?” In Education, Culture and Epistemological Diversity: Mapping a Contested Terrain, edited by C.W. Ruitenberg and D.C. Phillips, 65-84. Dordrecht: Springer.

Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. 1999. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. New York: Zed Books.

Abstract

We usually tend to think that the authors, problems, ideas, proposals, answers to those problems, books, articles, ways of doing things, etc. are connected to whatever activities we develop, academic ones especially. In a sense, these activities and ways of thinking might seem obvious to everyone we share those ideas or activities with.  Even criticism of those ideas, authors, etc. is part of what we get to perceive as a statu quo.  Based on the Latin noun traditio or the Latin verb tradere, we might call those ideas and activities as being part of a tradition. 

                     In this paper, we would like to focus on how to define a tradition from a philosophical point of view. We will offer some perspectives on how to think about a tradition at least in the discussion held by T. Kuhn, L. Laudan, and K. Popper in what has been an important issue in the philosophy of science. On the other hand, an approach from Hermeneutics would also give a broader philosophical perspective, taking H.-G. Gadamer into account. His idea on tradition’s role in hermeneutics might open up many ways in which “prejudices” build up in many ways what we think and do.

                     Then, we will try to think about what a tradition is within the realm of Philosophy of Education.  We will bring at least two perspectives from two different traditions, the first one being the approach of Richard Pratte within the anglophone tradition. His discussion of two traditions of philosophy of education is quite fruitful as a way of understanding how he sees traditions.  On the other hand, we will “translate” Stella Mari Vásquez’s perspectives of the Spanish-speaking tradition of the French, German, and English traditions of Philosophy of Education.  Her perspective is necessarily different from that of Pratte. In this way, by coincidences, but so much so by their differences, we will see how “Traditions” might work for the Philosophy of Education.

                     Finally, we will discuss the aims and opportunities of having an approach to Philosophy of Education or, as we would like to argue, Philosophies of Education in the plural. Having this in mind, how one perceives the limits, aims, and blind spots of each tradition of philosophy of education could shed light on how we approach education, and philosophy in general terms.  In this way, understanding “traditions” would enable a more dialogical perspective towards whatever philosophers of education think, feel, and do; what are the standing points where their way of doing philosophy of education starts, and specifically where those ideas, problems, critiques, are built form within a specific tradition.  In any case, only when two or more traditions come together, is that we can find the “limits” of our tradition.

Pigmaei gigantum humeris impositi plusquam ipsi gigantes vident.

[If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.]

 Isaac Newton

1. What is a Tradition?

One way to start this paper is by reading with a certain amount of care Isaac Newton’s phrase, which is coincidentally not his, but rather “borrowed” from a long tradition.  We are not sure that those were Isaac Newton’s words.  In a quite angry letter written from Robert Hooke to Isaac Newton in 1676 the former states that the latter is responsible for this phrase. (Koyré, 1952). Nonetheless, the famous phrase dates far back than just between two philosophers and scientists of the 17^th century.  We know that John of Salisbury attributes the following phrase to Bernard de Chartres: “Dicebat Bernardus Carnotensis nos esse quasi nanos, gigantium humeris insidentes, ut possimus plura eis et remotiora videre, non utique propria visus aucmine, aut eminentia corporis, sed quia in altum subenimur et extoliimur magnitudine gigantea [Bernard de Chartres used to say that we are like midgets on the shoulders of giants so to see far beyond themselves and things that stand at a farther distance, not by visual keenness nor by body strength, but because we have been elevated to the magnitudes of those giants] (Southern, 1966, II B).  From what it was thought was Newton’s phrase it is that it was minted on the £2 coin.  The impact has also reached papers on Sociology of Science or Physics and Astronomy.  R. K. Merton has written On the Shoulders of Giants: a Shandean Postscript (1965) and S. Hawking wrote On the Shoulders of Giants. The Great Works of Physics and Astronomy (2002).  Even outside of the academic world, people have felt like midgets on the shoulders of giants.  This is the case with Noel Gallagher and his band, Oasis.  They named their fourth album Standing on the Shoulder of Giants.  The rock band R.E.M uses the same phrase in one of its songs, King of Birds.

                     So far, the idea was to show how tradition works with quite a famous example.  A phrase, attributed to a famous person, could have not been even thought of by them. Nonetheless, the phrase or idea is “inherited” by others assuming several contexts and meanings, at the same time that a new context and meaning is attributed. Then, this process goes on and on within specific groups and realms of human actions and thoughts.

                     “Tradition” comes from the Latin verb trādere which means “to hand over, deliver, or betray." Tradere was formed by the roots trans- ("over, across") and dare ("to give"). (Merriam-Webster) The dictionary makes a special remark that in English the words “trader” and “traitor” come from the same root.  On the one hand, the verb allows us to think about heritage, when a thing or idea is delivered from a parent to a son or daughter, from one generation to another.  Nonetheless, it also means to betray since giving away someone “over” or “across” a certain boundary is also trādere. 

Philosophers have also been quite keen on how the idea of “tradition” has important implications for philosophy itself or other realms of human knowledge and human behavior.  Trying to “visit” different traditions, several philosophers with different approaches and aims will be presented to have a panoramic view of their ideas about tradition. We will visit the discussion among philosophers of science. Thomas S. Kuhn, Imre Lakatos, Larry Laudan, and Karl Popper have coincidences and differences in how “traditions” play a role in understanding science. On the other hand, but not too far from Popper’s hermeneutical perspective is Hans-Georg Gadamer.  “Tradition” is a very important notion for him and his hermeneutical approach to human life and worldviews.  What are the limits and possibilities of traditions? Among other cultural and linguistic aspects of humans, hiding, passing on, and revealing, among other actions tend to be part of our nature.

Thomas S. Kuhn was widely known because he introduced the historical approach to the Philosophy of Science.  It is not true that no philosopher, or even historians of science, had ever missed the point of showing that whatever is accepted at any given moment will still be “true” at a different time and within a different scientific community. Tradition has been articulated as being the array of elements that keep a paradigm and try to solve the puzzles that appear through time. That may be the case with Natual Sciences, but it is not for Social (or Human) Sciences. We would like to focus on the second perspective of tradition since, for the latter, there are no traditions in this proper sense.

                     Beyond The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), Kuhn directly deals with the problem of tradition in one of his compiles essays that appeared in The Essential Tension. Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition (1977).  Kuhn explains how a paradigm gets established.  He studies the role of the textbook, within the education of students of different (natural and physical sciences).  Unlike the “textbooks” in the social sciences, where a compilation of different essays and, thus, perspectives are put together giving a much broader sense of any approach, in a Geography of Physics textbook there is “one” idea.  Textbooks are used as a way of establishing a paradigm.  He says:

Except in their occasional introductions, science textbooks do not describe the sorts of problems that the professional may be asked to solve and the variety of techniques available for their solution.  Rather, these books exhibit concrete problem solutions that the profession has come to accept as paradigms, and they then ask the student, either with a pencil and paper or in the laboratory, to solve for himself problems very closely related in both method and substance to those through which the textbook or the accompanying lecture has led him. Nothing could be better calculated to produce “mental sets” or Einstellungen. Only in their most elementary courses do other academic fields offer as much as a partial parallel. (1977:229)

There is a difference between how students are treated and trained through a rather less divergent way of thinking, like the ones in the social sciences and the arts.  Although this is a big criticism of natural sciences, as Kuhn puts it, this explains why social sciences and the arts would never settle a paradigm, and thus, a scientific revolution would never happen within these realms of human knowledge. (1977:231)

                     This is how a “tradition” is built for any given science.  A scientific tradition is, in many ways, the set of ideas that are established by a group, mainly through the theories, problems, activities, etc. established by concrete ways of “passing on” those theories, ideas, and ways of solving problems, etc.  In this sense, this is how a tradition is inherited.

                     Through means of settling a paradigm, tensions are generated and “anomalies” build up. Without this “essential tension,” there is no way of a scientific revolution. In many senses, this Kuhnian idea of paradigm and scientific revolution has been applied to social sciences and even philosophy.  Nonetheless, he is quite clear that his model would not work if there is not this “essential tension” between the established tradition and the anomalies that are presented by the critics.  Thus, although he might not deny the possibility of having “traditions” within social sciences or art, there are no “science traditions” and their implications.

Another philosopher that was quite keen on criticizing Thomas S. Kuhn and Imre Lakatos is Larry Laudan. The American philosopher of science agrees in “From Theories to Research Traditions” (1977) with Kuhn and Lakatos that general theories are a good way of assessing theories. Nonetheless, Kuhn does not explain clearly, according to Laudan, how to evaluate those theories.  On the other hand, Laudan would criticize Lakatos’ perspective on how he sees progress.  Laudan’s critique undermines the idea that research programs and theories seem to have progressed.  He states that the only possible progress is given throughout empirical testation. Theories and research programs cannot progress.  They are part of a more or less fixed series of human characteristics that cannot “advance” in an orderly way, not even if the appreciation of that supposed progress is felt as such by a scientific community.  In this sense is that Laudan suggests the research traditions.  These are enabled by a group of specific theories, a certain metaphysical and methodological standpoint, on top of having lasted a good number of years being tested in some way.  Research traditions have ontological worldviews and they use research methods within this tradition.  For Laudan, “a research tradition is a set of general assumptions about the entities and processes in a domain of study, and about the appropriate methods to be used for investigating the problems and constructing the theories in that domain.” (1977:81)

                     Which tradition is better? That which can solve problems in a better way.  Laudan considers that Kuhn and Lakatos have a high degree of relativism.  It is up to the “paradigm” or the “research program” to decide.  In this sense, Laudan states that it is through testing that the “best” theory wins. We are not able to know a priori which tradition will state de best theory. That would depend on how these theories are tested and not only circumstantial events in different research groups or sets of people.

Karl R. Popper says clearly: “Having studied for some time the methods of the natural sciences, I felt that it might be interesting to study also the methods of the social sciences.  It was then that I first met with the problem of tradition.” (2002: 161)

                     In many senses, some rationalistic colleagues had argued that their approach could not tolerate “traditions” being mingled with natural sciences, since too much was at risk. Nonetheless, Popper tries to reflect upon the fact that he had to move from a Continental perspective, and then to an English one, just to go ahead and be part of a community in New Zealand.  “These changes have, no doubt, stimulated me to think about these matters and to try to look further into them.  Certain types of traditions of great importance are local, and cannot easily be transplanted.” (2002:163) He aims to give a method to these traditions for two reasons. The first one is that there has to be a way in which we can prevent the “anything goes” argument bringing any argument to a complete relativism.  On the other hand, he distinguishes “first-order theories” and “second-order theories”.  The first ones serve as a basis for the second ones.  Even if there is disagreement on the second level theories, there has to be a rationale and proven coherence among them. There has to be a correlation with empirical referents to understand these theories.  On second-order theories, traditions have a much deeper role in shaping them. Nonetheless, within first-order ones, the role of tradition is diminished. This distinction is important when we assess theories and how they work in different academic spaces, or in any other realm of human activity for that matter. 

Popper continues by saying the following:

 It should be clearly understood that there are only two main attitudes towards tradition.  One is to accept a tradition uncritically, often without even being aware of it. In many cases we cannot escape this; for we often just do not realize that we are faced with a tradition. […] The other possibility is a critical attitude, which may result either in acceptance or in rejection, or perhaps in a compromise. Yet we have to know of and understand tradition before we can criticize it […] (2002:164)

Against other perspectives, Popper does not see a direct relationship between the ontological or metaphysical perspectives of a tradition and its principles.  There could be a case in which a theory predicts an event after being tested.  Even in that case, that theory could be rejected, but not its empirical relation.  There might be the case that there are other presents or future theories, in this tradition or in another one, in which a better explanation can be given.

                     In any case, for Karl Popper, to study traditions, we would need to go to a social explanation.  He says: “A theory of tradition must be a sociological theory because tradition is a social phenomenon. I mention this because I wish briefly to discuss with you the task of the theoretical social sciences.” (2002:167)  His approach is that social sciences are theories based on rational conceptions of the world, in which an analysis can be made, especially around institutions and their foundation. Thus, traditions can be linked to the analysis of societies in which these theories interact and give a certain direction to human life in general. 

To have an approach to Hermeneutics, Hans-Georg Gadamer has to deal with the issue of traditions.  Beyond only traditions of research, or academic traditions, the whole sense of “tradition” is a key point for understanding Gadamer’s philosophy in general.  It can be said that in the first pages of Truth and Method (2004) he is acknowledging his tradition as a standpoint for his worldview.

                     In the chapter called “The elevation of the historicity of understanding to the status of a hermeneutic principle” (2004:267-304) Gadamer starts a discussion with Martin Heidegger’s idea of ontology.  This discussion starts with the disclosure of the Fore-closure of Understanding.  In Gadamer’s own words, “The point of Heidegger's hermeneutical reflection is not so much to prove that there is a circle as to show that this circle possesses” an ontologically positive significance.” (2004:269) Through language, as he will later address, ontology and consciousness can be highly problematic, since “consciousness”, as a word, tends to lose its meaning when used by Descartes himself.  He has been influenced, according to Gadamer, by the Greek vision of logos.  In that sense, he introduces the importance of tradition.  He states: “It is the tyranny of hidden prejudices that makes us deaf to what speaks to us in tradition. […] The recognition that all understanding inevitably involves some prejudice gives the hermeneutical problem its real thrust.” (2004:272)

                     His recognition of the role of tradition in the hermeneutical problem is decisive. Gadamer explains this idea furthermore in the following paragraphs.  He mainly blames the European Enlightenment for having “prejudice” as a prejudice.  Ideas were supposed to be uncovered or “clarified” by reason. Thus, we inherited the idea, the prejudice, that it was possible not to have prejudices.  The only thing true about this is that we are unable to see them, or at least fully. “It is not tradition but the reason that constitutes the ultimate source of all authority.” (2004:274)

                     In this sense, the hermeneutic circle enables, at least partially, to identify which are some lines of what we assume as a given. Going against Wilhelm Dilthey’s proposal in differentiating human and natural sciences, based on their object, and thus methodologically, there are traditions in any of our ideas and activities.  Thus, although there might be methodological distinctions between different scientific traditions, these distinctions are also part of traditions themselves.  Human sciences have traditions just as natural sciences do.  Hermeneutics gives an opportunity not to ignore prejudices by acknowledging that they exist and that they can be invisible to our consciousness. Furthermore, the hermeneutical circle enables an individual in dialogue with others, and also among collectives, to identify how a tradition is, at least partially built.

So far, we have seen several approaches to the role of traditions and how they work in different groups, being academic or not.  Philosophers of education – or should we say “philosophy of education” (not only philosophers)? – are also part of traditions.  Let us delve into two possibilities of understanding tradition(s) within the philosophy(ies) of education.

1. Two approaches to traditions of philosophy of education

How can we understand traditions within the philosophy of education? Several problems go beyond what we can imagine firsthand.  First of all, are traditions of philosophy of education mere “traditions” within the philosophical traditions? In that sense, we might think that they are sort of a “department” or “area” of philosophy as a greater category. Nonetheless, the approach can be much more complex. What if dealing with education gave a different nuance to philosophy itself?  What if how philosophy gets in touch with a certain phenomenon determines what philosophy is all about? In that sense, the philosophy of education might have different traditions that would not necessarily coincide with those traditions in philosophy. 

If we could approach philosophy and education as two possible ways in which we can approach traditions, what about the preposition “of”?  It is not obvious that in most languages, prepositions speak about the relationship between words and, thus, the relationship among things or ideas.  What if philosophy “of” education was already a standpoint that enables us to see the relationship “between” philosophy “and” education in a very specific way.  At least two Spanish philosophers, both exiled into Mexico due to the Spanish Civil War, make a case for understanding a relationship between philosophy “and” education and not philosophy “of” education.  María Zambrano (2007) and Joaquim Xirau (1999) make very interesting remarks trying to support that philosophy “and” education could give a different perspective on how to think, feel, and perceive education, rather than “applying” philosophy “to” education as a phenomenon. 

                     So, as we have tried to see, the panorama is not that simple.  Let us start, then, with two approaches to traditions in the philosophy of education. The first one is offered by Richard Pratte, a professor at the University of Ohio in the United States of America.  His book Philosophy of Education: Two Traditions (1992) is inspired by Alasdair McIntyre who noted that there are traditions of philosophy of education, although, as we are about to see, he tries to give a methodological approach up to the last decade of the twentieth century.

                     On the other hand, we are going to delve into Stella Maris Vázquez, an Argentinian philosopher of education, that tries to explain how three traditions of philosophy of education (according to their language of expression: English, French, German) get a different approach when “arriving” in Latin America. In that sense, should we call whatever philosophers of education do in that region of the world another tradition? It seems that Vázquez brings a very broad and complete panorama on how doing philosophy of education, and philosophy in general terms, in Latin America integrates, discusses, and re-appropriates European traditions that came to be the main referents for academia. Thus, there might be an approach to a Latin American way of doing philosophy of education, but maybe not a tradition in itself.

Let us start with Richard Pratte.  He starts discussing the idea of  “two” traditions of philosophy of education by asking similar questions as we have just stated.  He calls “analytical” (in quite a different way than we can generally understand “analytical” philosophy) the approach in which one delves into the philosophical ideas, terms, and questions of an author, and tries to understand, having clarified those terms, what education is all about.  On the other hand, he argues for a perspective in which one can “philosophize” around educational experiences and how we can make interesting questions that deal with it practically. 

Pratt even goes further on by asking if the methodology of philosophy of education should be that of philosophy, rational and conceptual, or rather from social sciences in general.  Also, he makes this very interesting question about the connection between philosophy of education and educational practice and policies.

                     He is quite clear by saying that, no matter what is the case, our approach to traditions of philosophy of education is a “rocky road”, not simple at all.  He tries to understand that those traditions are explained historically, by decades in the twentieth century.  He starts by saying that originally the approach to the philosophy of education had to do more with the –isms (Realism, Idealism, Pragmatism, Essentialism, etc.) or rather making a historical approach to specific authors that became “classics” such as Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Locke, Rousseau, Hume, Marx, Sartre, Dewey, etc. In them, philosophers of education qua philosophers examined educational theories and practices (Soltis, 1981 apud Pratte 1992:19). This is considered to be the analytical approach to philosophy, and philosophy of education specifically.  “One must not focus on the noun ‘philosophy’ (of education), but rather on the verb ‘philosophize’ (about education).  In other words, philosophy of education is conceived as a project in which a set of linguistic and logic tools should be applied to complex issues and problems around education” (1992:20)

                     Nonetheless, according to Pratte, in the eighties of the twentieth century, the analytical approach to the philosophy of education received several critiques, especially towards the assumption of mere descriptive and neutral standpoints.  Those assuming this tradition were criticized because of having the perception that they were talking about how things were, and not as if the whole program of philosophy (of education) had been constructed and had prejudices towards several issues, like any other tradition. 

                     On top of that, the different critiques were not a homogeneous body of thought, but rather a plurality of ideas based on Postmodernism, Post-Structuralism, Feminism, Marxism, and even Post-Marxism.  Some of those that held those critiques were Rorty, Bernstein, Nozik, and MacIntyre. 

                     Another set of critiques came from authors like Foucault, and Derrida, among others, especially based on the notion of “Power”, the use and meanings of language, among other implications.  The feminists and those that criticized the partiality and bias would not be recognized by the authors themselves. This is the case, according to Pratte of Bordo, Lloyd, Martin, Harding, and Hintikka.  The unilateral rational justice was set in doubt, and authors, like Nel Noddings, made a hard critique of the male, white, European authors that could not see that they were talking from a male, white, European perspective. An ethical and caring perspective to philosophy is a female perspective, and thus a different approach.

                     Pratte gives a starting point to solve the problem of the traditions in the philosophy of education, at least as a way of acknowledging the difficulty of the task: “As a result, anyone who wants to write a book about the philosophy of education, where systematic conceptions on education are thought and debated, he or she will notice that he or she has entered a rough debate or a radical conflict” (1992:22)

Stella Maris Vázquez writes in Spanish from another “tradition”.  In her book, La filosofía de la educación. Estado de la cuestión y líneas esenciales [Philosophy of Education. State of Affairs and Basic Guidelines] (2012) she speaks about three different traditions.

                     First of all, she talks about the German tradition.  Great thinkers, especially in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, thought about the idea of understanding Pädagogik as a way of applying philosophical perspectives on whatever each one of them understood for Bildung or Erzhiehung – both translated as “education” in their perspective of the Modern State, the role of society, culture, among many other elements.  In that sense around the late eighteen-century philosophy of education, not with that name per se, was already part of the philosophical systems at the time.  Many educational perspectives, like those of Humboldt, Kant, or Hegel, are based on a model in which a philosophical approach was the optimal one for developing a theory on the educational phenomenon. 

                     The next tradition is the French one, in which the whole project would go through the transit from Pedagogy to “Sciences de l’éducation”.  It is hard to translate both terms into English, but epistemologically the idea of having not one science, like Dilthey’s proposal of Pädagogik as the “Science of Education”, but rather a wider set of “sciences” that dealt with educational phenomena was the project. Thus, Psychology of Education and Sociology of Education, among others, were different sciences that could give epistemic and methodological approaches to education. Philosophy of education was then thought of as another “science” that dealt with educational issues but did not have, like in the German tradition, the major epistemological and methodological importance as the other “sciences.  In this sense, education could be studied and progress could be achieved.

                     Unlike their German neighbors, French thinkers restricted the philosophy of education and quite often used the term “pédagogie” as a way of naming didactics.  Thus, in many texts and authors, a “pedagogical approach” could be understood as a “didactical approach”.  Pedagogie in French is not the translation of Pädagogik in German.

                     Last but not least, Vázquez deals with the Anglophone tradition.  The English-speaking world was the origin of the “philosophy of education” per se, due to the importance of John Dewey’s perspective on the matter, but also because there were associations such as the Philosophy of Education Society, both in the United States (PES) and in Great Britain (PESGB). In those societies, the influence of the genera philosophical traditions was a given, be it Empiricism, Pragmatism, or any other relevant among the members of the societies. 

                     Later on, Vázquez deals not only with the epistemological differences but also with different practical approaches and different methodologies suggested or enables by different traditions of philosophy of education.  She is keen to show that in Latin America all of those perspectives have “lived together” implying that there might not be a tradition of the region in itself or, rather, that the Latin American tradition would be the eclectic perspective given while learning, discussing, and applying the other traditions in concrete circumstances. Vázquez’s perspective tries to give a broad panorama of the traditions of philosophy of education worldwide and does not try to tackle the problem of how these traditions are generated, transformed, developed, etc.  Nonetheless, it is a very good first shot, especially for Spanish-speaking audiences.

Why “traditions” of philosophy of education? – Closing (and hopefully opening) remarks

At least one thing is clear. It is plausible to state that there are “traditions” within the philosophy of education. What are these traditions specifically? Maybe there will never be a clear answer. Nonetheless, there are at least several things that could help build a community of philosophers of education. The idea of tradere (or receiving/inheriting) is a good starting point.  We always receive our concepts, authors, and ways of doing things, from a particular perspective which can be called “tradition”. In that sense, even though in philosophy of education, they are not fixed like in Natural Sciences, so much so we must understand we start from a perspective. This enables dialogue because we recognize that there might be other traditions that I am not aware of.  We tend not to be aware of our own tradition unless we start to see the limits whenever another tradition comes to play.

                     Just the fact of recognizing that there might be other worldviews is a positive starting point.  Whatever I think that philosophy of education is, by acknowledging the idea of “traditions”, I can recognize other traditions and maybe understand that whatever is obvious to me and my tradition, might not be obvious to others. In that sense, a dialogical perspective can be built. Not even “the famous or central” author or problem that is so fond to me might be even known to others.

                     A second issue that appears problematic is “translation”.  Of course, to have access to other traditions, a language barrier might appear.  Assuming that translating (as a linguistic process) does not represent a problem, we still have the bigger translation problem, that of a cultural or even philosophical one.  Translation as a cultural and philosophical way of understanding traditions as a whole implies a great deal of work. We could even think that establishing the basic rule games could be extenuating.  Maybe what seems philosophical for one tradition, might not be for the other.  Or maybe how education is understood in my tradition is just a given. Maybe even in some traditions, there is no such word for “education”.

                     That takes us to a more philosophical standpoint on language problems. At least from a structural perspective, not every language in the world necessarily has the word for “education”. For example, indigenous languages in the American continent have words or metaphors for saying “to become human”.  To go to school is not necessarily understood of these concepts. 

                     We can also point out that “education” could imply different phenomena.  In this sense, a tradition might try to apply “philosophy” to what they seem to understand THE educational institution par excellence, i.e. school, especially the Western and Modern schooling system to make a clear change in its policies and ways in which we can improve different problems that appear in our schools?  But maybe for another culture, a way of improving education does not go through schooling, but rather through thinking about other options for “being or becoming human” – or even going beyond a system of thought where humans are at the center of everything, including our questions and answers. For some Ancient Eastern cultures, like Taoism or Buddhism, to understand how and why we are human is understanding our role in this World, not necessarily becoming one, for example.

                     In any case, we can still be optimistic about the fact that, although the path is steep, acknowledging that it is worth trying to understand tradition a priori, gives the conditions of discussion and approach a much broader sense of discussion, analysis, a much richer way of approaching the philosophy of education, philosophy in general, education, and even the preposition(s) that can relate all of the above.

References

Gadamer, Hans-Georg (2004) Truth and Method. London, Continuum

Koyré, Alexandre (1952) An Unpublished Letter of Robert Hooke to Isaac Newton. Isis, Dec. 1952, Vol. 43, No. 4 (Dec. 1952), pp. 312-337 The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science Society

Kuhn, Thomas S. (1977) The Essential Tension: Tradition and Innovation in Scientific Research.  The Essential Tension.  Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change. Chicago. The University of Chicago Press. pp. 225-239

Laudan, Larry (1977) From Theories to Research Traditions. Progress and its Problems. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1977. pp. 70-120. 

Popper, Karl R. (2004)2Conjectures and Refutations: the Growth of Scientific Knowledge. London, Routledge. (Classics)

Pratte, Richard. (1992) Philosophy of Education: Two Traditions. Springfield, Illinois, Charles C. Thomas Ed.

Southern, R.W. (1966) The Making of the Middle Ages. New Haven, Yale University Press.

Vázquez, Stella Maris (2012) La filosofía de la educación: estado de la cuestión y líneas esenciales. Buenos Aires, CIAFIC.

Xirau, Joaquín. Filosofía i educació. Obras completas Tomo II Escritos sobre educación y sobre humanismo hispánico. Barcelona. Caja Madrid y Ánthropos editorial, 1999.

Zambrano, María (2007). Filosofía y educación (Manuscritos). Málaga, Ágora

Abstract

This paper is a philosophical attempt to explore the idea of morally valuable social distance, a well-balanced point at which people can get along without fighting, even in the context of political disagreements. In order to explore the idea of a good social distance and its educational meanings, the paper applies some theoretical aspects of philosophy as translation onto a specific and tough situation: interactions between locals and American military associates in Okinawa, Japan, where fundamental political disagreements have been held over the existence of American military facilities on the island for almost eighty years, and where the term ‘friendship’ is often used to manage the conflict. What is a good social distance? How do we maintain a social distance that prevent conflicts? What are the educational factors involved?

First, the paper establishes a theoretical framework by addressing some key characters and interests of Paul Standish’s philosophy as translation, namely: duality, neighborhood, and asymmetry, three major ideas which value the idea of distance. Second, the paper describes the term ‘friendship’ and its application in addressing the relationships between locals and American military associates in Okinawa, classifying its dual meanings, in this context, as feminine and masculine. Masculine friendship refers to the one “officially” announced by American military officials; feminine friendship describes a type of unofficial friendship nurtured by The American Welfare and Works Association (AWWA), a philanthropic American military spouse volunteer group in Okinawa. In addition to comparing the two different meanings of friendship, the paper examines how each type assumes the meanings of duality, neighborhood, and asymmetry. Then, the paper demonstrates masculine friendship as the kind that the theory of philosophy as translation might criticize, and shows how feminine friendship is uniquely different. Third, the paper examines the aspects of AWWA’s feminine friendship which philosophy as translation cannot fully explain, taking the position that these forms of friendship still remain distinctive in character, and are not fully withdrawn from the aspects of political ideology or from the aspects of philosophy as translation for the following reasons. Firstly, because it does not emphasize individuality; secondly, because it does not seek a solution for political conflicts; and thirdly, because AWWA’s friendship would only be possible in Okinawa. Finally, the paper discusses the educational aspects of this harmony between the moral value of mutual support in the American military community, and Yuimahru: a folkloric expression of the moral value in the Okinawa/Ryukyu area, meaning “reciprocity”.

Introduction

Social distancing, one of the most distinctive social values in the pandemic age, reveals a unique moral contradiction. While people are concerned about the negative side of social distancing, and worry that it risks damaging positive connections between family members, friends, and colleagues, people rarely pay attention to the possible positive side of the norm – i.e., that distance could function to lessen the likelihood of conflicts among politically discordant groups. The contradiction leads us to ask some educational questions: what is a good social distance? What kind of social distance can prevent conflict?

This paper is a philosophical attempt to explore social distance as a morally valuable idea, a well-balanced point at which people can get along without fighting, despite disagreements. In order to pursue the concept of a good social distance, this paper considers a unique and tough case: that of the interactions between locals and American military associates in Okinawa, Japan, where fundamental political disagreements have existed for almost eighty years due to the existence of American military facilities on the island, and where friendship is an idea often deployed to manage the conflict. In such a complex situation, there are two ways to use the term ‘friendship’. In order to classify these two uses in this specific context, this paper expediently applies a gender framework of feminine and masculine friendship. In addition, in order to critically examine the ideas of masculine and feminine friendship, this paper applies some key theoretical concepts used in the philosophy of translation as a means of exposing aspects of language that are often taken for granted. Are these usages of friendship consistent with its action, resonance, and meaning? The paper’s key aim is to extract the core factors of feminine friendship, those which make it possible to maintain a good distance without losing the meaning of friendship. Lastly, the paper will pursue the educational aspects of harmony across philanthropic practices in the American military community, and Yuimahru, the moral value of indigenous philosophy in the Okinawa islands.

A Gender Framework for Friendship

                     Several philosophers of education use gender frameworks to pursue alternative ways of thinking at various levels. Carol Gilligan (1982) and Nel Noddings (1986) employed gender to formulate their ethics of care. Jane Roland Martin (1985) developed gender sensitive theory by examining social gender norms. Stanley Cavell (1972) and Naoko Saito (2005 & 2007) apply the gender framework in reverse to explain the educational process of acquisition and reacquisition of language. Martha Nussbaum (1986) and Paul Standish (1992) apply gender to lay out two types of “normative conceptions of human practical rationality.” (Nussbaum, 20)

                     In order to prepare the ground for some classifications of feminine and masculine friendship, this paper will apply some techniques of what Standish terms “philosophy as translation”. One of the greatest strengths of philosophy as translation is to create “distance” by capturing multiple/dual meanings within a single term, and to accept complication and asymmetrical contrast. (Saito 2018, ii) Standish, for instance, points out that morally innocent words are particularly at risk of being faced with specious logic in practice. He identifies the term “social justice” as one such example, a powerful and persuasive term accepted unquestioningly in contemporary society. (2018, 23) He carefully points out that the usages of such morally correct terms often mistake the means for the end, and that, due to the sound of the term, which is morally so correct, people do not recognize that they are actually misusing it, distorting its resonance and literality. Standish is concerned that contemporary accountability culture, with its pressure to make visible actions, accelerates further distortion of the resonance and meaning of such terms and, as a result, people slip into the inability to think. (2018, 27) For Standish, the term of social justice constitutes a trap, because once invoked, it has the power to justify any action. It indicates that, although social justice studies and associated educational approaches are supposed to expand alternative ways of thinking, many of them end up shutting them down by proclaiming what constitutes goodness without necessarily practicing it.

                     To support Standish’s argument on the aspect of “duality,” Naoko Saito writes that using the literary device of metaphor to capture “asymmetrical contrast” can help to illuminate the “duality of the social justice discussion.” (2018, 226) In order to ensure that the word does not become an “empty shell,” (2018, 229)[1] she asymmetrically writes, “people need to learn how to correctly close their eyes.” (2018, 234) Saito indicates that an asymmetrical contrast can be achieved in this case by critically examining the established procedures of social justice studies, (2018, i) which involve the struggle to “escape [from] ideological debate or the assumption of a how-to book.” (ii) Moreover, Saito claims the importance of a sense of “neighborhood” in guaranteeing individuality. In this case, social assumptions, norms, and commonsense are double-edged swords in terms of individuality, because while they can guide individuals to deliberate on the meaning of goodness, they also can provide the authority that permits them to give up the need to. In other words, the point of philosophy as translation is that it is important to maintain “distance” when using morally innocent terms, so as not to lose critical perspective. (2018, 23)

Again, taking these three ideas for holding distance into account, this paper applies a gender framework to address dual meanings of friendship in Okinawa.[2] Masculine friendship is applied as a general term of “officially” announced friendship, and feminine friendship is applied as a general term of unofficial friendship but in the context of the specific friendship nurtured by The American Welfare and Works Association (AWWA), a philanthropic American military spouse volunteer group in Okinawa. The feminine friendship practiced by this specific group, as will be shown, allows us to maintain asymmetrical characters of masculine and feminine friendship, whose classification appears symmetrical, but is not. In contrast to philosophy as translation, Martin’s perspective on gender sensitive theory offers a different way to distinguish asymmetry from symmetry. Martin states:

any […] theory worth recording is readily accessible in books or academic journals [but] becomes unreasonable when the objects or the subjects […] are considered marginal […] as the larger effort of reclamation proceeds, we will have to look to sources of data that the history of educational thought regards as far from standard […]. (1985, 180)

Here, the ways to capture feminine and masculine values are asymmetrical because one has been historically treated as a preserved standard, while the other has remained out of scope. We could even argue that, from this perspective, philosophy as translation’s assumption of “asymmetry” is in fact “symmetrical”, because the theory of translation itself rests on historically-established knowledge, which is a masculine value.

Taking Martin’s perspective into account, thus, masculine friendships in the context of Okinawan military culture are addressed here nonspecifically, but have already been historicized by officially and broadly recorded materials, written culture, and official publications. Feminine friendship, on the other hand, is evoked using the specific example of AWWA, which has almost no official historical record, but rather has been privately maintained through oral culture and gifts of amateur art. The intention here is not to disregard philosophy as translation’s perspective of asymmetry. In fact, masculine and feminine friendship exhibit an aspect of this asymmetry in their contrast, in that masculine friendship stands on the framework of the established political debate (while the practical reality of this claimed friendship, like that of social justice, depends on who is viewing it), whereas feminine friendship slips out from the standardized political debate.

Masculine Friendship

The American military frequently applies the term of friendship as a synonym of alliance. For instance, they describe The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)[3] as “a unique friendship” and even celebrate NATO on International Friendship Day.[4] The American military also uses the term of friendship to express its alliance with Japan. The joint operation of the American military in Japan to rescue Japanese victims of the earthquake and tsunami in 2011 was named “Operation Tomodachi” (meaning “Operation Friends”), captioned as “a friend in need is a friend indeed”.[5] “Friendship Festival” and “Friendship Day” are names given to open, public, yearly events on American bases located in Japan. Also, the names of a number of facilities on American military bases include the word “friend” or “friendship”, either in English or Japanese, even though Japanese civilians do not have access to these facilities without a gate pass.

The most concentrated usage of “friendship”, however, has been in describing American military forces in Okinawa, where they have been stationed since 1945. After the battle of Okinawa in 1945, and until 1972, Okinawa’s islands were ruled by the American military, and even today, all US military forces (Air Force, Army, Marine, and Navy) are stationed there. Statistically, about 20% of Okinawa’s main island is US military bases[6] (McCormack and Norimatsu, 2013, 7). It is estimated that about 50,000 American servicemen and associates live in the Okinawa prefecture, comprising about 4% of its entire population.[7] In such a remarkably highly condensation of American military in a community outside of the United States, and indeed on the islands, which are not adjoining continental land, the appeal to friendship comes largely from the American military community’s side.

Such a long-lasting “friendship fever” is an extension of the American military’s lines of cultural policy for governing Okinawa. According to Etsujiro Miyagi (1992), historian and journalist of America’s occupation of Okinawa, this cultural policy[8] was actively installed during the occupation period in the 1950s and 1960s by the American military government, and it functioned well to justify the control of Okinawa and to reduce local resistance to its presence. Even today, fifty years after reversion, traces of this cultural policy can still be found. For instance, the Communication Strategy and Operations Marine Corps Base Camp Butler in Okinawa (COMMSTRAT) publishes a quarterly, bilingual Japanese and English magazine named Big Circle/Ohkina Wa[9] (phonetically it sounds almost the same as “Okinawa”). Every single issue reports some “friendship” between American military and Japanese/Okinawa locals, with photos of various events and social services, such as off-base volunteering work by either uniformed, or clearly designated American military associates (cleaning the beach, on a food drive, giving toys to the children in the local hospital, visiting various welfare institutions), as well as cultural and social interactions such as sports events and cultural festivals, language exchange opportunities, Covid-19 pandemic policy discussions, and even classes to learn about Okinawa’s battle history.

The masculine friendship described above also functions as a good role model, giving the United States an opportunity to internationally celebrate the success of its military diplomacy, showing how American armed forces have been deployed to democratize, protect, and develop Okinawa. Those “friendship” social services are counted as part of the work of American military culture.

Feminine Friendship

In contrast to the masculine friendship described in a broad sense above, the example of feminine friendship is presented by focusing on a specific group, AWWA. According to the oral history, the Ryukyu American Welfare Council was a philanthropic American military spouse volunteer group in Okinawa, Japan, established under American Military rule in 1952.[10] As Miyagi points out above, the group was established as a result of cultural policy at the time. To continue in post-reversion Okinawa society, in 1972 the organization changed its name to the American Women’s Welfare Association (AWWA). Until 2018, AWWA consisted of five military spouses’ clubs of Army, Airforce, Navy and Marine, and Enlisted.[11] In 2019, AWWA changed its name again, from American Women’s Welfare Association to American Welfare and Works Association, to reflect what was becoming a more diversely-gendered organization.[12] Today, AWWA is formed of six organizations: four military spouses clubs of Airforce, Marine, Navy, and Enlisted, and two gift shop groups, the Marine Thrift Shop (MTS) and the Marine Gift Shop (MGS). AWWA has its own cabinet, president, vice president, treasurer, historian, and translator. The spouse of the top American military commander/general in Okinawa traditionally takes the highest role, as the honorary advisor. Without an office, and despite continuous changes in members, AWWA has maintained its practice for almost seventy years.

AWWA’s aim is to “quietly foster a relationship with the Okinawan community through charitable contributions, friendship, and community involvement.”[13] AWWA generates funds for their philanthropy activities from gift shop sales at military bases,[14] selling local, international, new and second-hand products.[15] These gift shops are well known in the American military community in Okinawa, with some shoppers waiting in line before opening on the first day that new shipments go on sale.[16]

AWWA’s policy creates a unique way to express friendship between locals and Americans. Fifty percent of their donations go towards on-base welfare, and 50% to off-base welfare. This principle is distinctive in understanding AWWA’s friendship, because although American military spouse clubs are formed at individual bases all over the world, always functioning to provide mutual support, they limit this support to the immediate geographical territory of each base’s community. AWWA is unique in that it distributes its donations on- and off-base equally.

AWWA’s philanthropy follows a particular sequence. Before all else, each spouse club operates a gift shop for fundraising. Those who are hoping to receive support from AWWA send a written application (either in Japanese or in English, as AWWA has its own translator). These applications are screened and discussed by the respective groups in AWWA before their monthly meeting.[17] Applications are various, including requests for support with travel fees for on-base high school club activities, or to fund memorial photos at a coming of age ceremony for socially disadvantaged local girls off-base. Each AWWA group evaluates applicants’ requests before hearing their oral presentations during the monthly meeting, reviewing, discussing, and deciding on the donation amount they are willing to offer. The sum of the donation offered by each group becomes AWWA’s donation to the applicant.

AWWA mostly conducts monetary transactions, with few opportunities for face-to-face interaction with local Okinawans. AWWA creates such interactions with locals in a few circumstances: delivering supplies such as rice and detergent to social welfare institutes;[18] having its yearly luncheon with locals at a restaurant served by handicapped Okinawans; and on yearly trips to the remote islands.[19] These trips are recognized as some of the biggest, most emotional, and most memorable yearly events for AWWA members, during which they visit all facilities that have received donations, checking that they have been appropriately used, and interacting with donation recipients.[20] Members call these opportunities to meet donation receivers “rewards”, and often describe these as emotional experiences.[21]

Summary

Feminine friendship and masculine friendship are a jumble of uniqueness and commonality. There three commonalities are that, firstly, both forms of friendship are made possible and sustained by political conditions. Neither one would exist if American military troops were to pull out of Okinawa, indicating that personal will is not the original motivation in either friendship. Active-duty personnel and AWWA members are in Okinawa not providing services for friends in Okinawa of their own free will, but rather are expected to accept the military order as active-duty personnel, or as their family members. Due to the temporary nature of military culture, the expected average length of time for a military family to be stationed in Okinawa is a couple of years, and so both types of friendship identify those human resources as replaceable. Second, both types of friendship rest on a heightened awareness of giving and providing service as an action which is also characteristic of the military community. Third, both types of friendship are verbally limited because Americans speak in English and local Okinawans/Japanese speak in Japanese.

On the other hand, masculine and feminine friendship show duality in their definitions of justice, distance, consistency between speech and action, and reward. In terms of justice, masculine friendship is a way to prove the appropriateness of stationing in Okinawa. Therefore, it is a friendship that is necessary in terms of the extent to which it can be shown off in public. On the other hand, feminine friendship is quiet and basically invisible to the public. In fact, it is rare for those who belong to off-base local Okinawan society to know of AWWA’s existence, let alone its long-term social contributions, because it does not make public announcements about itself, nor does it receive compliments or social recognition. The value of feminine friendship is complete in itself because its main goal is associated with the well-being of its members and their “friends.”

Second, these two types of friendship interpret the meaning of distance differently. Masculine friendship needs to display images of physical closeness, or official written records of scenes of actual contact. Feminine friendship, however, maintains its remoteness from the local islanders. As described above, their physical contact is very limited, and most of their engagements happen in the shadows. Their fundraising efforts are basically invisible to locals because they are practiced inside of the military base. Also, their monetary transactions are prompt, without any attachment or ceremony. However, the feelings of intimacy between gift givers and gift receivers can be intense. 

                     Third, they interpret the meaning of consistency between speech and action differently. Friendly actions in masculine friendship are used demonstratively as a way to proclaim definitions of goodness and justice. Friendly events and rescue operations are valuable actions, of course, but the emphasis on this friendship, from the American military side, does not cancel out the region’s historical colonial power balance.[22] Feminine friendship, on the other hand, is an outcome of philanthropic engagement. AWWA introduces itself by saying that it “has forged a vital link between American military families and their Okinawan neighbors.”[23] AWWA’s “vital link” can be interpreted as a justification of the US military in Okinawa. However, it also can be interpreted as an a-justification of it. In support of the latter interpretation, we can consider a gift given to AWWA by a lady at a nursing home for former leprosy patients. She created a pair of shell art pieces, decorating each with the word “Friendship”, but using Chinese characters, which most Americans are not able to understand (“friendship” is written in English at the bottom, in a small font, for American readers).[24] One was gifted to AWWA and now hangs on the wall of the staff room in the Marine Gift Shop.[25] The other stayed at the nursing home and hangs on the wall in the community room. This gift teaches that the authenticity of friendship, while suspicious when claimed by the stronger party, looks very different when claimed by the weaker one, in a language unfamiliar to the stronger party, by its own free will.

Figure 1. A pair of shell art pieces. The left one is photographed by Kanako Ide at Nansei-en on January 21^st 2018 and the Right one is photographed by Kanako Ide at Marine Gift Shop on January 25^th 2018.

Fourth, the meaning of reward is different. While American military facilities in Okinawa have been financially supported mostly by the host’s national budget (Japanese taxes), AWWA’s fundraising takes advantage of money for daily expenses, which comes from members’ salaries and personal funds, to buy gifts for friends and family, or to cultivate and to decorate their homes and rooms. It indicates that, while masculine friendship is identifiable as a reaction – a quid pro quo from the American military to the host nation who pays for their existence – feminine friendship is identifiable as a reward of the generosity practiced by AWWA itself, where the circle of the gift begins.

Socially-Distanced Support

                      The perspectives of those who engage with philosophy as translation, such as Standish’s critique on the usage of ‘social justice’, are helpful in examining the usage of ‘friendship’ in the context of Okinawa. In Standish’s framework, masculine friendship seems to be making the same mistake as orthodox social justice studies, in that it uses friendship to justify a political position, and as a means to claim and define notions of what is good and just. Masculine friendship, thus, does not hold a space for duality in friendship. Also, the idea of neighborhood seems to be misaligned in masculine friendship, used to display and emphasize moments of actual physical closeness and unification between locals and Americans, thus following the performativity of accountability culture that Standish names. Furthermore, masculine friendship wipes out asymmetry, because in order to justify its political standpoint, it has to insist upon the symmetrical or equal nature of the relationship.

What of feminine friendship, then? Could a parallel be drawn between masculine friendship on the battle lines, and feminine friendship on the home front? After all, feminine friendship is not irrelevant to the political context; AWWA’s long-term philanthropy and social services more or less have taken the role of a fortress, defending the occupation with a moral vindication that America is here for protecting, rescuing, and democratizing Okinawa. Nevertheless, feminine friendship still accepts duality but maintains it by not speaking out about it publicly. Their idea of neighborhood is also uniquely maintained because, while American military spouses and locals rarely have face-to-face meetings, they recognize each other as neighbors through empathy and social distance, resident on the same island but without much opportunity for active communication. As a result, without visible actions, they achieve the quality of neighborhood by continuously completing the gift circle for each other; one side serves as giver, and the other as receiver. This offers a way to understand distance as neighborhood that differs from masculine friendship or the understandings of philosophy as translation. The idea of asymmetry or symmetry is also uniquely demonstrated in feminine friendship. Each side of feminine friendship is socially and politically placed at very different positions, which can be considered a kind of asymmetry. However, on both sides, these women’s lives share the similar characteristic of being so often at the mercy of social and political powers far beyond their control. In this sense, they seem to share symmetry.

This paper takes the position that the forms of feminine friendship exemplified by AWWA still remain distinctive in character, and are neither fully withdrawn from the aspects of political ideology, nor from aspects of philosophy as translation. Rene Arcilla considers alternative methods of philosophical translation that have been out of scope in the orthodox social justice discussion. (2018, 73) Arcilla indicates that the most important philosophical issue is not to disclose orthodox social justice studies as unjust, but to discover alternative ways of thinking about and understanding them. This paper presumes that the feminine friendship of AWWA can be a response to Arcilla’s question – that a piece of justice, a well-balanced point of distance where people can get along without fighting, despite disagreements, is attained by feminine friendship. This friendship is, however, partly located in the orthodox social justice discourse which Standish criticizes.

Feminine friendship takes a distance from the ideas of philosophy as translation on three points. First, it does not clarify its individuality in order to establish communication. It is the nature of military family life to accept voicelessness and replaceability at the personal level. Anyone in the military community must be ready to give up a sense of themselves as an irreplaceable individual when it is necessary; that is how they contribute to society. In such a context, those friendly and supportive communications function without individuality. Just as AWWA member gift givers are not recognized as indispensable, neither are local gift receivers identified as essential individuals. Nevertheless, their faceless communications are understood as friendship, on a personal level, by both sides, because the generosity involved is authentic. In spite of, or we could rather say because of these different political standpoints, AWWA and Okinawan locals can discover ways to communicate with each other nonverbally. The American military spouses and the local former leprosy patients, for example, are socially and politically placed at distant positions. However, the quality of emotion involved in their interactions, which is personal and uncontrollable for those on both sides, is actually very intimate. One side has to be ready to bear the anxiety of their spouses going to battle at any time, and the other lives in forced separation and lifelong quarantine from their family due to discrimination justified by the disease. As a result, without emphasizing individuality, this language-less communication reaches directly into each other’s personal lives, and has been recognized as a type of friendship among them.

Second, feminine friendship is known as limited and temporary by those involved. Walter Benjamin writes:

Is any nonviolent resolution of conflict possible? Without doubt. The relationships among private persons are full of examples of this. Nonviolent agreement is possible wherever a civilized outlook allows the use of unalloyed means of agreement. [… These] are never those of direct solutions but always those of indirect solutions. […] Its profoundest example is perhaps the conference, considered as a technique of civil agreement. For in it not only is nonviolent agreement possible, but also the exclusion of violence in principle is quite explicitly demonstrable by one significant factor: there is no sanction for lying. (1996, 244)

Feminine friendship sets aside the tough political debate to maintain the quality of humanity within it. It may not directly solve any political problem, as in Benjamin’s formulation. However, instead of providing another way of thinking about or changing the conditions of a limited and difficult situation, feminine friendship demonstrates the possibility of having a creative and a meaningful life within it. Thus, feminine friendship is morally valuable.

Furthermore, location is key to AWWA’s feminine friendship. Here, feminine friendship slips out of the theoretical framework of philosophy as translation, because it can give up its individuality but not its geographical specificity. Although American military stations are located all over the world, philanthropy groups like AWWA exist and remain only in Okinawa. Why is this? As Miyagi explains, the characteristic and unique cultural policies installed during the occupation period in Okinawa created conditions for the development of AWWA. Another possible reason is the density of the American military population on a small island. However, these factors are still too weak to fully answer the question. How is AWWA able to engage in such time- and energy-consuming, non-profitable labors so quietly, despite the continual replacement of its members? Also, how are the nameless, marginalized locals able to accept the gift of generosity from their “friends”, who are also widely seen as the source of social discrimination against them?

In its presumption that the influence of the nature of the Okinawa islands is one of fair and equal treatment and education for everybody, regardless of their heritage, culture, or nationality, when they practice something to support others, this paper argues that the influence of local nature is a decisive, absolute, and foundational factor in understanding the moral values of feminine friendship. Thus, it is not that human beings and nature are sharing a neighborhood, but rather that nature is our absolute teacher. This is different from Cavell’s interpretation of Walden by Henry David Thoreau, for instance, which sees human beings as able to establish a relationship with nature that functions as a kind of neighborhood. (1972)

Yuimahru is a folkloric expression from the Okinawa/Ryukyu area, meaning “reciprocity”, which could be considered as a traditional gift theory and gift economy. “Yui” means providing/receiving labor without any duty/demand of reciprocity; “mahru” means circulation. Yuimahru originated in the 17^th and 18^th centuries as a practical necessity, but it is understood in Okinawa today as the social norm, and teaches that a way to fulfill social obligation is to share the burdens of social welfare among the community.[26] According to George H. Kerr, the spirit of Yuimahru is deep in the core of Okinawan/Ryukyuan identity because of the ongoing sense and quality of mutual support in its communities and the remarkable mutual assistance practiced among family, relatives, friends, and community members. (2014, 228-229) On the other hand, as described above, the practice of mutual aid is also distinctive to military culture. The community has developed tight and multiple systems for mutual support because the possibility of tragedy and accident are everybody’s business.

It is true that, in the military community, the sense of mutual aid does not originate with Yuimahru. However, it is also true that engaging in social services as a practice of mutual aid is resonant with the spirit of Yuimahru when practiced in Okinawa, especially if the direction of the support goes to local Okinawans. Unintentionally, feminine friendship thus demonstrates the powerful influence of the indigenous moral value of Yuimahru extended to all of its inhabitants. While Saito’s philosophical concern is about words being reduced to an “empty shell” of meaning, a former leprosy patient in Okinawa created an art work with empty sea shells, as an embodiment of meaningful friendship.

Conclusion

Data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED) indicates that the social distance norm has had no positive impact on today’s domestic, local, national, regional, and international conflicts.[27] The pandemic rather created other, new social conflicts over vaccination, mask wearing, school opening, and lockdown policies.[28] These incidences persuade us that “good social distance” does matter in our lives, because the fact is that people today cannot stop fighting with each other. Thus, it is necessary to deliberate good social distance as an aspect of moral education. What moral education is lacking in contemporary society? While physical interactions can create bad situations, socially-distanced interactions can create humanistic practices. The examples of masculine and feminine friendship in Okinawa teach us that quality of distance does matter, and that physical distance and spiritual distance are two different stories in morality. While masculine friendship is an example which emphasizes face-to-face interaction and camouflages the absence of spiritual closeness, feminine friendship accepts physical distance in order to prioritize the quality of attachment.

Thus, feminine friendship offers hope, and its moral lesson about social distance is that, regardless of difficulty, there are ways to live a meaningful life, affirmatively and creatively. It offers us two ways to create and maintain a morally valuable social distance. First, through the unflashy qualities of quiet philanthropy, undisplayed practice, unobtrusive actions, kindness, nonverbal communication, and infrequent but intentional physical closeness. Second, by embodying the moral values embedded in the local nature. Okinawa, the indispensable geographical factor in feminine friendship, is unique, and can be learned from widely thanks to the ways in which it finds harmony in an artificial military culture.

Standish claims that, in order to be able to become silence, people have to be able to become illocutionary, or to become their utterances. Their silence, as a result, carries the power of manifestation. Such a silence teaches the point at which verbal expression becomes vain.[29] Indeed, AWWA demonstrates how the art of quietness and social distance allow communities to live well together despite social difficulties and distortions. In this way, the idea of social distance can be seen in reverse, as a way to promote positive connections, and the usage of friendship as consistent with its action, resonance, and meaning.[30]

References

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ABSTRACT

The cultivation of reason has long been regarded as a central aim of education. More recently, this is largely discussed against the background of the philosophical tradition of epistemology, with Harvey Siegel being the most influential philosopher of education for his account of critical thinking. In this paper, I seek to lay the way for an account of the cultivation of reason that goes beyond this epistemological conception. Crucially, however, my aim here is not to undermine Siegel’s epistemologically-oriented approach but to seek a way of furthering it, by rethinking it, through the thoughts that Stanley Cavell opens with his existential understanding of scepticism. By attending carefully and closely to the limits of Siegel’s way of architecting and defending critical thinking as an educational ideal, as will be shown, this paper will offer an account of the cultivation of reason that exceeds the epistemological conception, and does more justice to the unrestricted responsibilities we have in rational thought.

INTRODUCTION

The pandemic appears to me a time of intense experience of an unknown that is always near to us but we are somehow oblivious of. In response to the unknown virus, containment measures were followed, but we also witnessed how such measures often foundered with the arrival of a wave of unexpected events, or how they settle some part of our disturbance while giving a way to further complications in other parts of lives. At a time when we finally begin to talk more optimistically about ‘living with Covid-19’, which I believe is credited to the incredible triumph of knowledge and our capabilities for it, we are called upon to be cautious about optimism. For it is not as if we came to know fully what we should and should not do to keep things under control. Of course, that incompleteness of our knowledge and capabilities for reasoning is not new to us. But over the years in pandemic, this has come all the way down in our lives—has revealed the relationship of knowledge and reason to uncertainty and instability more richly than ever.

All this clearly bears on matters not only philosophical but also educational. One kind of response to the massive changes to life brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic might be to say that it shows us the increasing importance of critical thinking in our lives—as a means to navigate and live well with the new kinds of knowledge and elements of uncertainty that we face. Such a position would have a veritable inheritance in the form of epistemology of education which has taken the lead of the discussion and defended the cultivation of reason as an important educational aim. One of the most ardent contemporary discussants would be Harvey Siegel, whose epistemologically-oriented educational vision of critical thinking has earned much prominence in our educational thinking today. A particular feature of Siegel’s conception of critical thinking is its embrace of fallibilism—a position that appears to accord well with the unstable world we inhabit in the wake of Covid-19. But how far would such a conception of critical thinking allow us to live well in the world we have today?

The aim of this paper is to reconsider Siegel’s epistemological account of the cultivation of reason in light of Stanley Cavell’s discussions of scepticism. It is important to remark from the outset that the intention of my discussion is not to renounce reason and rationality as an educational ideal, nor to undermine the contributions Siegel’s critical thinking has on the matter. As we shall come to see, there is much to heed to what Siegel himself provides. What I am attempting in this paper is rather to attend more closely and carefully to the limits of the way Siegel propounds and defends critical thinking as an educational aim, and to seek therein a way to take it further than, and beyond, the epistemological understanding of the aim.

The first task of the present paper will therefore be to draw Siegel’s account of critical thinking in a fuller view. In doing so, my focus will be on the so-called fallibilism critique of Siegel that emerges from his engagement with John McDowell. I will then work to bring Siegel’s fallibilism—a name for the characteristic gesture in his epistemological solution to fallibility that is his account of critical thinking—closer to Cavell’s existential interpretation of scepticism. The second task of the paper will then be to explore the nature of the kind of progress that has potential for going beyond Siegel. For this, I will take what might at first glance seem a detour through Cavell’s way of reading Saul Kripke’s attempt to establish and then refute scepticism of meaning and a quiet acceptance of it. I will show that this line of thought can be extended to argue for a way of understanding human reason that is not confined to epistemological considerations. This paper will close by considering what this discussion might mean for the different ways we understand the cultivation of reason in education.

EPISTEMOLOGY, EDCUATION, AND FALLIBILISM

Let us start with Siegel’s fallibilism that emerges in his engagement with McDowell. In the second essay from Education’s Epistemology, Siegel reads that McDowell elaborates Wilfrid Sellars’s naturalistic account of the normative character of reason, encapsulated in the notion of ‘the space of reasons’. Originally in Sellars, this was a product of reconciliation between the realm of the ‘manifest image’ and that of ‘scientific image’ of human beings, the former concerned with relations that are normative in character while the latter naturalistic or causal. If Sellars’s project is to show ‘that epistemic and other sort of normativity can find their legitimate place in the scientific conception of the world,’ Siegel takes McDowell to have elaborated the way the normativity of reason is naturalistic: ‘reason is a part of the natural world but nevertheless operates autonomously from it and cannot be reduced to it’ (2017, pp. 22-23). The key to this elaboration is McDowell’s re-conceptualisation of ‘nature’ as something of ‘a second nature’ that human beings acquire in the course of ordinary experience. Drawing on and generalising Aristotle’s ethical account on the acquisition of second nature, McDowell puts: ‘rational requirements . . . are there in any case, whether or not we are responsive to them. . . . When a decent upbringing initiates us into the relevant way of thinking, our eyes are opened to the very existence of this tract of the space of reasons’ (p. 23). In this way, our rationality is (re)conceived as natural, or the lives of human beings are naturally (re)constituted through the process of ordinary upbringing to manoeuvre into the space of reasons.

Siegel remains positive throughout his discussion about McDowell’s naturalistic account of how we become rational beings. He in fact sees much proximity between McDowell’s view to his vision of education for rationality. In particular, Siegel takes as compatible the ideas that it is part of our natural maturation that we come into the rational demands, and that to live up to rational demands involves a sort of critical thinking in that we put our thinking ‘under a standing obligation to reflect about and criticize the standards by which, at any time, it takes itself to be governed’ (p. 25). Furthermore, Siegel concurs in McDowell that ‘our thinking can fail to meet such standards’ (p. 27). This failure is not untoward, since the natural emergence of rationality ‘includes or gives rise to both the epistemically good and the epistemically bad, both truths and falsehoods, both justified and unjustified beliefs’ (p. 27). To deal with this fact, ‘more—in a word, education—is needed’ (p. 28). The initiation into certain conceptual ways of thinking as part of normal human development is not enough. Our ways of thinking should be supplemented with ‘explicit educational interventions aimed at enhancing students’ abilities to reason well’ (p. 28).  

Siegel’s discussion of the proximity of his thought to McDowell is interesting for a particular reason. It shows us how the fallibility critique, sometimes made against Siegel, could risk missing the mark. For example, drawing on phenomenological perspectives, Siegel’s account is sometimes charged with ignoring the ‘background’: that presumed context of horizon of our relation to the world which is not subject to rational scrutiny (at least in the way Siegel envisages it). Yet others, such as Chris Hanks indicates that Siegel does not flatly ignore this. Siegel, as Hanks puts it, ‘wisely acknowledges that any specific application of critical thinking must take place under [the messy contingencies of everyday life], but staunchly insists that rationality itself must involve criteria that stand independently of particular circumstances’ (2008, p. 199). Siegel is not surprised that in ‘the mental life of every normal human being . . . lived “in” the space of reasons, . . . irrationality and uncritical thinking abound’, but at the same time, Siegel appears to turn towards a greater guarantee for rationality and critical thinking, the task of which Siegel engrafts into education (2017, p. 28). It is this move that I am interested in exploring in this paper—the move that makes Siegel’s fallibilism, as it were, not fallible enough. I would like to explore if there is more than an epistemological issue at stake in this.

Let us here turn to Cavell’s discussion of scepticism. The turn may see seem abrupt at this point. But, as we will see, it will allow us to bring to sight what else it is that we may find at work in Siegel’s fallibilism, and the ways in which Siegel’s account remains a limited conception of human reason (pace its apparent acceptance of fallibilism).

CAVELL AND SCEPTICISM

Scepticism is normally understood in philosophy as a problem of knowledge, and hence deeply connected to the philosophical tradition of epistemology. In this modern understanding, scepticism is concerned with the claims that we cannot know with certainty of the existence of objects or others. Perhaps the most famous version of modern scepticism would be that of Descartes, who used scepticism as a tool to discover certainty, infamously ‘found’ in the Cogito argument. Descartes progresses in stages of doubt over the deception of our own senses, the possibility of dreaming, and the trick by some malicious demon, and elicits the universal doubt that we cannot in fact be sure there is an external world we think there is. This is anything but a complete explanation of scepticism, but hopefully enough to explain how scepticism is, although its claim would at first appear oppositional, a characteristic of epistemology. And Cavell’s sustained interest in scepticism is attributed to this characteristic that scepticism displays as a ‘bedfellow’ of epistemology.

There is a particularly relevant passage to this extension of thought in Cavell. Here, recounting the arrival of scepticism Cavell writes:

In the unbroken tradition of epistemology since Descartes and Locke, . . . the concept of knowledge (of the world) disengages from its connections with matters of information and skill and learning, and becomes fixed to the concept of . . . certainty provided by the (by my) senses. At some early point in epistemological investigations, the world normally present to us . . . is brought into question and vanishes, whereupon all connections with a world is found to hand upon what can be said to be “present to senses”; and that turns out, shockingly, not to be the world. It is at this point that the doubter finds himself cast into skepticism, turning the existence of the external world into a problem (1976b, p. 323).

What Cavell’s recounting brings to the fore is that the sceptic speaks of the limitedness in the intellectual effort to make the world present. She finds herself forced to exclaim the awareness that what was once the best expression of seriousness about our connection with the world turns out to close off the very access to the world. In other words, the sceptic’s expression of intellectual limitedness does bear the truth in that it reveals our connection to the world is fundamentally not made in terms of knowing: that connection cannot be one of knowing, and by the same token cannot be one of failing to know. But the sceptic craves covering over that disturbing truth of unknowability with knowing and falls into a tragedy. In such a frame of mind, ‘skepticism must mean that we cannot know the world exists, and hence that perhaps there isn’t one’ (p. 324).

How does this passage bring Siegel’s fallibilism to scepticism? It is perhaps worth recalling here that Siegel arrived at a refutation of fallibility as a response to his recognition of fallibility. Siegel accepts McDowell’s naturalistic view that human being’s becoming rational involves a normal human development consisting of ordinary upbringing and the opening up of our eyes to conceptual ways of thinking. As such he recognises this presupposes the possibilities that human beings can be initiated into those ways of thinking properly or poorly, that human beings in the space of reasons can reason well or badly. It is precisely for this reason that Siegel argues for an education that ‘somehow prohibits mistakes in reasoning or leads inevitably to epistemically high-quality thinking,’ (2017, p. 28). Is it too difficult to glimpse the mark of a Cavellian sceptic in Siegel’s fallibilism, here? Siegel knows that our being ‘in’ the Sellars/McDowellian space of reasons implies our reasons will sometimes falter: he is drawn to take issue with this knowledge, to address and to escape ourselves from our condition of fallibility.

Let us develop a bit more the connection being made between fallibilism and scepticism by the way of clarifying their point for contact. Notably, the connection is not made upon the epistemic specifications of the two theses; but upon the deeper, existential significance that both theses of fallibilism and scepticism give expression to, namely, a certain frame of mind of us as knowing-doubting beings. To Cavell, scepticism is not confined ‘to philosophers who wind up denying that we can never know’ but applied ‘to any view which takes the existence of the world to be a problem of knowledge’ (1979, p. 46). For what constitutes scepticism is ‘the very raising of the question of knowledge in a certain form, or spirit’ (p. 46). According to this view, a philosophy ‘that takes itself to have answered the question . . . negatively’ is as much scepticism as a philosophy that takes itself to have responded otherwise (p. 46); and an epistemologist Siegel would very aptly be a sceptic in that his vision of education for rationality also returns the question about human condition to an intellectual (knowledge-related) matter.

A ‘REFUTATION’ OF SCEPTICISM?

Having brought Siegel’s fallibilism and Cavell’s scepticism in the same breath, however, it would seem clear that this will not help us to refute fallibility in the way Siegel does. For Cavell is in sharp contrast with Siegel in the respect that his existential understanding of scepticism rather finds in it a certain truth. But it is crucial to remark that the ‘contrast’ here does not indicate affirmation of scepticism, either. But then, the question will arise as to what else way is left that we might call a ‘progress’ from fallibility? In other words, how can such a way that is neither affirmation nor refutation of fallibility help us think ‘better’ of the cultivation of reason that education should aim?

Cavell seems to have received a similar question in a different context of language and rule-following, in relation to his writing on Saul Kripke’s interpretation of Wittgenstein. More specifically, the question concerns Cavell’s hesitation over calling Wittgenstein a sceptic, acceding to Kripke’s influential interpretation of the philosopher. According to Kripke, Wittgenstein shows that ‘another may, for all I know, at any time manifest his use of a conception such a way that is incompatible with the way he has used it in the past, a way I had taken myself to share’ (2005, p. 132). Kripke takes this ‘ungroundedness of concepts’ to constitute a sceptical thesis on meaning that ‘I can never know what another means by his concepts, nor indeed know what I might turn out to mean by mine’—to which Kripke’s sceptical Wittgenstein then offers a solution based on the strength of the ordinary (p. 132). Cavell’s response to Kripke is doubled. Cavell concurs in Kripke that Wittgenstein’s vision of language and meaning takes its importance from scepticism. But he disagrees, this irreducibility of scepticism is presented as a form of sceptical thesis, and subsequently, nor did Wittgenstein propound a solution to what has ‘a reasonably sceptical specter’ (p. 132). Note carefully here the point at which Cavell casts suspicion. It is not related to his disagreement with Kripke’s Wittgensteinian affirmation or refutation of scepticism, but to what would be left out in calling, following Kripke, Wittgenstein to have expressed the ungroundedness of concepts as a form of scepticism, and to have put an end to it himself.

To see in detail why Cavell holds back from calling Wittgenstein a sceptic, let us follow Cavell’s move to Kant and Heidegger on the scandal of philosophy. Kant famously wrote that the scandal of philosophy is that ‘the existence of things outside us . . . should have to be assumed merely on faith, and that if it occurs to anyone to doubt it, we should be unable to answer him with a proof’ (p. 133). Phrased in this way, I think Kant would be a figure who is comparable to Kripke’s Wittgenstein—and to Siegel. If they can be taken together, it would be because of the certain way in which they have responded to the possibility and the presence of scepticism in different domains. In essence, all three share the sense that scepticism can be, but has not yet been, solved. Kant is committed to put an end to this sensed ‘scandal’, Kripke’s Wittgenstein to the realised absence of a fact of meaning, and Siegel to the recognised fallibility of our reason.

Cavell compares this sense of the scandal to Heidegger’s: ‘the ‘scandal of philosophy’ is not that this proof has yet to be given, but that such proofs are expected and attempted again and again’ (p. 133). The scandal of scepticism is here expressed as that it is present in the life of our intellectual conscience as a ‘stumbling block, as running up against the incredible’ (p. 133). Cavell extends Heidegger’s sense of scandal, in some way that runs counter to it. Crucially, this sense of scandal is directed ‘not primarily to philosophy’s response (or lack of it) to skepticism’s thesis or conclusion, . . . but to the question of . . . skepticisms’s necessity and its possibility, to its paradoxical presence within our very possession of language’ that both Kant’s and Heidegger’s sense of scandal is likely to leave out (p. 133).

Let us press a bit more Cavell’s sense of scandal and the flip-side to scepticism this opens us to. This also brings us back to Cavell’s elaboration, and correction, of Kripke’s view that Wittgenstein provides a refutation of scepticism:

Philosophers have often said that skepticism defeats itself, denying a framework of assumption that it must itself assume. My worry is rather that it is (ordinary) language itself that defeats itself, so that if I am ‘confined’ to the ordinary in language, it is I who suffer defeats, tied to a stumbling block. I sometimes refer to this realization as the standing threat of skepticism.

What has to be answered, according to me, is not a sceptical thesis or conclusion (though that of course has to be accounted for) but how it is that philosophy has chronically required of itself a flight from the ordinary, one form of which is Cartesian skepticism. I have even argued that the ordinary from which philosophy flees is the creation of skepticism (language and the world seen as from the leaving of them) (2005, pp. 133-4).

Note here that Cavell takes Wittgenstein to engage with a refutation not of scepticism, but of the attempt to refute scepticism on the strength of the ordinary. And this double-negation of scepticism does not render the adoption of scepticism (as an intellectual position) but realises scepticism as a standing threat. For Wittgenstein, philosophy needs to return from its flight from the ordinary, but ‘there is no ‘back’ to which to return’ (1996, p. 67). The ordinary Wittgenstein calls for return to is ‘anything but invulnerable to skepticism’ (2005, p. 134). And crucially, Cavell finds that what is at stake here is not the intellectual truth or falsehood of the vulnerability. For ‘what regime of a vulnerable ordinary means . . . is that we are judges of what calls for, or tolerates, change in our ways of thinking and wording the world’ (p. 134). This is the existential truth of scepticism.

Let us bring Kripke, and Siegel, back in to the discussion. When Cavell disagree with Kripke’s view that Wittgenstein establishes scepticism and subsequently offers a solution to it, he does not thereby suggest an interpretation that puts the philosopher on the other side of the adoption of our vulnerable ordinary tout court. Cavell’s disagreement goes further to the poignant realisation of the regime of a vulnerable ordinary as a way of living with, and even surviving from, this standing threat of vulnerability. With little doubt, this would rightly explain the reason for Kripke’s Wittgenstein to care that the vulnerable ordinary be replaced by invulnerability in the first place; and perhaps Siegel’s for arguing that the fallible human thinking be supplemented by the educational efforts for ‘inevitably’ good thinking in the first place. But Cavell brings us to the aspect of our lives that precedes, and potentially exceeds, the way of putting a stop to scepticism. For there is something in our constant exposure to the threat of scepticism that can make our words ‘solider’ than those of Kripke’s Wittgensteinian speaker who is given the rules of her language community to follow in speaking; and that can make our thinking ‘better’ than that of Siegel’s critical thinker who is educated to monitor and prevent herself from making mistakes in thinking. Having travelled so far, I think we are finally approaching how this can be seen to be the case.

‘LIFE OF NECESSITIES WITHOUT RULES’: AN ETHICAL PROGRESS

To recall, Kripke formulates the Wittgensteinian experience of the ungroundedness of language into a scepticism that there is no fact of meaning. And Cavell, objecting to this interpretation, re-articulates the experience as illustrative of ‘the life form of talker, . . . the life of necessities without rules’ (2005, p. 138). ‘In continuing to project ordinary words into further contexts . . . “nothing insures” that we will go on (that is, “make the same projections”) as we have done in the past’ (p. 135). But then, instead of taking this as a trouble that unnerves us, Cavell takes the necessary absence of rules to reveal the depth of our accommodation to one another in speaking, or rather, the bottomlessness of this accommodation which we ever have to find out.

Ordinary examples from Cavell’s The Claim of Reason will help us here (1979, p. 197). Suppose that I was invited to my friend’s house for coffee and broke a cup. I report this to her and she asks me whether I broke all of the cup. I respond I did. But after glancing over the broken pieces, she says, ‘No, you have not broken it all. Look, this piece could have been broken into smaller pieces.’ I think this would most likely strike me as a joke. Because it is too bizarre that if what she really meant by ‘breaking all of the cup’ is, as it were, smashing it into dust. I find it very unlikely to accommodating myself to this, say, to stamping on yet too big fragments really to ‘break all of the cup’. But then she picks up the piece that is yet big enough and takes it to where various objects are collected, with them all displaying their faces of different monograms. Now I see what she means by the apparently awkward question, that is, I may accommodate to her way of ‘breaking all of the cup’. She is right, I may say, that I have broken all of the cup except for the monogram. This, of course, does not mean that the next time when I break a cup at a cafe I am entitled to say to a staff: ‘I am sorry, but I did not break all of it. I found a big enough fragment of it to preserve the promotional print on it!’ ‘We don’t have to talk to everyone about everything,’ but as Cavell adds further, ‘there seem to be some things we do have to talk to someone about if we are to talk to her or him about anything’ (2005, p. 137). But what those things are is, as the examples usefully reminds us, not set out in advance. What we say to one another may be ‘within bounds of mutuality, or not’, and ‘how far the bounds extend is not given’ but ‘in principle open to [our] judgement’ in each case of speaking (p. 138).

Now all this would make it almost ‘a miracle’ that we are at most of the times accommodated to one another in speaking (p. 139). The fact of language is, as Cavell describes, ‘as simple as it is difficult, and as difficult as it is terrifying’ (1976a, p. 52). But the painstaking exposition of the double-sided fact of language directs at revealing not so much that it is a miracle as the extent to which it is.

[It] is not simply that since we may “always” be wrong in our (empirical) judgements, the moral to draw is . . . to be cautious in our claims, to measure how far we attach our wills to our words about the world. . . . The moral . . . is rather that since I am, as finite, threatened with consequences from unforeseeable quarters, I am at any time acting, and speaking, in the absence of what may seem sufficient reason. Since I cannot measure in each case how far to invest my will, I must trust myself to be up to calamities (the consequences of accidents, mistakes, inadvertence, clumsiness, thoughtlessness, foolishness, imprudence, hesitation, precipitousness, acts of God, and so on) (2005, p. 139).

There is no reason for us to say one thing rather than another, and we can always go wrong with what we say for no reason; but then we are answerable for everything that is said. But this line of thought is easily obliterated in the middle. As the passage reminds, a temptation gets in the way to make ourselves protected from calamities which we are subject to, and responsible for, as living the life form of talkers without rules.

The way in which this temptation plays out would be reminiscent of what we have so far referred to as our tendency to reduce human finitude into an intellectual lack—the frame of mind that allowed me to bring Kripke’s Wittgenstein and Siegel together. That there is nothing deeper than accommodation upon which to found language registers what we do through language: a constant test of how far to reason with one another through speaking. But we are tempted to take the depth of our accommodation to mean a piece of knowledge about how deep its bottom is from the top, and attribute the unwanted consequences to a lack of that piece of knowledge. We think what we need is to measure the depth of our mutuality upon which we then forge a solid language in speaking of which we will never fail to accommodate to what we say; and hence, we will be fully discharged from the requirement of responsibility for judging the limits of our accommodation.

Apart from whether this is empirically possible (to which I think the above examples have already offered a negative answer), the above passage makes us think what it would be like to be speakers of such language. We will now somehow say what we mean without remainder and be licensed to rest easy with our burden of responsibility for elaborating what we mean by what we say. But this is precisely because there will arise no occasion for sharing through language further ‘interests, judgements, impressions, needs, inclinations, desires, temptations, compulsions, surprises, moods, tastes, curiosities, qualms, antipathies, attractions, conflicts, perplexities, perceptions, satisfactions, games, proofs, jokes, news, fictions, gossip’ than what we were given to say—or to repeat (p. 139). Which is to say, what we will now have is poverty of language, and an impoverished life of talkers. To restore the nourishment we want to enjoy in speaking is to reconcile ourselves to the responsibility we have of our words—which has always been owed to us but would become pressing in particular when communication is threatened to break down and accommodation seems to reach at its limits.

TOWARDS RETHINKING THE CULTIVATION OF REASON

Let us move these lines of thought on to how we might be prepared for a way of understanding the cultivation of reason as an educational ideal that goes beyond Siegel’s. To recall, Siegel took seriously the kind of fallibility that flows from McDowell’s wider conception of rationality. Rationality is a matter of becoming responsive to rational demands, which is described in terms of acquiring a second nature or coming into the space of reasons. Of course, this conception itself does not say that our ordinary decent upbringing shall always initiate us into the relevant ways of thinking; nor that once acquiring appropriate reasoning capacities, we shall always think with and in terms of concepts as understood by epistemologists. For what it refers to as rationality is not confined, if not irrelevant, to ‘a facility with inference and argument’ but rather ‘a matter of living in the world in a certain way or manifesting a certain form of life’ (Bakhurst, 2016, p. 80). And I think Siegel’s fallibilism is, although he claims himself in a different spirit, completely compatible with this extensive conception of rationality. His insistence on non-fallible rationality through education is itself a rich expression at once of the recognition that our reason is by nature fallible and of the very ‘reasonable’ desire to overcome that fallibility, where reasonableness points (not to the epistemological solution that he propounds but) to what it thereby manifests about what is required of us to become a thinking, rational being. We are liable to mistakes in reasoning in that our thinking is not always in keeping with the relevant ways of living in the space of reasons, but then we are at each moment responsible for the ways we think.

But Siegel’s fallibilism diverts in the middle of this line of thought in the direction of his epistemological solution that is education for critical thinking—which I just alluded to, perhaps provocatively, as reasonableness in disguise. To see why, let us go back to the reason Siegel gives for this epistemological conversion by the way of tracing the architecture of his account of critical thinking itself. Although Siegel builds his account upon a particular conception of knowledge, its arguable supremacy is far from the ground for Siegel’s claim that it is first and foremost important educational aim. Rather, it is because education is a moral matter, and so is critical thinking. The kind of activity Siegel takes as central to critical thinking is that of sifting out ‘realist, objective, and mind-independent’ knowledge from what we think something to be true or what may luckily turn out to be so (1998, p. 22). For what makes something true knowledge hinges on ‘its successfully capturing of some independent state of affairs which obtains independently of our thinking that it does’ (p. 23). Now this makes critical thinking ‘good thinking’ (2008, p. 81). And to the extent that this stands, it follows that education ought to foster in students the abilities and dispositions for critical thinking that will enable them to think for themselves, competently and well.

Let us note how far this is from acceptance and willingness to face up to responsibility we have of our thinking. By the remark, however, I do not intend to deny there being some shade of responsibility in Siegel. Indeed, Siegel acknowledges that we are liable to both good and bad thinking, we are not always bound to think well. That profession of liability compels him to turn to the teaching of his critical thinking for good, ‘epistemically high-quality’ thinking (2017, p. 28). But I would like to draw attention to the spirit in which responsibility is discharged in this way of progression, and to remind what it means that we are responsible for our thinking. For the responsibility we have of our thinking is a matter of living that runs much deeper and wider than acquiring abilities and habits of mind for critical thinking so that a critical thinker will become able to monitor her thinking and protect herself from culpability for bad thinking. To put differently, Siegel’s account of critical thinking does not bring our fallibility seriously and far enough into its way of progression, or else understands its seriousness to be a matter that is to be addressed on a purely intellectual level—a question of knowledge-claims. And the consequence of this is his fallibilism that accepts fallibility only to reject it; and his account of critical thinking that acknowledges responsibility only to deny it.

CONCLUSION

Let us revisit the earlier remark about Cavell’s interest in ‘refutation’ of scepticism. With the line of thought we have developed so far in mind, I can now elaborate that his interest here is in working through the complex knots of thoughts of a sceptic and relinquishing the empty temptation of overcoming scepticism intellectually. A crucial point to add again is that Cavell’s refutation of scepticism also resists a passive acceptance of scepticism as a fact of our intellectual life. For Cavell traverses refutation and affirmation of scepticism. He attends to failures of knowledge and therein restores us to a way of furthering our knowledge. Plainly put, we do not have the confidence of knowledge that the person in front of me is genuinely expressing her pain when crying out ‘Ouch!’, but then we do our best to understand what she might mean. We look around what has happened and imagine why she has had to say it (e.g., a sudden blast of wind raised grains of sand into her eyes). This re-orients knowledge towards what it means to us or what it requires of us to know. Knowledge is to face up to and willingly participate in how to go on—the call which is always present but becomes pressing particularly when we seem not to know our way around so we have to find out.

Let us phrase our points in some comparison with Siegel’s vision of education for critical thinking. What we have seen in the paper does enough to show the idea of human reasons that goes beyond Siegel’s of thinking well in order not to think badly—and hence, to my eyes, not to have to think about how anything could not have gone wrong, and further, how anything could ever go right. To put otherwise, Siegel aligns his account of education for critical thinking with McDowell’s view of initiation into the space of reasons in that both accentuate ‘a standing obligation to reflect about and criticise the standards by which, at any time, [our thinking] takes itself to be governed’ (2017, p. 25). The alignment, however, seems to be made upon restricting that obligation to the end of, and discharging it thereupon, coming able to tell and do what Siegel sets out to be epistemically good thinking. But that obligation of criticism has no end, but rather goes all the way down—including when and where (we think) we are critical enough in Siegel’s eye.

In drawing the paper to a close, this may baffle us as to what reason it is that is being suggested teaching at school. But I think Cavell’s claim of reason teaches us the price of our penchant for ‘the answer.’ If we are to take on our responsibility for thinking, then this is a question that is ever in progress and always in play. And it is this re-cognition of the depth of our responsibility in thinking that I argue would improve Siegel’s epistemological conception of critical thinking—into the kind of critical thinking that is of the increasing importance in the world we have today in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, from a time of an unknown to a ‘better’ known.

REFERENCES

Bakhurst, D. (2016) Introduction: Exploring the Formation of Reason. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 50.1, pp. 76-83.

Cavell, S. (1976a) The Availability of Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophy. In S. Cavell. Must We Mean What We Say? (Cambridge MA, Cambridge University Press), pp. 44-72.

Cavell, S. (1976b) The Avoidance of Love: A Reading of King Lear. In S. Cavell. Must We Mean What We Say? (Cambridge MA, Cambridge University Press), pp. 267-356.

Cavell, S. (1979) The Claim of Reason (Oxford, Oxford University Press).

Cavell, S. (1996) A Pitch of Philosophy: Autobiographical Exercises. (Cambridge MA and London, Harvard University Press).

Cavell, S. (2005) Philosophy The Day After Tomorrow (Cambridge MA and London, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press).

Hanks, C. (2008) Indoctrination and the Space of Reasons. Education Theory 58.2, pp. 193-212.

Siegel, H. (1998) Knowledge, Education and Truth. In D. Carr (ed.) Education, Knowledge and Truth: Beyond the Postmodern Impasse (London, Routledge), pp. 19-36.

Siegel, H. (2008) Why Teach Epistemology in Schools?. In M. Hand, and C. Winstanley (ed.) Philosophy in Schools (London, Continuum International Publishing Group), pp. 78-84.

Siegel, H. (2017) Education’s Epistemology: Rationality, Diversity, and Critical Thinking (Oxford, Oxford University Press)

Abstract In this article, I present an Arendtian perspective on tact and how it can be shaped in the educator. Pedagogical tact is generally understood as an ability to act appropriately in pedagogical situations with a sensitivity to the individual child or student, as well as the group and the demands of the particular situation. Building on Arendt’s work on action, exemplarity and judgement, I argue that tact is similar in structure to the daimon, in ancient Greek thought. A guiding spirit that is an inseparable part of who we are, yet beyond our immediate control and visible only to others. Accordingly, tact is not something we can define, nor can we systematize the acquisition or development of it. Rather we are left with the rather illusive proposition of studying examples of tact. Not because they can simply be imitated, but because they offer the only way of placing ourselves in the vicinity of the tactful.

I

This article attempts to tackle the question of what pedagogical tact consists of and how it forms itself in the individual through the lens of Hannah Arendt’s thinking about appearance and exemplarity. I raise the questions of what processes and from what sources can we draw when we wish to enable ourselves to act properly in pedagogical situations. What does it entail to embody tact in movements and words, and how do we become capable of such movements and words that would be deemed tactful? This is of course not a task that can be accomplished in any finished form or with fixed conclusions, nor can it be answered only conceptually or philosophically as will be the attempt here. Nor is Arendt the most likely theorist with whom to think about these matters. There are at least three reasons for this. First, Arendt never spoke explicitly about tact. Second, Arendt’s focus in her educational writings was never specifically on the work of the educator. Third, she has often been read as a thinker whose theory of action was overly cognitive and ignorant to affective and bodily aspects. Nonetheless, I will in this piece try to tease out some central aspects of Arendt’s thinking that I believe to be relevant for theorizing pedagogical tact. I will do this by first trying to outline how we can understand tact in relation to Arendt’s ideas about action and appearance, and secondly by turning to her ideas about exemplarity and judgement. Exemplarity will be presented as a possible source for understanding how tact is formed in and by the educator. Judgement will be explored as a way of understanding how exemplarity and tact are connected through an ability to open oneself to the contextual nature of pedagogy and the perspective of ‘the other’ of the pedagogical relation. I will connect these ideas to a perhaps unlikely literary example, drawn from the short story ‘The mysterious stranger’ by Mark Twain. I do this to show how tact is an embodied phenomenon which is exceedingly hard to grasp in any strict methodological way, or through establishment of criteria, principles or rules for action. It is something that is part and parcel not just of what a person says or does but is in fact a manifestation of ‘who’ one is. It is not a skill or a set competences and abilities that can simply be acquired through scholarly learning, practical exercises, or rote repetition. As such, tact is a fickle friend, or with an Arendtian analogy, a daimon, looking over our shoulder; visible to everyone but ourselves.

II

Etymologically, tact derives from two familiar sources. One is the Latin tāctus, which translates as ‘keen perception’, the other is the Greek Taxis (from the verb tassein; to order, to arrange), which means ‘an arrangement’. Tact began to emerge in scholarly literature around 1800 in diverse works in philosophy, musicology, the study of war and pedagogy. Kant spoke of ‘logical tact’ in his Anthropologie, Clausewitz about the ‘tact of judgement’ in Vom Kriege, and Herbart coined ‘pedagogical tact’ in his lectures on education. The term seems in all these works to function almost heuristically to connote that undefinable ability to do what is right in complex social situations, where there are no set rules or laws to guide us. The two different etymological origins of the term are clear in two distinct ways in which it has been used in musicology. With the introduction of the modern bar notation in the 16^th century with the vertical bar-line [Taktstrich], tact became a fixed measure of time in music, and with the later invention of the metronome this was mechanized. As such, tact functions as an organizing principle in music, by providing an ordering of the different voices, an arrangement of the sequences and the different sounds that form a piece of music. However, the organizing principle or mechanism, tact, is independent of the voices and sequences that make up the piece of music, it is “an empty measure or abstract structure independent of the notes and voices it structures” (Engberg-Pedersen, 2018, p. 355). For music to be an aesthetic experience following the order is not enough. In his wonderful article on tact in the early 19^th century, Anders Engberg-Pedersen uses an example drawn from E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Der Sandmann, where Olimpia, an automaton, performs two pieces of music with absolute rhythmic precision. Her performance, however, leaves her audience unmoved.

In her unpleasant, soulless correctness, Olimpia appears at once as the epitome and the perversion of the musical notion of Takt. On the one hand, Olimpia is the acoustic and visible manifestation of a musical principle that was invented some two hundred years earlier, viz. the invention of the modern measure or Takt. On the other hand, it is just this ordering principle that appears in perverted form in Olimpia’s senseless performance (Engberg-Pedersen, 2018, p. 354).

What Olimpia is missing is not the technical skill to follow the arrangement, rather it is the much more elusive sense of tact present in the Latin tactus; a keen perception or ability to sense the world around us. An aesthetic sense or capacity based on our ability to use our senses to ‘touch’ the world around us.

According to Gadamer (2004), tact is a kind of elasticity of the mind, which permits us to maintain the appropriate distance to the objects and events of the world. This distance allows us to remain open to the world and the other, while not imposing our self-interest and preconceptions on the world or the other person.

By ‘tact’ we understand a special sensitivity and sensitiveness to situations and how to behave in them, for which knowledge from general principles does not suffice. Hence an essential part of tact is that it is tacit and unformulable. One can say something tactfully; but that will always mean that one passes over something tactfully and leaves it unsaid, and it is tactless to express what one can only pass over. But to pass over something does not mean to avert one’s gaze from it, but to keep an eye on it in such a way that rather than knock into it, one slips by it. Thus tact helps one to preserve distance. It avoids the offensive, the intrusive, the violation of the intimate sphere of the human person (2004, pp. 14-15).

Gadamer uses the word tact as an umbrella term for formation (Bildung), commons sense (sensus communis), Judgement (Urteilskraft), and taste (Geschmack), all of which are not only elements of a person’s character, but the very building blocks of hermeneutic science. In this way, our ability to interpret aspects of the world, is intertwined with the elements that make up our character. This might seem obvious, but it is crucial to Gadamer to make this explicit, and to show it as a fact that science cannot escape from, however objective it strives to be. Arendt had a different, yet related way of putting it; “the answers of science will always remain replies to questions asked by men; the confusion in the issue of “objectivity” was to assume that there could be answers without questions and results independent of a question-asking-being” (Arendt, 2006b, p. 49). This problem is made quite apparent when it comes to the notion of tact and made even more complex by the fact that the closest version of tact to us, i.e., our own, is not something we can put at a distance, and hence it is not amenable to study. It is, however, visible to those around us, and they will quickly see if we are merely ‘following the arrangement’, and not fully sensitive to the aesthetic and personal aspects of the situation we find ourselves in.

III

In her seminal work The Human Condition, Arendt wants to examine what it is we (as humans) do. What kinds of activities do we engage in and how are these changed over time? In a peculiar revival of Kant’s philosophical anthropology, Arendt charts the different spheres of human action, and engages with the question of what makes us human. One crucial aspect of this is that we appear before others. “With word and deed we insert ourselves into the human world, and this insertion is like a second birth, in which we confirm and take upon ourselves the naked fact of our original physical appearance” (Arendt, 1998, pp. 176-177). Arendt calls this ‘naked fact’ of our appearance in the world natality. The fact that we are born into the world as a specific somebody, in a specific time and place, which no one else could occupy. It is this “miracle” of being born, that provides us with a “who”, as distinct from a what, and the potentiality to remanifest the miracle of our singular birth, by acting in the world.

In acting and speaking, men show who they are, reveal actively their unique personal identities and thus make their appearance in the human world, while their physical identities appear without any activity of their own in the unique shape of the body and sound of the voice. This disclosure of "who" in contradistinction to "what" somebody is—his qualities, gifts, talents, and shortcomings, which he may display or hide—is implicit in everything somebody says and does. It can be hidden only in complete silence and perfect passivity, but its disclosure can almost never be achieved as a wilful purpose, as though one possessed and could dispose of this "who" in the same manner he has and can dispose of his qualities (Arendt, 1998, p. 179).

This means that unlike my qualities and abilities, such as playing the violin, doing complex math, or reciting poetry by heart, which can be consciously put on display, “who” I am, is not something I can consciously hide away or put on display, and most importantly it is not visible to myself.

On the contrary, it is more than likely that the "who," which appears so clearly and unmistakably to others, remains hidden from the person himself, like the daímōn in Greek religion which accompanies each man throughout his life, always looking over his shoulder from behind and thus visible only to those he encounters (1998, pp. 179-180).

A daimon in Greek mythology was a divine power or guiding spirit that followed each human throughout their life. And one who had a good daimon, would also be able to attain eudaimonia. Socrates, famously invoked his daimon, his inner voice, in his defense. Arendt seems to focus more on the aspect of the daimon which has to do with its elusiveness than on its role as guide. It is unmistakably ours, yet we cannot see it. It follows us wherever we go, yet we cannot make it do our bidding. How it is seen is always in the hands of others.

‘Who’ we are is a conglomerate of bodily and mental features. It is our Bildung, our physiognomy, our personal traits, our judgements, the way we move, our tastes, our sense of the world, our aesthetic sensibilities. In continuation of the way Gadamer used the term tact, I would say that it comes very close to being ‘who’ we are. The trouble with getting at ‘who’ we are is thus reminiscent of the trouble with defining and describing tact.

The manifestation of who the speaker and doer unexchangeably is, though it is plainly visible, retains a curious intangibility that confounds all efforts toward unequivocal verbal expression. The moment we want to say who somebody is, our very vocabulary leads us astray into saying what he is; we get entangled in a description of qualities he necessarily shares with others like him; we begin to describe a type or a "character" in the old meaning of the word, with the result that his specific uniqueness escapes us (1998, p. 181).

Even if it is probably not viable to claim that tact is the same as who one is, or that who we are is reducible to tact, there are enough overlaps to say that just as the question of who we are constantly eludes us, so does tact. Once we try to pin down what makes a person tactful, we resort to descriptions of features or abilities that can never give the full picture. We resort to words and descriptions like empathic, eloquent, quick on her feet, sensitive, accommodating, and so on. All of which are aspects of one’s personae, which can be identified and even worked on. But tact and who we are is never just that. “It excludes in principle our ever being able to handle these affairs as we handle things whose nature is at our disposal because we can name them” (1998, pp. 181-182). If we could name our daimon, we could perhaps bring it to heel, and finally give the cogito the role the enlightenment envisioned for it. Alas, our daimon constantly eludes us.

IV

Yet as Zirfas reminds us, this might not be such a big issue, since “our concern here is not with such education or cultivation of the self by itself” (Zirfas, xxxx, p. xx). What we are talking about when we speak of tact is something inherently relational. Tact is the ability to maintain the proper distance to the other, allowing him or her to come into their own. To become. This entails, that “[p]edagogical tact, in other words, is above all a principle of mediation.” (Zirfas, xxxx, p. xx) in a double sense. It is on the one hand as Herbart argued a “link intermediate between theory and practice… a quick judgment and decision that is not habitual and eternally uniform” (p. xx). It is also on the other hand a mediation between the child as he or she is, and who they are to become.

Regarding the first sense of mediation, Zirfas is quick to add that this should not be seen in a rationalistic sense of mediation, as the cognitive and voluntary implementation of principles, the enlightenment dream of rational and principled control of emotion and behaviour. ”It should be considered to what extent emotional qualities have always been included in rational considerations or to what extent tact is characterized not only by cognitive elements but also by aspects of sense, emotion and will.” (xxxx, p, xx). Without wanting to get into a discussion of whether this is consistent with Herbart’s own thinking, it is important, because it points to the previous point about how tact is always a fickle friend, and never fully in our control.

Regarding the second sense, this leads us of course directly to the paradoxical aspects of pedagogical practice. How can we possibly lead children in a way that mediates between who they are in the moment and whom they will become. “Pedagogical tact remains embedded in this pedagogical paradox: of needing to encourage people to behave in a way that is self-determined, and of their simultaneous inability to achieve this on their own.” (Zirfas, xxxx, p. xx). What remains then is the tactfulness that places one at the appropriate distance between the two states, the present and the future, just enough to allow the child to become self-determining in their own becoming. Hence, there is no escaping the paradox, nor any solution or finality to it. All we can do is to stay with and attempt to balance the paradox.

This has to do with the relation between the individual and general in the form of the world to come. On the one hand we lead children towards who they will become, on the other the ‘who’ they will become remains open and undetermined. As Zirfas argues, quoting Schleiermacher; “[P]edagogy must react tactfully to individuality in order not to destroy it: ‘That which is directed towards the individual is what we call tact, a feeling for that which is unbecoming in each of us’ ”^[i] (xxxx, p. xx). This is very close to Arendt’s formulation of education’s central concern; the fact of natality. This entails that; ”[o]ur hope always hangs on the new which every generation brings; but precisely because we can base our hope only on this, we destroy everything if we so try to control the new that we, the old, can dictate how it will look” (Arendt, 2006 p. 189). However, and paradoxically perhaps, Arendt never makes the relation and responsibility towards the individual the center of her argument in ‘The Crisis in Education’. Rather it is the relation to the world and the concept of plurality that she places at the center.[ii] The reason for this is, that much more is at stake in education than the individual and the individual teacher’s relation to the child. The world itself and human beings’ ability to establish a relation to it is at stake. One could argue of course that this makes Arendt blind to the fact that oftentimes this very problem is played out precisely in the teacher’s relation to individual children. However, it does seem to be at least implicitly present in her argument for the centrality of natality, which is precisely the appearance of the individual in plurality. The details of the relation however, Arendt wishes to leave in the hands of the educators (2006, p. 192).

Were she to have pursued this path, however, she would have had to confront the issue of the relation between judgement and action. And as we know she did not live to fully develop this central theme. Another issue she would have had to confront is the relation between who we are, and how tact forms itself in us. Because tact, like our ‘who’, is by necessity ours, even if it is manifested only in relation to another, yet it is never fully in our hands so to speak, because we can never cognitively fixate it, nor can we claim to always be fully in control of the actions that follow from our tact and who we are. 

Tact, as Gadamer reminds us, is a conglomerate of formation, commons sense, Judgement, and taste. Zirfas adds that we cannot exclude emotion and will. Nor can we exclude our body, and the central role it plays in how we appear in the world. Returning to Herbart’s definition of tact as a mediator, we could perhaps say that tact mediates between our ‘who’ and the way we act in the world. This does not however place us in control of tact, nor of who we are, nor of how these appear for others in the world.

V

Once again, we are left in the dark concerning how we can meaningfully speak about how we can develop tact and what it means for the relation between theory and practice. Whether we will get any closer by following Arendt remains to be seen, but she does in Men in Dark Times, state her own position on how to find guidance for troubling questions.

[E]ven in the darkest of times we have the right to expect some illumination, and that such illumination may well come less from theories and concepts than from the uncertain, flickering, and often weak light that some men and women, in their lives and their works, will kindle under almost all circumstances and shed over the time span that was given them on earth – this conviction is the inarticulate background against which these profiles were drawn. Eyes so used to darkness as ours will hardly be able to tell whether their light was the light of a candle or that of a blazing sun. But such objective evaluation seems to me a matter of secondary importance which can safely be left to posterity (Arendt, 1995, pp. ix-x).

Arendt explicitly questions the ability of theory and concepts alone to guide us, and posits instead the stories and examples of, in this case, historical and contemporary writers, who in some way portray a relation to the world and others that can help us to (re)think our condition. It is of course not given whom the exemplars we choose should be, and, as shall be elaborated later on, Arendt is not invoking an Aristotelian admiration-emulation model of exemplarism here.[iii] Whether we consider the example to be exemplary cannot be settled in any final way, and each example must be open to revalidation and reinterpretation. This is so not only for practical, fictional, or anecdotal examples, but also for pedagogical literature and theory. Whether an example has any pedagogical force and resonance will also be dependent on the encounters with novel readers and the discussions that arise in response to it. That Emile still has an exemplary pedagogical force is verified by the way it continues to challenge and provoke us to reflection about its pedagogical insights. ”Consequently, examples exist both in relation to communities of people who have repeatedly judged them to be exemplary, and in relation to the history of those judgments that have set certain objects and individuals above others as models” (DeCaroli, 2007, p. 378). What makes pedagogical examples relevant is thus not whether we can emulate them efficiently or successfully, but whether they force us to make use of our judgement.

Herbart spoke of the pedagogical force of the example in relation to the development of pedagogical tact, and the importance of being able to make use of the right company, the right examples.

To lead us back to the ideas of the previous lecture, take an illustration. Conceive of' a man of character - of moral character, if you please - only do not think merely of what is called a good, honest, law-abiding man, but hold present to your minds a man in whom the moral element has grown into that decision, steadiness, and organized swiftness of execution which with especial propriety deserves the name of character (Herbart, 2012, pp. 25-26).

Our pedagogical tact is thus very much formed by the examples we choose to engage with. This is not a matter of mere mimicking or appropriation of a vocabulary. It is a matter of letting it grow into one’s person. Tact has to grow into us and become embodied in our actions, not just our words. Tact must penetrate our whole person, and not just some professional personae or way of speaking, lest it become simple automation as was the case for Olimpia. “[A]s there are not only moral, but very many species of characters, so also there are very many species of tact, manners, and ways among educators” (Herbart, 2012, p. 27).

Before returning to the issue of what examples actually do, I want to turn now to an example that is the complete opposite of Olimpia. An example of someone not bound at all by the confines of order and automation. In The mysterious stranger by Mark Twain, three young boys meet an angel who introduces himself as Satan, a namesake of his infamous uncle.

Soon there came a youth strolling toward us through the trees, and he sat down and began to talk in a friendly way, just as if he knew us. But we did not answer him, for he was a stranger and we were not used to strangers and were shy of them. He had new and good clothes on, and was handsome and had a winning face and a pleasant voice, and was easy and graceful and unembarrassed, not slouchy and awkward and diffident, like other boys (Twain, 1916, p. 10).

The angel quickly beguiles the young boys with his demeanor and personality.

He was bent on putting us at ease, and he had the right art; one could not remain doubtful and timorous where a person was so earnest and simple and gentle, and talked so alluringly as he did; no, he won us over, and it was not long before we were content and comfortable and chatty, and glad we had found this new friend (p. 11, my italics).

Satan does not only use his looks and his manners to entice the boys, but he also uses his abilities to manipulate his surroundings and conjure things into existence. First, he conjures all manners of food and delicacies.

He ate nothing himself, but sat and chatted, and did one curious thing after another to amuse us. He made a tiny toy squirrel out of clay, and it ran up a tree and sat on a limb overhead and barked down at us. Then he made a dog that was not much larger than a mouse, and it treed the squirrel and danced about the tree, excited and barking, and was as alive as any dog could be. It frightened the squirrel from tree to tree and followed it up until both were out of sight in the forest. He made birds out of clay and set them free, and they flew away, singing (pp. 12-13).

The boys are enraptured by Satan’s person and his abilities and knowledge of the world. His art of using just the right words when they begin to become anxious or afraid and withdraw from him, and his ability to place in front of them magical objects that entice them back into attention, show his pedagogical tact. He does it all seemingly effortlessly, but at the same time with a presence and attentiveness to their every word (and thought).

I should not be able to make any one understand how exciting it all was. You know that kind of quiver that trembles around through you when you are seeing something so strange and enchanting and wonderful that it is just a fearful joy to be alive and look at it; and you know how you gaze, and your lips turn dry and your breath comes short, but you wouldn’t be anywhere but there, not for the world (p. 15).

Theodor here gives voice to a familiar experience of being captured by a phenomenon or a person that draws our attention fully and makes us forget both time and place. Sometimes even at the cost of other responsibilities or even our sense of right and wrong. While talking with the boys, Satan has conjured a small village of living creatures made of clay. He then, much to the horror of the boys, casually begins to kill some of them and finally to destroy the village. The boys are horrified and appalled, yet;

he went on talking right along, and worked his enchantments upon us again with that fatal music of his voice. He made us forget everything; we could only listen to him, and love him, and be his slaves, to do with us as he would. He made us drunk with the joy of being with him, and of looking into the heaven of his eyes, and of feeling the ecstasy that thrilled along our veins from the touch of his hand (p. 18). 

Even when revealing some of the darker aspects of his being to the boys, aspects that repulse and scare them, Satan is able to calm them, and explain to them the reasons for his haphazard dealings with things and people. Of course, Satan has the great advantage of being able to read the boys’ mind, something alas, mere mortal educators have not. A further hindrance in developing one’s tact. Being immortal and omnipotent, Satan is little interested in the goings on in human life, but nonetheless takes a special interest in Theodor and begins to educate him about the world and the follies of humankind. Satan is an attentive and caring teacher. Yet at times he portrays a distinct arrogance and in his omni-potence has little time and care for the feelings and moral sentiments of humans. Nevertheless, he introduces Theodor to a much wider world than the one his small village life would otherwise have acquainted him with. There is thus no doubt that Satan portrays many aspects of what we could call pedagogical tact, in his dealings with the boys. Sometimes he is less than caring when it comes to the ignorance of humans, and whether he is in fact educating or manipulating Theodor is of course open to discussion.[iv] The reason I want to highlight this particular example here is once again to emphasise the ambiguity and risks involved in invoking the idea of pedagogical tact. We will not get straightforward answers about what to do in specific pedagogical situations, nor evidence for effective learning activities, even when studying an immortal being. What we will get however is a way of proceeding that is sensitive to the discontinuity of pedagogical practice, and the particularity of both how tact forms itself in the individual and how it is always context dependent and relational. Where tact is not automated, as it was in Olimpia’s failed attempt to move her audience, but rather attuned to the particulars of the individuals involved and the particular situation, it is always hard to determine where the borders between right and wrong, manipulation and educating can be drawn. When are we leading the children where they should go, and when are we in fact, by drawing their attention in specific ways and directions, leading them astray?

VI

According to Arendt, Judgement is the faculty by which we determine right and wrong. It is a backward-looking mental capacity that judges what has happened, and what has befallen us. Judging, Arendt informs us, “is a viewpoint from which to look upon, to watch, to form judgments, or, as Kant himself says, to reflect upon human affairs. It does not tell one how to act” (Arendt, 1992, p. 44). How then is it connected to tact? Following Arendt, it can be so only indirectly. Judging is “an unending activity by which, in constant change and variation, we come to terms with and reconcile ourselves to reality, that is, try to be at home in the world” (Arendt, 1994, pp. 307-308). So rather than being the ability to judge right from wrong in a particular moment of action, judging is a process of reconciliation to being in the world with others. It is a matter of making oneself at home in the events and the plurality of the world. This entails that when invoking the concept of judgement in relation to tact, I am not trying to turn it into a placeholder, but rather pointing to something that I believe to be prior to being able to enact tact in pedagogical relations. First comes the ability to reconcile oneself to and to make oneself at home in the ‘pedagogical world’. It is a matter of gaining understanding of where I come from and what circumstances I find myself in the midst of. “[O]nly an ‘understanding heart,’ and not mere reflection or mere feeling, makes it bearable for us to live with other people, strangers forever, in the same world, and makes it possible for them to bear with us” (Arendt, 1954/1994, p. 322). Coming to terms with the world through putting one’s judgement to work on the events and people that make up this world, is a first step towards becoming at home enough to enact pedagogical tact in pedagogical relations. Or as Herbart put it in the quote above; we need ‘a preparation of both the understanding and the heart before entering upon our duties, by virtue of which the experience which we can obtain only in the work itself will become instructive to us’.[1]

In the end, Arendt tells us, our ability for judging does not come down to our deductive or intuitive abilities to foresee or sit in final judgement of the events of the world. Rather; ”our decisions about right and wrong will depend upon our choice of company, of those with whom we wish to spend our lives. And again, this company is chosen by thinking in examples, in examples of persons dead or alive, real or fictitious, and in examples of incidents, past or present” (Arendt 2003,  145–146). It is the ability to go visiting the perspectives of others when assuming the position of judge, that will determine if we succeed or fail. What for Gadamer was a kind of elasticity of reflection, Arendt, borrowing from Kant, calls Erweiterte Denkungsart or enlarged thinking. However, where Kant seemed to think that the validity of one’s judgement rested on having tested it against all the possible viewpoints[2], Arendt urged us to find the right examples to consult. “To think with an enlarged mentality means that one trains one’s imagination to go visiting” (Arendt, 1992, p. 43). This brings us back to the role of the example, which is not to function as a manual for imitation, but to facilitate a visiting of another perspective, and a reconciliation to our being in the world with others. This process of enlarging one’s ability to visit the perspectives of others is central to becoming at home in pedagogical practice. It not only provides us with ways of reflecting on our own practice, by visiting that of others, it also, and crucially, provides us with a potential sense of being at home in our practice, and with how we appear to others.

What good does a ‘sense of being at home’ do educators who are faced with having to make quick judgements on what to do in particular situations and relations, you wonder? Well, perhaps not much, but does this not simply lead us back to the paradoxical nature of turning to the daimon we call tact as a starting point for talking about what it means to be a good educator? We can never lay it bare before us and dissect it to see what it consists of nor whence it came. This does not mean we cannot learn from others and from examples how we might become more at home in pedagogical thought and practice, it just means we have no privileged access to the process, nor any means of determining in advance what should done in each situation, nor how we become someone who will do what is right nonetheless.

Literature

Arendt, H. (1972) ‘On Violence’, in Crises of the Republic, New York, Harcourt Brace.

Arendt, H. (1992) Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy. Beiner, R. ed. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.

Arendt, H. (1994) ‘Understanding and politics (the difficulties of understanding)’ in Essays in Understanding 1930–1954: Formation, Exile and Totalitarianism. 307-328. New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace & Company.

Arendt, H. (1995) Men in Dark Times. New York, NY: Harcourt Brace & Company.

Arendt, H. (1998) The Human Condition. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press

Arendt, H. 2003. Responsibility and judgment. New York: Random House.

Arendt, H. 2006. Between Past and Future. London: Penguin Books.

Croce, M. (2019) ‘Exemplarism in moral education: problems with applicability and indoctrination’. Journal of Moral Education, 48(3), pp. 291–302. doi:10.1080/03057240.2019.1579086.

Croce, M. & Vaccarezza, M. S. (2017) ‘Educating through exemplars: alternative paths to virtue’, Theory and Research in Education, 15(1), pp. 5–19. doi:10.1177/1477878517695903.

Dahlbeck, J. (2021) ‘The Pedagogical Importance of Ingenium: Exemplarism and Popular Narratives’ In: Spinoza: Fiction and Manipulation in Civic Education. pp. 43-60. Rotterdam: Springer.

Dahlbeck, Johan. (2021) ‘Satan as teacher: the view from nowhere vs. the moral sense’, Ethics and Education. 1-17. 10.1080/17449642.2021.2013635.

DeCaroli, S. 2007. ‘A Capacity for Agreement: Hannah Arendt and the "Critique of Judgment"’ Social Theory and Practice, 33(3), pp. 361-386. Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23558481

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Abstract

This paper considers what it is at stake in the idea of universitas – a community of masters and scholars – in the context of the shifting institutional and pedagogical landscape of higher education that the Covid-19 pandemic engendered.  It looks to the etymological roots of the term ‘university’, and turns to the philosophy of Gabriel Marcel, to consider what it means to be together in the community of the university.

We begin by considering the impact of the pandemic on academics, particularly how shifts to online learning have altered practice and the ways in which student and staff relationships are negotiated and navigated. These shifts have naturally moved us away from the physical world, with the impacts of such a change not yet fully known. The paper then draws a distinction between the idea of ‘functioning’ as universitas and ‘being’ universitas We argue that, that while universities have continued to o function effectively (in terms of , for example, delivering teaching, validating new courses, recruiting new students, maintaining administrative functions, and ensuring financial security), something of what it means to be universitas has been much harder to maintain when staff and students have not had a physical presence at the heart of the institution.

By drawing on the philosophical and dramatic works of French existentialist, Gabriel Marcel, we consider his explorations of interpersonal relationships in the context of physical presence. We show how the Marcellian concepts of disponibilité and indisponibilité (availability and unavailability), as well as presence and communion, reveal insights into the types of interactions that form the basis of meaningful interpersonal relationships, and by extension, the creation of a meaningful academic community. Given the ineffability of in-person encounters (over online interactions), Marcel’s understanding of the self, and the ways in which we relate to each other, helps give substance to the difference, and exposes important and implications for how different behaviours and practices can foster richer relationships and interactions.

We conclude by drawing attention to these differences, through comparisons between religious and academic communities, and suggest that this is account of hope for how we might conceive of contemporary Higher Education communities. By drawing on the distinction between functioning as universitas and being universitas, we conclude that our physical presence with each other affords the possibilities of a rich encounter with others through relationships of plenitude that we argue are fundamental to being universitas.  

Functioning as universitas

It was in the 14^th century that universities, established for the study of the Arts, Medicine Law and Theology, were first referred to as universitas magistrorum et scholarium, denoting a community of masters and scholars (Heald, 1975).[1] Central to universitas was a community of teachers and scholars afforded recognition either by a civil or ecclesiastical authority (Rüegg, 1992). In highlighting the significance of community to the medieval understanding of universitas, Verger writes: ‘The medieval universities were therefore, first of all, organised communities of individuals…This notion of the community would seem to be fundamental to the definition of the medieval university’ (1992: 38). The universitas was, as Schwinges puts it, a ‘“societal community”’. ‘It was’, he claims, ‘the faithful reflection of its surrounding society, living like the latter’ (1992: 203).

The idea of the ‘university-as-community’ remains strong in contemporary higher education, seen especially in university marketing campaigns. Hungary’s Eötvös Loránd University has a motto that translates as ‘The community of knowledge’, and the European University of St. Petersburg declares Addo optimus una – Bringing the best together. University strategic plans, vision and mission statements all repeatedly signal the importance of community: of studying and living together; of the university at the heart of its community; of the university as a diverse place of belonging and togetherness. University College London’s (UCL) vision is to ‘inspire the community of staff, students and partners’, and its mission is to be a ‘diverse intellectual community’.[2] By putting the notion of community front and centre, universities signal the values they espouse and the culture they seek to create.[3] Yet is it not only the community of the university that is celebrated in these ways; it is also the idea of the university community within the wider physical community that is at the heart of institutions’ civic engagement plans which celebrate the sharing of spaces and facilities with communities, and which promise positive social impact.[4]

With the advent of the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, university communities were forced to re-think what it meant to be universitas. Campuses closed; the community became a disapora as students moved from their accommodation on campus; academics re-located to their homes while teaching went online, and learning became an almost solitary activity. But the ways in which universitas was re-imagined were concerned, in the main, with keeping the functions of the institutions going. Universities invested in technology to ensure the continued delivery of high-quality teaching. Emergency regulations were approved to ensure student progression. Assessments were modified for professional and practice-based programmes (la Velle et al., 2020), and universities used virtual simulation technologies to teach and to assess clinical competence (Fung et al., 2021). All this ensured that the main functions of the university continued to operate: admissions departments ran virtual open days (Gavin et al., 2020); decision-making in finance, quality assurance and ethics continued uninterrupted, and even academic conferences continued in virtual formats (Donlon, 2021). Such measures kept universities functioning to realise their key missions.

This rapid shift elicited a broad range of responses from academic staff, ranging from eagerness to apply these new technologies, to concern and difficulties with using them. Naylor and Nyanjom (2020) considered the range of emotions and experiences that followed from the move to online platforms. There was significant variety of staff perceptions, many of which were dependent on the level of institutional support. One educator described the frustration that was experienced in the context of such changes: ‘Absolute frustration with not being able to see and contact students…whereas if I see them face-to- face class, I can sort of tell by their responses in class immediately how they’re going’ (Naylor and Nyanjom, 2020: 1244). Others expressed concern at the impacts of a lack of physical contact with students, and the pedagogical implications that ensued: ‘I am concerned about not seeing my students. I am a very hands on, active teacher, and I was wondering how I could be as effective as I am on-campus…and just the way I get people involved…students wouldn’t get as much out of the unit as on-campus’ (ibid.: 1246).

The more general return to campuses in September 2020[5] elicited some of the same kind of positive responses that the population generally felt when restrictions were lifted, and families, friends and communities were able to meet together again:

I want to be back in the classroom. I miss the serendipity of snatched conversations in the interstices of lectures and seminars. I miss people-watching – seeing new students literally and metaphorically navigate campus. I even miss the abysmal coffee in mandatory                        meetings. I want those rectangles to burst open into the messy, complicated, exciting physical spaces we used to inhabit. I want to be back in the classroom. But I also want to know that it’s safe to be there (Rees et al., 2021 no page).

Rees calls particular attention to the physical aspects of the working environment – the bodily and sensory experience of being together that informs and creates a sense of what constitutes an academic community. The loss of physical connection in online teaching has a clear effect in the ability of academics to ‘read the room’ and adapt their style in light of it. These very physical components of teaching allow academics to respond in dynamic ways not only to the content, but also to others who are physically present. Wickenden captures something of the essence of what was lost when the community that is universitas was profoundly disrupted: ‘Academia, despite its reputation, is a social beast. It thrives off solidarity, brief chats in the department kitchen, bouncing your research off a friend in another department. It is worth it for those moments you see students get the point you’re making, or when the conversation of a break-out group sparks connections they wouldn’t have made on their own’ (ibid.).

But such views stand in stark contrast with those of others, with some asserting that that they could function effectively, fulfilling their job roles, without being physically present on campus (UCL, 2021). Of course, the picture was a complex and nuanced one. The pandemic necessitated balancing childcare responsibilities and home-schooling with the demands of work. Conditions for home working required appropriate physical space, the ability to cover additional utility costs; access to wifi and to appropriate electronic devices. Those reluctant to return cited concerns for the health of themselves, their families, and colleagues, as well as a belief that they could fulfil their duties from home, thus achieving a better work-life balance, and protecting the environment by avoiding unnecessary commutes. Concerns about the safety of a return were found amongst staff in the United Kingdom through a poll by Times Higher Education, which found that a majority of university staff felt unsafe going back to campus for in-person teaching . Professor Elizabeth Stokoe, author of a SAGE report on the status of Covid-19 and universities, stated that ‘Staff and students alike should be supported to make choices that keep them physically and psychologically well, such as genuine flexibility and avoiding presenteeism’ (Stokoe, in McKie, 2021, no page). She further made the case that as educational institutions, universities should be leading the way in developing and implementing best practice for Covid-19 regulations and guidance. Despite policies on the return to campus, McKie found that that only 25 per cent of respondents in a study reported excited to return to in-person teaching or on-campus working (McKie, 2021). There were repeated fears about the performativity that might be playing a role in the decision to return to campuses, as evidenced in the claim that a return to physical presence on campuses was ‘driven by the optics…rather than by the lived experience and concerns of the staff’ (McKie, 2021, no page) and that ‘‘Back to normal’ has been embraced at all costs to justify the high student fees’ (McKie, 2021, no page).              

These concerns raise an important question: Is there a problem with this? Surely there are benefits both to the institution (in terms of the job still being done) and the academic (achieving a better work-life balance and job satisfaction) if universities embrace these new ways of working? This then raises a second question: Would such arrangements constitute universitas? We argue here that the dispersed community, where for the majority of the time academics and students are not physically together as a community of masters and scholars, shifts what it means to be univeritas. We suggest that while such arrangements may keep the main functions of the university operating effectively, that something significant is lost. It is as if, in Lesley Gourlay’s words, there has been a shift to ‘performing the university’ (2020: 791). As Gourlay writes: ‘The ontological nature of the university itself has been fundamentally altered by the closure of the campus and lockdown…the site of the university is now radically dispersed across sequestered bodies’ (2020: 991).

In turning to the work of the French existentialist philosopher and playwright, Gabriel Marcel, we explore what is lost in the idea of an institution functioning as universitas (contrasting this later with what is at stake in being universitas). Marcel’s work is significant given his concern in his (1948) work The Philosophy of Existentialism where he discusses the ‘misplacement of the idea of function’ (1948/1995: 11) in what he calls a ‘broken world’ (1950: 18). To illustrate this valorisation of function, Marcel uses the example of a subway token operator. In the busy subway environment, the public engage her in only the most superficial way, avoiding speaking or making eye contact, interacting only to ensure that they are given the correct change and ticket. The operator is simply the amalgamation of the function that she performs. Marcel summarises the problem when he writes: ‘Man is thought of on the model of a machine, on the model of a mere physical object – sine in fact he is being treated as if he were a mere physical object’ (1952/2008: 71). In The Mystery of Being (1950), Marcel elaborates further, claiming that what is going on here is ‘the reduction of [her] personality to an official identity’; what has been effected is a kind of ‘social nudity, a social stripping’ (pp. 29 - 30). He writes of such ‘interactions’ as characteristic of what he calls the ‘administrative machine’ (ibid.: 31). In those instances when an individual (or indeed, a university), is seen merely as an amalgamation of the functions that she performs, Marcel claims that: ‘The ties of fraternity are snapped – and there is nothing that can take their place except a Nietzschean ‘resentment’ or, at very best, some working social agreement strictly subordinated to definite materialistic purposes’ (Marcel, 1950: 32).

In the pandemic, the university has increasingly become an amalgamation of the functions it performs; it is functioning highly effectively as universitas, identified by the efficiency of its operations. For Marcel, the functionalism of the broken world is bound up with its obsession with ‘technics’, its deferral to the technological to resolve problems. Here again we see a connection with universities’ mode of operation during pandemic times, relying on the salvatory power of technology to facilitate operations. For Marcel, dependency on ‘gadgets’ and technology risks us becoming estranged from an awareness of our inner reality. In this sense, one’s ‘centre’ moves form the internal to the external as one aligns with technologies outside of the self. As Marcel writes:

I should be tempted to say that the centre of gravity of such a man and his balancing point tend to become external to himself: that he projects himself more and more into objects, into the various pieces of apparatus that he depends for his existence’ (1952/2008: 41).

 For Marcel, ‘technics’ cannot resolve the existential questions that are iteratively part of our human condition. Such questions open onto what it means to be universitas, to live together well as a community of masters and scholars. One effect of merely functioning as universitas is the deleterious effect on our relation to others. To illustrate this point, and drawing on his contemporary, Martin Buber’s famous I-It/I-Thou distinction (Buber 1923/2013), Marcel writes: ‘If I treat a ‘Thou’ as a ‘He’, I reduce the other to being only nature; an animated object which works in some ways and not in others’ (Marcel 1949, pp. 106–107). Our being in relation to another as a ‘He’ prioritises attention on the resolution of problems (as opposed to the exploration of mysteries); as Marcel notes: ‘A problem is something which I meet, which I find completely before me, but which I can therefore lay siege to and reduce’ (Marcel 1949, p. 117).

Being universitas

Marcel claims that despite our living in what he calls an increasingly ‘collectivized world’, paradoxically, ‘the idea of any real community becomes more and more inconceivable’ (1950: 27). Togetherness, he argues, is losing it meaning such that there is a deleterious effect on our human relationships. In Creative Fidelity (1964/2002), he writes of the relationship between of a lack togetherness (physical or metaphorical) and the way in which we perceive another: ‘When I consider another individual as him, I treat him as essentially absent; it is his absence which allows me to objectify him’ (p. 32). The ‘socialization’ of life in the broken world now consists for Marcel in an individual ‘being treated more and more as an agent, whose behaviour ought to contribute towards the progress of a certain social whole, a something rather distant, rather oppressive, let us say…rather tyrannical’ (1950: 28). Such effects are undoubtedly seen in our institutions, and in the context of higher education, this raises critical questions which go to the heart of what it is to be a university. Does being universitas necessitate our expressing what it means to be a community of masters and scholars in ways that privilege physical presence through forms of togetherness? And is it in our being with one another (in ways that go beyond being present in an online teaching session, meeting, or research seminar) that we articulate something of what it means to be universitas, accomplish more than keeping its functions going, and move beyond relating to others as agents to solve problems?

The importance of physical togetherness to our ideas of what it means to be, and flourish, as humans – and the loss of this during the pandemic because of legislated social and physical distancing – has been profound. There were moving, and deeply troubling accounts of elderly residents in care settings separated from family and caregivers with devastating consequences (Paananen et al., 2021), of the effects on babies’ social and communication skills of being born during the pandemic (Wise, 2022), and the achingly sad stories of COVID patients dying alone in hospital (Hernández-Fernández and Meneses-Falcón, 2021), all of which underscore our need for togetherness. But the specificity of such loss is ineffable; we struggle to articulate what it is exactly that is different when we are not together, often concluding resigning ourselves to merely stating that ‘it is just not the same’. It is at this point that Marcel, with his evocative and rich metaphors for our living together and being in relationship with one another, may help us to begin to express what it is that has been lost (and so, what certain forms of human relationship afford). Central to Marcel’s philosophy (as well as to his dramatic works) is an idea of the self as being receptive to others, and a commitment to participation that is rooted in ideas of encountering others, and of being encountered ourselves.

1. Marcel: Availability, Communion, and Presence

As with his contemporary, Martin Buber, Marcel emphasies two general ways in which we conduct ourselves in relation to others: disponibilité and indisponibilité (generally translated as ‘availability’ and ’unavailability’).[6] To be available is not a temporal issue – of making time in one’s schedule to, say, to see students who call by the office. It is rather understood in a richer sense: as a general state of, and commitment, to making one’s material, spiritual, emotional and intellectual resources available to others that is marked by love, hope, and fidelity. The communion we experience with others through availability limits the objectification of beings. However, to be unavailable, claims Marcel, is to cut oneself off from the possibility of communion with others – to be alienated. It is to see others in purely functional terms (as with the subway token operator) rather than qua beings to be encountered. Such a lack of communion positions the other as ‘He’ rather than as ‘Thou’. Marcel uses the image of a circle around ourselves into which we place the other as ‘He’, in order to illustrate the problem of the ‘fragmented’ or ‘parceled out’ other (1964/2002: 72). This stands in opposition to his ideas of porosity or permeability, in which we are radically hospitable the other as ‘Thou’; he writes: ‘If we devote our attention to the act of hospitality, we will see at once that to receive is not to fill up a void with an alien presence, but to make the other person participate in a certain plenitude’ (ibid.: 28). Being available does not insist on its own rights, and our availability risks being rebuffed by the other who remains unavailable. Marcel anticipates reciprocity in the intersubjective relationship, without this being demanded. ‘What is relevant’ he writes, ‘is the act by which I expose myself to the other person instead of protecting myself from him, which makes him penetrable for me at the same time as I become penetrable for him’. It is such moments of porosity and of mutual encounter that Marcel claims we are avec – or with – another. This should not be understood merely in either temporal or prepositional terms; rather, avec denotes a relationship of genuine communion and co-esse. The Marcellian concepts of communion and availability coalesce in the idea of presence. Yet again, we do not understand the richness of this notion in everyday ideas of ‘here-ness’. Rather, availability and communion allow us to participate fully in the being of another, and so to be present to them as ‘Thou’. Conversely, when we comport ourselves towards another as a ‘Him’, we ourselves are closed off to the presence that the other offers to us. Maintaining presence to another over time requires a fidelity that is creative in order to meet the demands of such presence.

1. Presence and Being Present

The concept of presence is ineluctably tied to Marcel’s understanding of the way in which we relate to others. However, this usage implies something richer than mere physical, bodily presence. Marcel writes: ‘Of course presence is not to be construed here as externally manifesting oneself to the other, but rather as involving a quality which cannot be so easily described in objective terms, of making me feel that he is with me’ (1962/2002: 154). Marcellian intersubjective relationships are marked an encounter which demands the understanding of the other at a level that goes beyond the acknowledgement of the physical presence of the other. The significant component of such relationships can be understood through the lens of the way that Marcel claims that we relate to music. As Murchland states:

If music is the most perfect medium to reveal man to himself in unique plenitude and liberty it is because, Marcel believes, it      touches that point of breakthrough where man communes with the "essence" of others, when he is interiorly united with all those who participate in the enigmatic human adventure (1959: 344).

In more practical terms, these moments of shared understanding can occur in a variety of ways. It is not that our intersubjective relationships need to be characterised by passionate speeches, showy displays of emotion, or even explicit discussion of our inward lives, but rather that they can be realised in many seemingly insignificant moments such as when we use a tone of voice, or issue a slight smile that might accompany a phrase we use; all these exemplify our co-esse (Marcel, 1950). However, Marcel recognises that our being together physically is not enough to experience this kind of encounter; we can, for example, be on a bus, or at a party, and experience intense isolation despite our physical proximity to others. He writes ‘However, there is a presence which is yet a mode of absence’ (1962/2002: 33).

Yet there is something profoundly foundational to human condition about togetherness that is bound up with the physical. It is of note that, despite Marcel emphasising that one can be both physically present - but absent, many of the examples he gives of ‘presence’ rely on some form of physical interaction, and this is especially tangible in his dramatic works.[7] The significance of this is seen in Marcel’s claim that ‘To encounter someone is not merely to cross his path, but to be, for the moment at least, near to or with him…it means a co-presence’ (authors’ emphasis).

Marcel’s ideas have profound implications not only for our personal intersubjective relationships, but also for those that we forge and sustain in our institutions. In the context of the university, a criticism could be levelled along the lines that our argument might suggest that those institutions which operate predominantly online, are only functioning as universitas, and that to be universitas, there need to be forms of physical presence that then open up the possibilities for presence, communion, and expressions of availability. Let us address this issue directly using the examples of the Open University and Arden University in Britain, and Athabasca University in Canada, all of which market themselves primarily as online or distance learning providers of higher education. We are not saying that these universities are incapable of forming meaningful academic communities, not that these institutions represent a deficit model of higher education. Indeed, Marcel is at pains to point out that a loved one who is many thousands of miles distant to us, may be ‘closer’ to us than somebody who is in our immediate vicinity. It is rather that there are specific and noteworthy difficulties – such as belonging, identity and community cohesion ­– that such institutions do encounter, and which has been brought into sharp focus with the shift to online learning during the pandemic (Banas and Warltalski, 2109, Shea et al., 2019). It is telling that these kind of universities will often emphasise the limited physical components of their courses whilst valorising the affordances of online and distance learning.[8]

From Functioning as a University to Being Universitas

At the outset of this paper we highlighted a certain resistance to return to campus following the easing of Covid-19 restrictions, with common claims made that the work (of the administrator, the academic) could be undertaken effectively without the need for a physical campus presence.[9] We still maintain that there is something important about physical presence – as opposed to being ‘present’ in online spaces ­– which is given fuller expression in Marcel’s philosophical oeuvre. This is not to say, however, that there have not been important lessons learned from the pandemic in terms of the potential benefits of remote working and the use of online platforms for teaching, learning and the core functions of the university (Barrero et al, 2021; Chung, et al, 2020). In these concluding sections, we outline the ways in which Marcel’s understanding of the self and the Other might be brought to bear on thinking about interpersonal relationships and being present in the university.

Often thought of as a Christian existentialist (despite being a term from which he distanced himself) much of Marcel’s thought is grounded in a Christian worldview. As such, he draws upon religious institutions and imagery when presenting a number of his ideas. An interesting parallel might be drawn between Marcel’s perceptions of the Church, and a modern understanding of the institution of the university. Both are organisations that strive for ideals that transcend those of any individuals within them. There is something of the place of mystery, and the mystical for both.[10] There is another line of connection here: the university can be a place for individual study just as the church can be the location for personal devotion - of prayer or worship. However, when the academic community, or the community of believers, come together (physically), they in Marcel’s words, ‘do not swarm together mechanically, but do form a whole that transcends them’ (1949: 189-190). What this demonstrates is that it is not merely the fact of physically being together (of swarming mechanically) that is central, but rather it is a continuous observance in which ‘the subject finds himself in the presence of something entirely beyond his grasp’ (Marcel 1973: 193). Put another way, it allows us to participate in each other’s plenitude. By focussing attention on a goal that exists beyond oneself, one’s ‘centre’ is shifted. When working remotely, often alone, it is easy to become self-absorbed, and to lose track of the lived realities and complexities of one’s colleagues. It is in our being together that we often are exposed to a change of orientation away from ourselves, and towards another: ‘This change revolves upon the centre of an experiencing self; or, to speak more exactly, let us say that the progress of…[our] thought gradually substitutes one centre for another’ (Marcel 1950: 48). This form of de-centring is essentially collaborative, as, by shifting one’s perspectives to align with another, one can more readily engage the lived reality of the other in a way that includes, and goes beyond, the functional operations of the University. This is what makes tangible the reality of university mission statements that vaunt ideas of community and shared values. Such decentring is the obligation that we owe to the community if we think of ourselves as a community.[11]

The Covid-19 pandemic has triggered a significant growth in the publication of scholarship across all disciplines, given that its effects continue to have global reach and interdisciplinary implications. Higher education has not been exempt, and significant new discourses have emerged around the function of a university that consider the operational, managerial, pedagogical and social imperatives of such institutions for pandemic times and beyond. While these have had impact in enabling the continued function in a practical sense, there is a risk that within these discourses, we lose sight of more foundational questions pertaining to the very nature of the university, as well as the relationships that constitute it (in the sense of being universitas). We find that Marcel’s work, while not known for its explicit concern with education, is nevertheless profoundly educative. His analysis of how we might be available to each other, and encounter others in a relationship of presence and communion, speak to what is central to the idea of being in community as universitas. This rich articulation of the interpersonal goes far beyond the (often contractual or transactional) ways in which we tend increasingly to talk of how best to relate to colleagues and students in the university. We read Marcel’s work as having a bearing on what the university could be, how we live well together in it, and for providing a framework of language that gives expression to qualities and experiences of what it means to be universitas in ways that transcend the overriding contemporary concern with function.

This is an account of hope for the possibilities of universitas. Marcel’s work offers not only a language for critiquing the emphasis on function which has come to dominate the work of universities, and also the relationships within them, but also the most practical of examples for how we might re-imagine our being in relationship to colleagues, students and partners. Marcellian philosophy is, at its heart, a philosophy of participation. While physical presence to another is not something that Marcel insists upon in thinking about what it means to participate in the life of another, his dramatic works in particular show how it is in being bodily present – when we encounter another face to face – that we come to experience the other as fully human; that we experience the human full-blown. This is explored through the idea of plenitude. When we encounter the other in her bodily presence to us, we experience her in plenitude. This then opens up the possibilities for our giving of ourselves to another from our plenitude.

While it has been difficult to express in concrete terms what is lost when we are not physically together (and this has very much been the case during the pandemic), it is important to recognise, and begin to articulate, some of the specific ways in which the interactions differ, and what is at stake in our bodily presence to each other in the university. In doing this, we reveal something meaningful about what it is to be universitas. When we are bodily present to each other in the lecture hall, the meeting room, the seminar, corridor or cafeteria, the complexity of the personhood of the other is brought more sharply into focus. We see this illustrated clearly in dialogue from the opening scene of Marcel’s (1952) play, ‘The Funeral Pyre’ (La Chapelle Ardente). Here, two of the characters navigate the understanding of their own relationship. Aline is imploring her would have been daughter-in-law[12], Mireille, to call her ‘Mother’. It is from a place of being together physically that they have to then find a way to overcome the complexities of their situation, and to resolve what seems like a very basic problem of what to call each other. In the context of higher education, online spaces (for teaching, committees, meetings etc) tend to focus attention on the problem or the task at hand; Marcel might describe this as the foregrounding of the problem. But it is when we are physically in each other’s presence that we are sensitive to the complexities of the personhood of others. It is not that this is impossible when we are working from disparate locations, but rather that our bodily presence to each other opens us up to the mystery of (others’) being:

It can happen, however, that the bond of feeling is created between me and the other person if, for example, I discover an experience we have both shared (we have both been to a certain place, have run the same risks, have criticized certain individual, or read and loved the same book); hence a unity is established in which the other person and myself become we, and this means that he ceases to be him becomes thou… The path leading from dialectic to love has now been opened (1965/2002: 33).

In another example, if we imagine a group of friends meeting in the pub or going to a football match, there is clearly something different about the very fact of their bodily togetherness around a shared pursuit that elevates the experience. Of course, one can drink alone at home, or watch the match by oneself from one’s living room, but in doing so, one misses the opportunity to participate in the emotional experiences of others doing the same (of involvement with their joy, pain etc). This participation, by virtue of the fact of physical togetherness, opens possibilities for the kind of communion and presence of which Marcel writes. To see this in the context of higher education, we argue that, because of our shared embodiment, we are better able to embrace the shared vision that being universitas imagines. This is because we see the other – in Buberian terms – as a ‘Thou’ who exists in a relation of mystery to us, rather than as merely a functionary to solve whatever immediate problem lies before us. In moving beyond a narrow understanding of the other as a functional ‘It’, physical presence to each other makes us indubitably aware of the fullness of the other as ‘Thou’. The other exists, in this moment, beyond just the scenario in which we encounter them, and opens possibilities for us to experience them in plenitude. Our experience of the other’s plenitude, however, is dependent on a generosity that is seen in the idea of the porosity of the self (in terms of a giving to, and a receiving from, the other).

Our hospitality to the other, then (in terms of an openness in relation to all our extant physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual resources) is the practical outworking of Marcel’s ideas of availability, communion, presence and plenitude:

If we devote our attention to the act of hospitality, we will see at one that to receive is not to fill up a void with an alien presence, but to make the other person participate in a certain plenitude (1965/2002: 28).

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Abstract

Pandemic disruptions to schooling threw into sharper relief the entanglements of economy, gender norms, and education that had been there, and throughout the modern world, all along.  The particular entanglement this paper aims to unravel is the reliance of education on a certain kind of attentiveness, historically provided by a feminized teaching force and mothers, that itself rests on the cultivation of particular sensibilities regarding time.

                     By “all along,” I mean roughly since the establishment of modern economies and school-systems, which go hand-in-hand.  Much adult labor moved out of the home with industrialization, while children and much of their educations moved out with compulsory schooling.  Pandemic lockdowns threw some workers and students back into an earlier arrangement of time and space, in which home was the fulltime site of labor and education, while requiring others to spend their days in the semi-functional, newly dangerous, and erratically open communal spaces of “essential” workplaces and schools.  The breakdown of modernity’s spatial and temporal organization of education and schooling -- familiar I suspect to all attending INPE 2022 -- makes this an opportune moment to consider how the modern organization of teaching and learning looked from its other side, i.e. from the 18^th century, an era when it was being invented and put into place. 

This paper returns to Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Émile, specifically to its depiction of Sophie’s time.  Sophie’s time merits our attention for two major reasons.  First, Rousseau is an exceptionally perceptive commentator on the experiential qualities of human lives, including our experiences of time. As such, his account of what children require from adult’s time is unusually sensitive and still relevant to educators.  Rousseau’s insights into what Sophie’s experiences of time and space need to be like during her girlhood in order for her to attend to her future children as their first educator remain pertinent to any post-pandemic reorganization of children’s, and therefore teachers’ and parents’, time and workplaces. Second, in providing an account of Sophie’s time that is in many ways the opposite of Émile’s, Rousseau’s text calls for a critical feminist reading that shines light on how the gendered prescriptions he provided for girls’ and women’s time cannot but prove harmful to women – in ways the pandemic makes freshly visible. Analysis of Sophie’s time in Émile, that is, points to what post-pandemic education needs to recognize and value and what demands change.

Introduction: Education, Economics, and Women’s Time

“Other countries have social safety nets.  The U.S. has women.”[1]  Economist Betsey Stevenson quoted these words from sociologist Jessica Calarco in her September, 2021 analysis “Women, Work and Families: Recovering from the Pandemic Induced Recession,” and they capture Stevenson’s conclusions.[2]  Women in the United States, Stevenson shows, were hit hard by the pandemic recession in large part because of their longstanding association with care-giving – including, crucially, as teachers and as the caretakers of young children.  By December 2019, women had, for the first time in US history, become the majority of the paid labor force.[3]  Spurring this shift was women’s predominance in the economy’s fast growing service sector, especially those jobs in the service sector that require face-to-face interaction with others, the sector hardest hit by pandemic shut-downs.  Although many of those jobs, and the women who filled them, returned later in 2020 and in 2021, many women remained burdened with extra responsibilities due to the ongoing unreliability of childcare, in-person schooling, and eldercare.  Their time, already a resource allocated for maximum efficiency, had to stretch even further.  Women responded in different ways: some left the workforce entirely to provide some version of schooling at home, while others juggled children’s care with part-time or full-time jobs.  The economic impact on these women is likely to linger, with women’s time out of the workforce and/or inability to offer the kind of 24/7 commitment that workplaces demand taking them out of the pool for promotions and ultimately diminishing their retirement benefits.  In short, women who had to cut back on work to care for children at home during the pandemic are likely to be left worse-off economically by the pandemic for the rest of their lives.  There was (and still is) no safety net for them, in part because they were, via their via their (frequently underpaid) jobs in childcare, education and health care, as well as their unpaid labor at home, the safety net for one another and everyone else.  

                     By “for them,” I mean “for us,” as I count myself among US women with a career in education and children who spent months at home, experiencing nearly every possible variation of pandemic-era schooling.  Having previously written about public schools’ reliance on mothers’ unpaid time and labor, I felt a mix of smug “told you so” vindication and deep frustration as news media trumpeted that the economy couldn’t function without reliable in-person schooling.  But any hopes I had that what wasn’t actually news at all might, finally, be an impetus for political progress were dampened by polarized public discourse that pitted women against each other by race, by job-status, and by region.  Reopening US schools was politicized early in the pandemic, when then-President Trump insisted schools could safely reopen well before that was the case.  In response, the American left quickly swung to the position that it was insensitive to the welfare of children, teachers, and society at large to make any argument that children were better off in-school than learning at home -- or, more accurately, learning in whatever places they could get an internet connection, which famously included Taco Bell parking lots.[4] The disparate needs of various groups of Americans, groups that overlap to produce a myriad of conflicting vulnerabilities vis a vis reopening schools – the poor, the unemployed, children, working mothers, the elderly, Black and Brown Americans, small-business owners, and teachers – were run together into simplified narratives, as if in a desperate hope that one answer could meet all of their incommensurable needs at once.  While these narratives battled it out in the media, social and otherwise, children themselves trudged to joyless days of masked separation in schools or dangerous days of unmasked feigned normalcy.  Or they stayed home for frantic days of trying to get someone’s attention for help with online schooling or lonely days of sheer drudgery in their bedrooms.  There was no social safety net for them, either.  Only women.[5] 

                     The US is something of an outlier among peer nations in its commitment to privatized caretaking, electing to rely on the exploitation of (mostly) women who either forego employment opportunities or in turn rely on exploitatively underpaid care-workers (often Black, Latina, and/or immigrant women) in lieu of putting into place publicly subsidized parental leave, childcare, early childhood education, and eldercare.  During the pandemic, it was occasionally remarked that mothers were the US’s Plan B.  In fact they were, and always had been, Plan A.  But although the US marks an extreme, and includes within its domestic economy mutually distant antipodes of wealth and poverty, its dependence on women’s time as an exploitable resource is hardly unique.  Pandemic disruptions to schooling threw into sharper relief the entanglements of economy, gender norms, and education that had been there, and throughout the modern world, all along.  The particular entanglement this paper aims to unravel is the reliance of education on a certain kind of attentiveness, historically provided by a feminized teaching force and mothers, that itself rests on the cultivation of particular sensibilities regarding time.

                     By “all along,” I mean roughly since the establishment of modern economies and school-systems, which go hand-in-hand.  Much adult labor moved out of the home with industrialization, while children and much of their educations moved out with compulsory schooling.  Pandemic lockdowns threw some workers and students back into an earlier arrangement of time and space, in which home was the fulltime site of labor and education, while requiring others to spend their days in the semi-functional, newly dangerous, and erratically open communal spaces of “essential” workplaces and schools.  The breakdown of modernity’s spatial and temporal organization of education and schooling -- familiar I suspect to all attending INPE 2022 -- makes this an opportune moment to consider how the modern organization of teaching and learning looked from its other side, i.e. from the 18^th century, an era when it was being invented and put into place.[6] 

This paper returns to Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Émile, specifically to its depiction of Sophie’s time.  Sophie’s time merits our attention for two major reasons.  First, Rousseau is an exceptionally perceptive commentator on the experiential qualities of human lives, including our experiences of time. As such, his account of what children require from adult’s time is unusually sensitive and still relevant to educators.  Rousseau’s insights into what Sophie’s experiences of time and space need to be like during her girlhood in order for her to attend to her future children as their first educator remain pertinent to any post-pandemic reorganization of children’s, and therefore teachers’ and parents’, time and workplaces. Second, in providing an account of Sophie’s time that is in many ways the opposite of Émile’s, Rousseau’s text calls for a critical feminist reading that shines light on how the gendered prescriptions he provided for girls’ and women’s time cannot but prove harmful to women – in ways the pandemic makes freshly visible. Analysis of Sophie’s time in Émile, that is, points to what post-pandemic education needs to recognize and value and what demands change.

Sophie’s Girlhood Time

In a century that glorified work, that exalted the labors of Hercules, and that scolded laziness and loafing, Rousseau was sometimes a perpetuator of the enthusiasm for productivity and other times, especially in his later writing, a contrarian defender of idleness.  “Idleness is one of the contradictory figures that weave through Rousseau’s works,” writes Pierre Saint-Amand in The Pursuit of Laziness, his exploration of eighteenth-century discourses of indolence that counter the prevailing celebration of productive activity.  Saint-Amand’s chapter on Rousseau mentions Émile once, noting a passage that ties labor to citizenship, before turning to Reveries of a Solitary Walker, which offers a rich picture of the kind of counter-normative time-use that Rousseau’s “most useful rule” and its exposition suggests in Books II and III, as does his account of Émile’s meandering progress toward Sophie in Book V.[7]  Émile, however, presents two depictions of idleness, contradictory and starkly gendered, with one prescription for Émile’s pre-adolescent childhood, another for Sophie’s.  In his Book V depiction of appropriately feminized idleness and action, Rousseau portrays the ideal woman as engaged constantly in what later scholars would call “invisible” and “emotional” labor, even as her physical movements are limited and her access to physical space constrained.  To produce a woman capable of such labor, Sophie’s childhood is the converse of Émile’s.  Her soul is exercised in preparation for a lifetime of self-imposed physical confinement, while his “soul” is kept “idle for as long as possible” even as his body is allowed to wander, at leisure, farther and farther afield.  This section explores the directive to prevent idleness in girls, the better to prepare them for constant “vigilance” as adult wives and mothers.

                     “Idleness,” says Rousseau, is one of the two “most dangerous defects” for young girls.  “Always justify the cares you impose on young girls,” he recommends, “but always impose cares on them.”

Girls ought to be vigilant and industrious.  That is not all.  They ought to be constrained very early.  This misfortune, if it is one for them, is inseparable from their sex, and they are never delivered from it without suffering far more cruel misfortunes.  All their lives they will be enslaved to the most continual and most severe of constraints – that of the proprieties.  They must first be exercised in constraint, so that it never costs them anything to tame their caprices in order to submit them to the wills of others.  If they always wanted to work, one would sometimes have to force them to do nothing.[8]

This justification of imposing constant cares links female idleness to the second of the “most dangerous defects”: disobedience, or in French indocilité, which better than the English denotes Sophie’s requisite passivity and softness.  Yet Sophie’s industry is an “exercise” in constraint, which gives her a paradoxical kind of strength, a strength that she turns upon herself in order to render herself constantly docile.  Her exercise keeps her soft; her incessant labor preserves her passivity.  In contrast to Émile’s, her soul must never be kept – or even allowed to fall -- idle. The chores Sophie performs are not themselves the point – if she wanted to work, she would be required not to – as her labors are primarily internal.  Sophie’s work builds her strength to enslave herself.

                     “Emotional labor” is a term that has recently gained popular currency, but sociologist Arlie Hochschild, who originally coined it in her 1983 book The Managed Heart, gives the phrase a slightly different meaning than its common use.  Used frequently to denote the labor of tending to others’ emotions, the term was initially defined by Hochschild as the labor one needs to perform on oneself in order to attend to others’ emotions.  Work that requires emotional labor, in Hochschild’s account, “requires one to induce or suppress feeling in order to sustain the outward countenance that produces the proper state of mind in others.”[9] That induction and suppression of feeling is, itself, labor.  The Managed Heart is based on a study of flight attendants, for whom a condition of paid employment is that they suppress their own feelings of fatigue, annoyance, and frustration in order to present the airline’s customers with smiles that can pass as genuine.  The easiest way to produce a genuine smile, Hochschild learns through interviews with flight attendants and their managers, is to induce the emotions that cause one to smile.  Thus, positive feelings in the other person are the ultimate – and marketable -- product, but the labor involved is exercised upon the self.  Hochschild’s original definition is worth returning to, even as the term’s denotation has shifted through common use, because it points to the hazards of such labor.  Emotional labor, Hochschild argues, comes with a possible cost comparable to the costs of physical labor: “the worker can become estranged or alienated from an aspect of self -- either the body or the margins of the soul -- that is used to do the work.”[10] 

                     Sophie’s alienation from body and soul begins in girlhood, although at a very early age Sophie is not to be denied “a moment of freedom to play, jump, run, shout, or indulge in the petulance natural to her age.”[11]  Like the girls Rousseau imagines to have lived in Sparta, she is to develop a “good constitution in youth by means of agreeable, moderate, and salutary exercises.”[12]  This is necessary, Rousseau adds, not for her sake but for the sake of her male children.  “Women ought not to be robust like men, but they should be robust for men, so that the men born from them will be robust too.”[13]  Over time, she is to confine herself increasingly to the home. In contrast to the conventional French confinement of girls in convents during their girlhood followed by physical liberty in the social realm as adult women, girls are to follow “the way of life that nature and reason prescribe for the fair sex” and enjoy public games and dances as girls, but, as soon as they are married, be “[s]hut up in their houses.”[14]  Concerned to present this radical confinement as promoting Sophie’s happiness, Rousseau bases the two contrasting aims of the “cultivation” of boys’ and girls’ bodies in their natural inclinations.  “For man this aim is the development of strength; for woman it is the development of attractiveness.”[15] 

Time is enlisted into Sophie’s self-objectification, as it flows most quickly for her when she engages in the work that prepares her to be a plaything.  Her cultivation of her body as an object that appeals to others – a body she must willingly shut up -- will cost Sophie little, Rousseau predicts, because “[l]ittle girls love adornment almost from birth.”[16]  In the years that correlate to Émile’s pre-adolescent childhood (though Sophie’s childhood years are not divided into stages as distinct as Émile’s), her supposedly natural taste for “adornment” expresses itself as an interest in the “special entertainment of this sex”: dolls.[17]   “Spending the day around her doll, constantly changing its clothes, dressing and undressing it hundreds and hundreds of times, continuously seeking new combinations of ornaments,” Sophie’s time is allowed to meander according to her fancy. When a girl plays with dolls, says Rousseau, “time flows without her thinking of it; the hours pass and she knows nothing of it.”[18]  Sophie’s liberation from the clock, however, comes with the unsettling aspect of involving her self-enslavement to social convention.  She plays with her doll the better to learn to make herself attractive, the better to make herself an object of desire, the better to win a husband who will provide her with the home in which she can confine herself.  Her play involves the suppression of her most basic physical needs.  Playing with her doll, Sophie forgets meals. “She is hungrier for adornment than for food.”[19]  Her limited appetite will, in the long run, accord with her physical idleness: “Her sex, which is less laborious than ours, has less need of restoratives.”[20] A quintessential example of, as Saint-Amand’s puts it, the discursive production of Foucauldian “bodies chained by techno-production, controlled by the institutions of confinement,” Rousseau’s description of Sophie presents her as laboring with little more need of nourishment than a machine.  Even in her play she is at work producing a docile female self.  Perhaps the most chilling line in the entire account of Sophie is the line that wraps up her doll-play: “She awaits the moment when she will be her own doll.”[21]  Her girlhood is a waiting room in which the process of self-alienation plays itself out.  Sophie, never idle yet always waiting, is like an “idling” machine. 

The time Sophie spends playing with dolls in childhood prepares her well for the “labors of her own sex,” listed in one of the only paragraphs that, rather than depicting her development of erotic charms or delineating her nascent virtues and vices, actually describes what Sophie does all day. [22]  Sophie’s labors include “cutting and sewing her dresses,” “lacework,” and learning “all the details of the household,” such as preparing herself to price and assess the quality of food and to keep accounts.[23]  Servant rather than slave in this domain, she “serves her mother as butler.”  As with other aspects of her subjugation, this servitude entails its reversal; “she learns to govern her own household by governing her parents.”  Her mother has this reason for “keeping her busy”: “One can never command well except when one knows how to do the job oneself.”[24]  In the household as in her erotic relations, Sophie learns how to be a servant so that she can rule.  

Sophie’s prescribed girlhood combination of emotional labor and industrious housework, in its contradistinction from Émile’s childhood idleness of soul and outdoor meanders, shows the mandated uses of childhood time to be one of those crucial “differences” between woman and man that are “connected with sex.”  The opening of Book V promised to show the reader willing to accept Rousseau’s creation of illusions how to know Sophie in order to find her.  Attention to the differences in girlhood time brings the reader a step closer.  For readers eager to assess the appeal of this game, Hochschild’s questions linger.  What are the effects on Sophie of her ceaseless emotional labor?  Rousseau’s argument is that through her subjugation, Sophie/woman attains power.  She is vanquisher and vanquished, slaver and enslaved.  In keeping with the notion inherited from antiquity that slavery was a status imposed by victors on the vanquished, Rousseau’s portrayal of Sophie’s time and labor entails Sophie’s development of a self that is not integrated but radically split.

Sophie’s role as vanquisher/vanquished doubles again as she enslaves both herself and Émile, attaining power over him through the force of her charms.  In Rousseau’s dialectical account of seduction, women yield to men’s superior power – to their physical force and their moral aspect of activity – yet wield power as well, inexorably drawing men to them through their attractive passivity.[25]  The significance of child-bearing and child-raising to this dialectic of seduction is crucial.  In Rousseau’s account “Women possess their empire not because men wanted it that way but because nature wants it that way.”[26] Because she will bear children, Rousseau explains, unlike the male who is “male only at certain moments . . . [t]he female is female her whole life or at least during her whole youth.”[27]  She needs a “constitution which corresponds to” her sex because she will need care when pregnant, a “soft and sedentary life” while nursing her children, and patience while raising them.  Her moral, even more than her physical, “constitution” will tie a father to his children, creating the emotional bonds that are the only means of ensuring the survival of the human race.[28]  (Les Solitaires, the unfinished sequel in which Émile leaves Sophie because she becomes pregnant with another man’s child, is the reversal that proves the case.)  The tug of her future as a mother renders Sophie’s childhood time unlike Émile’s in this respect: Émile’s self-possession is in part a matter of his complete orientation within the present, whereas her potential children make Sophie’s present always a matter of their co-presence and her future.  For Émile, Rousseau foreswore “foresight” as “the true source of all our miseries.” It “takes us ceaselessly beyond ourselves” and is therefore a kind of “madness.” In contrast, Sophie’s self “during her whole youth” is always a matter of her future motherhood – mad though it may (and, in Les Solitaires, does) drive her.

Sophie’s Maternal Vigil

                     Is this internal split a detrimental state foisted on Sophie by patriarchal domination, or an aspect of Sophie that indicates Rousseau’s recognition of important tensions in his ideals?  Arguably, both.  In “Reconsidering the Role of Sophie,” Denise Schaeffer argues that Sophie’s internal divisions, and the divisions within the family that her relationship with Émile represents, indicate Rousseau’s recognition of a “precarious instability – and the mobilization of that instability – that Rousseau sees as essential to our interdependence.”  Among passages cited in support of her argument, Schaeffer notes Rousseau’s textual generation of Sophie, where he acknowledges that she is not an ideal. Émile was generated as an “imaginary pupil”; Sophie’s existence is more ambiguous. Just after Sophie’s parents deliver a speech telling her it is time to marry, Rousseau inserts a question about her real or fictional status, for the sake of convincing

people to whom everything great appears chimerical, and who in their base and vile reasoning will never know what effect even a mania for virtue can have upon the human passions.  To these people one must speak only with examples, so much the worse for them if they persist in denying these examples.  If I said to them that Sophie is not an imaginary being, that her name alone is of my invention . . . they undoubtedly would believe nothing of it.  Nonetheless, what would I risk in straightforwardly completing the history of a girl so similar to Sophie that her story could be Sophie’s without occasioning any surprise?[29]

Shaeffer makes a plausible case that Sophie’s doubling and splitting throughout Book V, of which this passage is one of several textual examples, presents her as “more self-conscious, sophisticated and complex than Émile” and indicates Rousseau’s pessimism about achieving perfect happiness on earth (a pessimism more fully expressed in Les Solitaires). 

Shaeffer is content to divide two ways of reading Émile: as a practical guide to education or as a philosophical text.[30]  By dismissing Émile as any kind of practical guide, Schaeffer is able to dismiss the problematic conclusion that Sophie’s role is meant to apply to women or that women are restricted to it.  This dismissal of the practical, however, divorces ideals from a critical appraisal of their relationship to actual social practices and thereby further cements injustice.  Sophie is more than a warning about the imperfectability of human happiness; she is part and parcel of political and educational ideals that require incessant maternal labor, with mothers suppressing their own needs and interests for the sake of others. 

If instead Émile is treated as a philosophical text whose ideals can be put into conversation with practical recommendations, what should readers make of the character Schaeffer aptly renames the “girl like Sophie” when she reaches adulthood and becomes a mother and educator to the next generation?  The woman like Sophie remains, as she learned to be in girlhood, “vigilant.”[31]  A vigil, with its connotations of watchfulness and wakefulness, is typically associated with a military or religious state of waiting, but the word also captures exactly the kind of attention children require from adults, the kind of adult attention that makes a “negative education” possible and that enables the educator to seize the moment – the kairos, as Lovlie calls it – when it comes along.[32]  Real mothers are literally vigilant – awake in the night, attending to what the moment demands – when they are nursing infants, and throughout Books I – IV Rousseau depicts the tutor as continuing that practice of attunement to the child’s moment. The stratégie dilatoire that Rousseau recommends is still a strategy, and as such requires constant vigilance.

In an easily overlooked passage in Book V about behavior at dinner parties, Rousseau suggests that the woman like Sophie will in fact be a far better practitioner of this strategy than Émile.  The passage can read as a non-sequitur, but it is in fact placed exactly where it belongs.  Rousseau has just provided a course correction to his argument that women are enslaved by public opinion and argued that they must, in fact, develop reason.  “A rule prior to opinion exists for the whole human species. . . .This rule is the inner sentiment.”  If the “two rules” of public opinion and inner sentiment “do not cooperate in the education of women, that education will always be defective.”[33] To bring the two rules together, women’s faculty of reason must be cultivated.  It seems a jump, then, a few paragraphs later, for Rousseau abruptly to shift from women’s reason to a description of their hospitality.  Host and hostess, Rousseau says, “have had the same education,” and “are equally polite, equally endowed with taste and wit, and animated by the same desire to receive their guests well.”[34]  But while the host attends to each guest equally, moving around the room because “he would like to be all attentiveness,” the hostess “stays put” and lets a circle gather around her that might seem to “hide the rest of the gathering from her.” [35]  Nothing, however, escapes her notice.  And while the host may be “knowledgeable about who gets along with whom,” the hostess, “without knowing anything will make no mistakes.” Her vigilance outdoes his knowledge. If the guests leave feeling attended to, it is more thanks to her attention, her ability to see what is hidden, than to his.  This description of host and hostess describes beautifully what the emotional labor (in Hochschild’s sense) of a woman like Sophie is able to accomplish.  Inserted into the text just after the acknowledgement that Sophie’s education will be like Émile’s in certain essential features, the description of the party portrays her vigilance as of a piece with her complete humanity. 

                     In contrast, Émile’s time is a flight of fancy, in multiple senses.  Émile is an imaginary pupil.  Although his imagination is forestalled until adolescence, he has no need of it in childhood because he is free to fly after his (natural) fancies.  From a critical perspective, Émile is an imaginary pupil because the realities of mainstream schooling do not permit most real children’s time to follow such flights of fancy.  Yet, in spite of determination to script every instructional minute, real students’ minds wander, exercising a capacity for imagination that cannot be constrained by walls and clocks, or computer screens and online modules.  Émile calls on the reader to imagine a child, and in so doing to let ourselves be educated as he is – to let our imaginations meander through space and time, envisioning a world in which our desires align with our abilities.[36]  In contrast, the time of a woman like Sophie is, like Sophie, closer to the reality of women’s lives.  For critical readers who value Rousseau’s acknowledgment that the work of education demands a difficult to achieve kind of vigilance, but who are vexed by much else about Sophie, perhaps the text’s depictions of gendered time are best treated as reason to keep imagining what it would take to achieve human happiness in a world of entanglements, which is to say of conflicting obligations, of relationships, of economic and educational – using educational in its broadest sense, as a process of constant growth -- needs that are often at odds.  Across recent decades in which women have entered the labor force in increasing numbers, the idealization of mothers like Sophie has thwarted revisions to domestic economies, public and private.  Meanwhile, a globalized economy and resultant job-insecurity have demanded long hours that are difficult to calibrate with family life from many workers.  Émile reminds readers that though (mis)managed time functions as a tool of our oppression, time understood properly is a means to both liberation and community.  As such, perhaps it is best read as an invitation, at this moment when so much about schools stands to be reimagined, to rethink what a different kind of alignment with time might achieve – for men and women, parents and children, alike.   

Abstract

As the pandemic moved teaching off campus and on-line in March of 2020, practitioners of place-based learning faced serious challenges: unable to replicate but unwilling to abandon this pedagogical form.  Nobody is fooled into thinking that a slide show on Share-screen is equivalent to an actual walk-about, a realization of some relief to both the travel industry and conference organizers.  In adapting to the new Zoom-environment it was possible, however, to make this form of synchronous on-line teaching more than an empty ritual or even worse, collapse into a dystopic, Matrix-like simulation.  Reflecting on the shift helps us to better appreciate what was lost, what we value and wish to sustain by once again conducting in-person this form of teaching and learning – cherished by many and especially vital to environmental educators like myself. 

Investigating the meaning of ‘place-based learning’ I first entertain Aristotle’s seminal thought on place as a container or vessel, using this metaphor (after Casey, 1974) to venture into contemporary phenomenological inquiries.  The shared realization is that places and things are not only conceptually implicated by each other, but are immanent and potentially powerful elements in more directly affecting our learning experiences. Turning to Michal Bonnett’s philosophy of environmental education, I endorse his phenomenological argument that authentic forms of this pedagogy must be both embodied and emplaced in order to open learners to more in situ, deeply contextualized and yet ‘transcendental’ and ‘ecstatic’ reception of the more-than-human realm of nature: what ‘comes forth’ to us (phusis) if only we heed its call and properly care for things in their environs.  But this powerful exposition, with which I resonate as a reader of Heidegger, poses steep challenges for my students and sets the bar very high for place-based educators in any mode of delivery. 

Conducting place-based environmental education on-line serves many of the same aims of environmental education, and continuing the practice this way during a pandemic made sense, but it often reduces the pedagogical form to an animated and interactive lecture: a danger contained also within in-person forms.  In diminishing bodily senses, this ‘other’ (heterotopic) form can never replace the vibrant experience of being there: seeing, smelling, touching, and even drawing things like trees, feeling their gathering power to give ground and edify us.  Nonetheless, just as when the lights go out we learn again to build bonfires, when the pandemic hit we learned new ways of using electronic devices to stay connected: sometimes powerfully, moving us along new avenues of pedagogical practice.

The weighty subtext carries in its hold an underlying leitmotif: Wittgenstein’s philosophical approach, itself modelled on place-based investigation of language as our ‘home city’.  The recurring refrain draws me back from metaphysical inclinations to dwell on more ordinary discourse rooted in educational practices.

In an appendix I draft virtual plans (pseudo-artifacts) for conducting place-based learning at Arhus University Park. Thorough absence of familiarity pares down content, focusing attention on formal elements of this pedagogy (cf. Wittgenstein on simplified cases, PI §5). 

1. Introduction to the problem space

Teaching within the novel conditions of the pandemic it is easy to romanticize pedagogical forms that in the not-too-distant past sustained our teaching practice: forms integral to our identity and teaching philosophy.  The pedagogical form with which my students in environmental sustainability education associate me (favourably in their salutations and course evaluation comments) is place-based learning, infused with cross-disciplinary inquiry and arts-based learning.  Seeing the INPE 2022 call for papers I was reminded of a passage I read in Michael Bonnett’s 2015 paper, “The powers that be: Environmental education and the transcendent”, in which the distinguished philosopher of environmental education pondered whether such practices could be moved onto technological platforms without sacrificing essential aspects of embodied, sensory contact with places and things.  His speculative remarks were cut short (concision in publishing), and of course nobody was then foreseeing mass migration onto digital platforms with the arrival of COVID-19 five years later. 

Considering the necessarily multi-sensory experiencing of nature, ultimately, there can be no substitute for immediate firsthand experience. Engagement with virtual places made available through ever advancing technology will of course involve mutual anticipation, claims and prompts, and it can be interesting to speculate to what degree – necessarily being engineered and selective compared with natural places – they could approach the experience possible in places in which physical nature is authentically present. Lack of space forbids a proper examination of this issue here, but I suggest that the transcendent qualities of nature previously outlined pose serious problems for any such endeavour.  (Bonnett, 2015, p.52)

I take up this problem in section 3, heeding Bonnett’s (2021) more developed answer on ‘Digitalized experience,’ in “Listening to nature” (Chapter 6, pp.112-114).  I strongly resonate with Bonnett’s work (see Stickney and Bonnett, 2020), as a fellow ‘naturalist’ and reader of Heidegger who appreciates Bonnett’s finesse in making this ‘Black Forest’ (Greco-Catholic, neo-Druidic) ontology more accessible and applicable for many (see Stickney, 2020a)[1], but as a classroom/outdoor education practitioner I am painfully aware of how high a bar this sets for instructors like me who (donning their own version of a Henry Thoreau/Arne Naess/Rachel Carson/Diana Beresford-Kroeger …persona), take classes out for relatively brief, intentionally orchestrated and minimally risky (relatively inauthentic) encounters with ‘nature’ in park settings within a busy metropolis. 

Easy to end this paper now by simply acknowledging that Bonnett is right, on so many grounds, in advocating direct and heightened experience of nature.   But the call for papers asks for more than confirmation of loss and recognition of what we wish to retrieve.  What has the experience of moving on-line taught us about this cherished practice of place-based learning? Has its continued performance these past two years been reduced to an empty ritual, or is it something else altogether when we are not walking together ‘in the field’?  Although reasonable to assume that place-based learning was severely compromised during the pandemic, perhaps even ‘placeless’ (see Relph, 1976), I was a panelist in an on-line seminar for North American environmental sustainability educators in the April of 2020, addressing how I was trying to move place-based learning on-line.  I showed how I recorded my own excursions on the 600-hectare conservation area behind my home, introducing my environmental education course for teacher candidates by modelling one of the options for their final assignment: making their own video, conducting place-based education and sharing it with their classmates in Zoom breakout rooms.  For many students this was an exhilarating and fulfilling project, bringing in arts-based learning (soundscapes and ephemeral art, after Andy Goldsworthy[2]), biology and history infused with local Indigenous knowledge and heritage, continuing our work to decolonize place-based learning (see Greenwood, 2019).  One of our Masters students filmed an Indigenous knowledge-keeper at an eco-school discussing the ‘three sisters” horticultural practice of growing corn, beans, and squash on wood-filled mounds, constructing an ‘authentic’ Haudenosaunee garden with high school students).[3]  Some exemplary videos from our classes were shared with the local district school board’s Outdoor Education department, including lessons plans for use with students.  I also participated in a national Climate Action conference in 2021 hosted by my university (of necessity offered on-line, like the INPE 2020 conference on the environment, which might be something to continue as it greatly reduced our carbon footprint) practicing a variant of place-based learning on Zoom with about 25 grateful participants (see the companion paper, Stickney, 2020a).[4] 

Instead of abandoning the practice, I adapted to the new digital environment in which synchronous instruction was being delivered.  I inadvertently share some of these pedagogical moves, of potential use to fellow practitioners, but my aim is to reflect more deeply on some philosophical aspects that surface through this discussion of modified forms of place-based learning.  I am not arguing through some linguistic and philosophical sleight of hand that doing place-based education on-line is the same as doing it in-person, but rather attending to commonalities and significant differences.  Of course, when the “all clear” sounds I will return to doing in-person teaching, using the campus and its surrounding envrions once again, but I will also retain some of the digital avenues we have created.

In the first two sections I briefly explore Aristotle’s metaphysical discussion of place and then Michael Bonnett’s phenomenological presentation of emplaced environmental learning, meditating on what is lost in terms of our material engagement with things and places (see also Bearn, 2020). For philosophers of education I focus on meanings of ‘place’ as the concept is altered or extended by circumstances of on-line learning: averring (after Wittgenstein, as leitmotif in the subtext) temptations to entertain fascinating but somewhat metaphysical accounts of place,[5] or play the criteria-games of analytic philosophy of education, seeking necessary and sufficient conditions for a practice to be considered ‘place-based education’ or ‘educational’ at all. Where is the locus of this ostensibly in situ pedagogical form when linking disparate students onto Zoom platforms, and how does this ‘other space’[6] impact student/participant experiences of gathering and learning?  Can we still capture some of the poetry of places, or does sensing an ethos, genius loci or spirit of place require embodied and physically present modes of learning (see Heidegger 1977a&b)?  Only able to unpack some of these questions here, instead of a tightly argued, narrowly focused paper I provide dispersal into radial avenues for thinking teaching, invited by the complex topic/locus of place.[7]  I also provide in an appendix a sketchbook or album for conducting place-based learning at Aarhus University Park – a distant place (even from the conference location in Copenhagen) I have hitherto only visited on-line: like a curious octopus extending its tentacles to the monitor. 

1. Aristotle on the immanence place

“Place is thought to be some surface and like a vessel and surrounder.”  Aristotle, Physics, 212a28-29 (in Casey, p.53)

I open by acknowledging Aristotle’s contribution to our philosophical thought about place, but when we talk about ‘place-based learning’ educators are not ordinarily referring back to this ancient thinker and his magnificent work even while carrying on with his peripatetic tradition.  Does anyone now talk in quotidian speech or educational discourse about place being like a container or vessel?[8]  Entertaining the metaphor of place being like a boat does shed some light on what is lost in moving on-line, where the Zoom screen must suffice as our ‘containing vessel’. Zoom offers a two-dimensional geometric configuration of small boxes with student names and sometimes photos and the occasional face of an animate person, gathered symbolically into a cluster that fills one page after another, extending into space like a spreadsheet. The appearance of being bounded on pages conceals the actual distance separating each person, which although not infinite has the feeling of being more like talking from one space ship to many others than a real classroom conversation. Calling it a ‘lesson in place-based learning’, is teaching on such an on-line learning environment potentially in the hold of some real place – the actual topic of the lesson -- and can one possibly feel its surrounding presence? 

The primary task at hand is to come back to contemporary place-based discourse and practice: as limited as such a survey can be within this paper.  But further consideration of Aristotle may prove useful. 

As Casey notes, in describing place as a vessel Aristotle was distinguishing things from their immediate surroundings.  Consequently, place is neither the form or matter of a thing it contains, but that which immediately surrounds it, as its location.[9]  The form is the limit of the thing, but place is a different limit that immediately surrounds or circumscribes it (211b3010-14, in Casey, p.54).  Aristotle acknowledged how difficult it is to conceive of place.  To Aristotle’s credit, Casey likens his initial approach to phenomenological description of things we perceive within the lifeworld.  “Start from the things which are more knowable and obvious to us and proceed towards those which are clearer and more knowable by nature” (Physics, 184a17-18, in Casey, p.53).  But what does it mean to consider the place more metaphysically, in its nature?

In Aristotle’s more metaphysical sense, the place considered ‘in nature’ (en de te phusis) has a ‘holding power’ (dynamis, 208b11) as container, which makes it ‘what it is’ (in estin, 211a8, Casey p.53) and different from the things it contains, making ‘place in its primary sense the first thing surrounding each body’ (Casey, p.54). 

The double immanence, the reciprocal belongingness, of things and place is summed in an axiomatic formula that quite appropriately incorporates two uses of ‘in’: “Just as every body is in a place, so in every place there is a body” (209a25-26).  This is not a merely empty or redundant statement.  (Casey, p.56)[10]…It remains that, according to Aristotle, to be in motion or at rest is to be in place, however momentary or transitional; that place might be.  (Casey, p.56)

This place can move, much as a vessel can be carried, for instance in the case of a boat floating in a river (Casey, p.55).  But it is hard to point to this limiting power, conceived as the essence or inherent property of the place qua ‘place’.  We can locate it with respect to the six directions, as being in all points around the thing, but difficult to determine its full extent in space. How far around the thing does the place extend?  When does one pass from one distinct place into another, when for the perceiving subject their locomotion in space implies that at each moment they are contained within some place?[11] 

Aristotle was more concerned with place as the immediate limit, or inner boundary that surrounds a formed and material thing (and so denying that a geometric point can have a place), thinking more metaphysically than we normally do when asking questions about the boundaries of places we are familiar with as somehow distinct but loosely bounded neighbourhoods or districts.  Following Nietzsche’s call to return to earth and the body, phenomenologists and pragmatists have directed us to remain focused on the first approach: to how things appear to us and how we find them useful in everyday life.[12]  After Wittgenstein (cf. Rorty, 1979), we are also less inclined to expect our words, such as ‘place’ and ‘ethos’, to refer to or mirror some real ‘thing’ when discussing the haecceity, being or is-ness of places.[13]

That is to say: if we construe the grammar of the expression of sensation on the model of 'object and designation' the object drops out of consideration as irrelevant. (Wittgenstein’s beetle-in-the box case, PI §293)

1. Immanence as a theme in Bonnett’s writing about emplaced and embodied environmental learning

Michael Bonnett (e.g., 2013, 2021) writes about ‘embodied and emplaced transcendence’ as potential ekstasis within outdoor education, potentially opening students to more authentic and aesthetic encounters with their environment.  Following Heidegger’s reading of pre-Socratic philosophy, ‘nature’ (phusis) is conceived as what ‘comes forward’ to us from outside, only perceptible in rare moments of heightened experience (transcendence) or releasement.  In beautifully crafted prose he offers two phenomenological vignettes (read aloud in his 2019 keynote at PESGB) describing ‘embodied participation in the being of places’ through intimate excursions into natural settings (see 2021, p.29). 

By our embodied participation in the being of places exemplified in [Chapter 2] by the upland stream and woodland dell – by entering into their otherness – our being is enriched and quickened. Our ecstatic consciousness, as inherently environmental, is fulfilled and we are able to appraise the world and discern appropriate action from a perspective that in a significant sense lies within nature, one that is enlightened by her internal norms. Here is an important sense in which we retrieve our place in nature – as it were, become part of it as its conscious expression.

Bonnett amplifies this view in stating that:

…within a phenomenological approach, the existence and character of any moral standing and intrinsic value that nature might possess are disclosed in our direct experiences of nature. Because these are ineluctably human experiences, attention to them can reveal how a proper respect for nature involves recognizing both its alterity and its relationship to humanity.  (2021, p.94)[14]

One of the best articulations of this position comes in a 2015 paper, cited earlier as immediately after this passage (below) Bonnett speculated on the relative poverty of doing environmental education through technology.

Third, returning now to the idea that we inhere in places through ongoing mutual anticipation, there is a significant sense in which places claim us. It is not only that the ongoing play of reciprocal anticipation results in us experiencing – again often, but certainly not always, implicitly – prompts and claims that constitute us being in, inhering in, a place, rather these can be such as to determine incisively how and who we are when we are present there (Bonnett, 2009a). Our workplace, the place of some seminal personal encounter or tragic occurrence can claim us in this way. This means that the normativity, values, that it has been argued are inherent in places, likewise claim us and can shape our being.  (Bonnett, 2015, p.52)

Five years later, Bonnett (2021, pp.112-14) included in his book a section on “Digitalized experience” – written ahead of, but published during the pandemic that drove us onto digital platforms.  Referring to how the “logic of interaction and the character of our immersion in our environment is very different from when we are in direct contact with nature,” Bonnett (2021, p.112) distinguishes digital from in-person contact and its more direct reciprocity with nature:

In the former case, we are relatively disembodied, physically disengaged by means of the very limited finger movements structured by qwerty[15], touchpad, or screen and a very limited visual field.  In the latter case, we are fully embodied: all the senses coming into play and stimulated in varying and unpredictable directions and ranges, and bodily movement is responsive, accommodating and potentially negotiating a far greater range of conditions.  (Bonnett, 2021, p.112)

One could argue, however, that many students taken by their instructor for a walk into a local environment are not fully present in the moment or attuned to the place, perhaps being enraptured in conversation with friends or on their cell phones, straggling behind and not listening to either the instruction on offer of harkening carefully to nature.  Bonnett would concede this, being fully aware that our ordinary condition is one of being somewhat tranquilized rather than authentic, lost to the idle chatter instead of the call of things (see Bonnett 2001, 25-26; cf. Bonnett 2002; see Bonnett, 2021, p.31, addressing accusations of romanticism).  Being inauthentic and alienated from nature (falling prey to our public they-self) is our ordinary state of existence and heightened moments of awareness the rare exception (see Heidegger, 1996, pp.166-167), whether on-line watching slide decks or in-person at actual places. 

Heidegger gives us a quaint picture of the teacher-pupil relationship, modelled upon the craftsperson and apprentice.  Much as the expert woodworker acquires a relatedness to the wood, responding carefully to its kind (walnut or oak) and the ‘shapes slumbering within the wood’, so too the master teacher attends to the needs and interests of individual pupils -- not imposing instruction upon the pupil but rather creating space needed to explore by him/herself.  The teacher is “learning to let them learn” (Heidegger, 1977c, pp.355-356).

Teaching is even more difficult than learning.  …The teacher must be capable of being more teachable than the apprentice.  The teacher is far less sure of his material than those who learn are of theirs.  If the relation between the teacher and the learner is genuine, therefore, there is never a place in it for the authority of the know-it-all or the authoritative sway of the official.  (Heidegger, 1977c, p.357)

One of the dangers in conducting place-based learning (of which I too have been guilty) is that through repeated visits and research over many years the teacher acquires vast knowledge of the place (in all its minutia, the detritus of history that fills plaques and local chronicles). This pertains to both in-person and on-line teaching.  Being the designated tour guide it is easy to play docent, annotating every monument and place-name in an endless stream of words: trivia that risk occluding the place and its vibrant things in a storyscape imposed relentlessly on a captive albeit mobile audience.  But it is also rather idealistic to think that on a walk with thirty participants the teacher will, in the space of one or two hours, uncover and attend to every pupil’s slumbering needs and interests.  They have to be encouraged to make their own inquiries, bring questions back to the classroom to conduct follow-up project-based learning, making their own reports or exhibits (some of which would be digital, such as the illustrated place-blogs and podcasts some of my students created). 

In sharing Bonnett’s work with my graduate students -- teacher candidates drawn from all subjects instead of philosophy specialists -- I find that most cannot understand him as they lack prior education in the philosophies of Martin Heidegger and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, among the other thinkers he draws upon (Franz Brentano, etc.).[16]  It took me a decade to feel I had some understanding of Heidegger, which gives me all the more appreciation of the way in which Bonnett translates Heidegger’s obtuse terminology into everyday speech. The few who have this preparation resonate strongly, and also some with a science background who are intrigued to read further Bonnett’s arguments against reductive scientism (not science per se) and its technological enframement and ‘metaphysics of mastery’ (Heidegger, 1977d).  In our correspondence I share with Michael some of the appreciative journal responses, but relatively few students ‘spark’ the way I do in reading his refined and philosophical articulations.[17] 

Such realizations take us back to the aims of place-based learning, one of which in environmental studies (onto-ethics) is to increase appreciation of the intrinsic value of the more-than-human.  Reflecting on the poem “Binsey Poplars” by Gerald Manley Hopkins, depicting ‘after-comers’ being unable to ‘guess the beauty been’ nor appreciate fully how ‘only ten or twelve / Strokes of havoc unselve / The sweet especial scene’ in chopping down and removing trees from their location, Bonnett (2009, pp.29-30) muses on how we as educators cannot now adequately convey the presence of this tree and its power of place-making:

It upholds this neighbourhood—contributes to the unique and ever-changing qualities of its space—and is upheld by it. In other words it participates in a place-making, and is constituted as the thing that it is through this participation. Thus—to take one example—removed from its neighbours the posture of the tree might make little sense and we would have to ‘read them in’ to understand, say, both the precise shape and distribution of its foliage and the significance of this for the ambience of its neighbourhood.

A favourite place I take my class is to a small urban park two blocks from our building where a concrete ring acts as an amphitheater, surrounding a noble Copper Beech tree older than our city.  In an attempt to simulate gathering around what was now a photo in my slide show instead of the real thing, I went off Share-screen and asked (able) participants to come onto video and enter into a face-to-face conversation in which I and they ask questions, exchanging our thoughts and feelings. Attempting to animate celebrated rituals from my teaching repertoire, on this virtual walk we also pause to draw the tree (or its parts) and talk about the myriad ways in which we can conceivably be regarded as residing inside or outside the tree (see nt.4 above for video link). 

   Copper Beech Tree at lost creek, Taddle Creek Park (Toronto)

Somewhere around seven people appeared and unmuted themselves to speak.  What is different is not so much the number, as few people speak up when there in-person.  It is the increased awareness of the attention (or lack thereof) of the circled audience: the subtleties of glance and expression when having eye-contact within a visible group.  Although we do eco-art in breakout rooms, using a variety of digital tools, it is almost impossible to conceive of my on-line students composing and performing (as in the past) slam poetry under this canopy.  Once a classically trained music student came forth to touch the tree and then burst into song, her aria drawing spectators from around the park. Such rare beauty!  But I also marvel at the drawings and poetry my students create, after giving them paper and pencil in-person or asking them to use their own at home/on-line while I deliver some carefully chosen ‘teachings’ about the wood-wide web running beneath our feet. As in Hopkin’s poem, in the on-line form I feel deeply the absence of this tree, so I took photos of me standing by a cluster of beech trees in the forest near my home, showing its exposed root structure.  In this way I was more fully present in delivering my scripts, and the Chat lit-up with appreciation.

A precondition for doing ‘placed-based learning’ as it is ordinarily understood and practiced is that there is a common place being visited by teacher and students, taking some risk in leaving the familiar abode of the classroom to share in an experience together.  Teachers might assign the task (sojourn/ordeal/trial) that each of their students individually visit a place and make certain inquiries while there, but this would break with the norm, becoming something else: more like doing homework than relocating the class to an outdoor setting.  David Sobel (2005), a renowned author in this field, also talks about place-based learning as an engagement with and service to one’s community.  Among other anticipated conditions for being considered ‘place-based’, the learning occurs on a journey in which the students move through or in-and-about the place: this mobility making it vital that teachers consider equity issues around ableism to walk the route, meet creature comforts like access to water and washrooms, and weigh safety issues pertaining to each environment.  Instead of actual locomotion, in doing place-based learning on-line the participants are being guided risk-free through my slides, if even actually there on the other end of the fibre-optic network, pausing at predetermined landmarks to go off share-screen and try to engage as many students as possible in dialogue with extremely limited face-to-face and verbal interaction. 

Stage-setting a cephalopod-friendly atmosphere for conversation

Conducting on-line variants of place-based learning can still be directed toward the same ends in environmental education, but as we have seen through Bonnett there is good reason to believe this exercise will collapse into something more recognizable as an interactive lecture and discussion, using tools like Share-screen and Chat on Zoom.  Among the aims Bonnet articulates convincingly is moving us off-centre from an anthropocentric and humanist stance into one of belonging in-and-with nature, serving normative ends of moral education by increasing our regard and care for non-human animals (see Bonnett, 2012; 2021, p.92).  In terms of social justice positions, students are exposed to (not indoctrinated into) considerations as to whether non-human animals and even environments have a right to existence and therefore protection from harms caused by our development and despoiling of the earth.  I can lecture with these same aims on-line, but the intellectual appeal or exhortation is not the same as the dynamic experience Bonnett is seeking in modes of emplaced learning.  In the following vignette I try to encapsulate affordances and limitations in such digital place-based learning.

This year’s graduating class in our two-year Master of Teaching program never entered the building of our educational institute (OISE); the campus I now ‘walk’ them across is a digital simulacrum, threading photos of University of Toronto’s grounds into the carefully woven tapestries of a lecture. In being dislodged from our campus we also became chair-stayed in front of our monitors: no longer the evolutionary champions of bipedalism but rather primates turned into rather mushy but clever invertebrates.  Amazingly, we were however connecting across the expanses of space, with many students joining remotely from across the country - some oceans away.  The meaning of ‘teaching’ and ‘learning’ was gradually changing along with very small but significant modifications in our form of life.

Digital connections (even phone calls) can be very meaningful and even ‘touching’, but undeniably they are different from being present, fully there and gathering in-person.  One of the most moving films I saw during the pandemic was “My Octopus Teacher,”[18] about a human and octopus forming mutual bonds in the kelp forest off the coast of South Africa – a remote and exotic seascape made more familiar to me from vitally charged experiences of kayaking off the California coast, bobbing up and down in the kelp tangled swells among the otters.  My past bodily experience of snorkeling and scuba diving also helps me to more deeply appreciate the film, but it nevertheless offers a vista into an underwater world I am seeing in vivid colour on my two-dimensional television screen.  If I had never been underwater, I could not adequately comprehend the octopus and its world.  Recall Hilary Putnam’s (1982) famous thought-experiment: “How do I know I am not a brain-in-a-vat?”, where in answer our direct experience of trees makes us different from limbless aliens from Mars who could not handily grasp such things, and so compared to arboreal creatures like us are practically afloat in a jar.  The pragmatic argument from externalism[19] suggests that we are caught up in a causal nexus with things outside us, like trees, with which we have dwelled intimately from our prehistory (see Stickney, 2020a).[20]

The hermeneutic challenge works the other way too: How can an octopus understand our terrestrial firmament and atmosphere?   We get some sense of this learning experience in the documentary “Octopus: Making Contact” (PBS, NOVA series, 2019) about a family taking an octopus into their living room to not only study it but to become familiar with each other as co-habitants.  The convivial relationship in both films is stunning. Tentacles reaching out to human hands, even when separated by glass, reminded me of the equally moving science fiction film “Arrival” (2016) by French-Canadian director Denis Villeneuve.[21] Max Richter’s music in “Arrival” is spellbinding, creating the mysterious feeling of long- distance space flight.[22]  That is how many of us have felt teaching on-line these past two years: adrift in space, often floating in silent darkness, fearing the ravages of micro-biology (aka “Alien”) while awaiting deliverance from the pandemic.[23] Of course this domestic octopus-in-a-vat knows nothing of the wider neighbourhood or city in which it is being housed.

What this vignette reminds us of is the need in teaching to see and hear our students, using peripheral vision and auditory senses to pick up subtle gestures like nods and sounds that signal agreement, confusion, rejection, etc.[24]  There are thumbs up and applause reactions on the Zoom tool bar, but with most students viewing off-video and muted, the virtual classroom is a dark and rather silent space, less animate or vital than a lecture hall.  The instructor can use a pointer to show something on the screen, like a particular tree or bolder under discussion, but there is less certainty than with in-person teaching that the ‘learning triangle’ between instructor, audience and thing, is being secured at this moment.[25]  We take for granted the human capacity for ostension, of being able to heed the pointing finger to focus our attention on a common object of interest, and its contribution to human evolution in being able to grasp things around us and to discuss them in common. Eye-contact facilitates these arrangements in learning, as do facial expressions more generally. This was the topic of Wittgenstein’s opening remarks in the Philosophical Investigations (1968), preceded by his Blue & Brown Notebooks (1969a, BB) that considered our ability to train our young into this practice of pointing and observing, something cats and chimpanzees lack but at which dogs excel, which gradually develops into second-nature ways of seeing and regarding things in common (PI, pp.198-205). Of equal significance is the hermeneutic triangle that powerfully connects performers (musicians, dancers and teachers alike), improvising not only with their original scripts or scores, but in subtle communication with their audiences (Benson, 2003).  Whether or not we could understand a ‘lion who talks’ (see PI, p.223), we have felt most deeply this loss in our communication with students, despite sharing a common form of life, when we moved place-based learning on-line. Visiting places on Zoom we feel rather like the domestic octopus with its tentacles on the glass, trying to apprehend things seen only on our screens. 

Can our conventional criteria or stipulated requirements for emplacement, sensory contact, risk and journey be achieved in such on-line forms of learning, or does it lack the implicit condition of being embodied in place?  Of course, computer games can be highly exhilarating adventures and augmented or virtual reality simulations can capture the sublime: aspects once restricted to the grandeurs of nature (vast oceans or skies, and majestic mountains).  I can become lost in a painting I just ‘Googled’, feeling something of the intimate connection between painter and landscape (see Merleau-Ponty, 1964); a child can become enraptured within his/her own animations of a doll house – dwelling within a miniaturized world outside quotidian space (Bachelard, 1958).  Marshalling these defences for the positive use of technologies in education[26], I am left feeling that students/participants would be reasonably disappointed if on the day of ‘the trip’ the teacher wheeled into the classroom a cart of laptops or Chromebooks instead of leading the class out the school doors to an awaiting bus, subway, or sidewalk.  

#

References

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Abstract

In this project, I consider the consequences of honesty on our democracy, especially for citizens’ ability to engage in civic inquiry together as they face shared problems. Honesty is a key component of a well-functioning democracy; it develops trust and fosters the sorts of relationships between citizens that enable civic dialogue and reasoning. Post-truth and truth decay pose serious obstacles to good civic reasoning as citizens struggle to draw clear distinctions between fact and opinion, weigh personal beliefs and emotions over facts, and increasingly distrust traditionally respected sources of information. At the same time, deceit and partisan spin are eroding both the institutions of democracy and democracy as a way of life. These problems are exacerbated by confirmation bias, echo chambers, fake news, and motivated reasoning.   As a result, citizens are unable to attain and agree upon reliable information from trustworthy institutional sources or citizen peers, and cannot reach wisely informed collective decisions. Rather than just focusing on these as signs of personal psychological shortfalls or unethical behavior, I use them to explain how the consequences of honesty are significant socially and politically. I will consider how a well-functioning democracy provides the relational conditions that enable and encourage truth-seeking and truth-telling, while keeping my account grounded in the non-ideal conditions of democracy today. I will employ a Deweyan pragmatist account of truth and a distinctly social account of democracy to build a case for foregrounding honesty in the development of citizens. I will describe how schools can employ communities of inquiry to cultivate habits of honesty that better support democracy in light of current impediments and in the long run. I will explain how a better democracy—one grounded in a wider understanding of social life and relationships—might head off the temptation to be dishonest for self-serving reasons, focusing on how dishonesty jeopardizes our relationships to each other as citizens and our ability to engage in civic reasoning together to fulfill shared goals. I will offer an approach to citizenship education that can improve our democracy by developing proclivities toward and practices of honesty.

Introduction

Whenever we face a problem, must reach a decision, or must figure out how to live together, citizens ask the key civic question: “What should we do?”[1] We try to answer this question by engaging in civic reasoning, which can include gathering related information, putting forward solutions, and deliberating amongst options. Recently, I wrote commissioned reports for The American Academy of Education and UNESCO that described how to teach the knowledge, skills, and virtues needed to do civic reasoning well.[2] Notably, these reports fail to take up matters of honesty. Following established trends, the reports presume truthful and trustworthy behavior, echoing an idealism of deliberative democracy where citizens work together smoothly.

Yet, many democracies, including that of the United States which I focus most on in this paper, currently fall considerably short of those ideals. Worrisome recent events, such as the mass refusal of COVID-19 vaccination resulting from conspiracy theories, demonstrate how obstacles to good civic reasoning are posed in a post-truth setting, where “objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.”[3] Without linking honesty to truth or foregrounding the role of honesty in a vibrant democracy, recommendations for improved citizenship education—one that can prepare citizens to attend to these phenomena—are limited at best and may perpetuate current problems at worst.[4]

In this paper, I argue that honesty is a key component of a well-functioning democracy. It fosters the sorts of behaviors and relationships between citizens that enable civic reasoning as we solve shared problems and figure out how to live together. I seek to clarify the relationship between honesty, truth, trust, and healthy democratic living from a pragmatist perspective, in part by responding to recent struggles. Then, situating citizenship education within that pragmatist framework, I will describe how we might cultivate honesty, thereby reviving democratic life, especially our ability to engage in civic reasoning well.

Connecting Honesty, Truth, and Democracy

In this section, I will define honesty, describe its relationship to truth and trust, and discuss its connection to democracy. I will introduce a pragmatist account, explaining how it offers a unique lens for responding to recent struggles, especially in American democracy, and envisioning improved alternatives.

An Initial Sketch of Honesty

                     Here I offer a brief overview of honesty, which I will further develop by locating it within pragmatism in the sections to come. While few contemporary philosophers have focused on honesty, I base this initial depiction on key aspects of their work. Honesty is typically understood as a way in which we conduct our thinking that is carried out in action and is relatively stable across time. Honesty is a personal responsibility that drives thinking and actions when proper conditions or stimuli are present. I employ two of the categorizations of honesty offered by Christian Miller, the key scholar writing on honesty today. I focus on honesty as truthfulness (caring about the truth and being disposed to reliability express it) and forthrightness (being particularly open and complete when pursuing and sharing truth).[5] Honesty has related components of sincerity and accuracy mostly notably laid out in the earlier work of esteemed ethicist, Bernard Williams.[6] Honesty means taking truth seriously, which encourages truth-seeking and truth-telling. Accuracy is the role of earnestly seeking valid truth claims to the best of one’s ability. Sincerity means being open and straightforward in telling what one believes to be the truth, without deceiving oneself or others.

Ethicist Etienne Brown rightly describes open-mindedness, intellectual caution, intellectual courage, and intellectual humility as virtues key to a functioning democracy, largely because they help us epistemically when solving problems. Honesty is related to and supplements his list of virtues in significant ways. Notably, honesty is an other-regarding virtue; it pushes us to consider relationships, trustworthiness, and the impact of the beliefs we assert on those around us. As an other-regarding virtue that supports both epistemic and civic endeavors, honesty offers benefits to democratic communities.[7]

Honesty takes on greater significance when located within an understanding of democracy as a social way of life aimed at solving shared problems, where individuals are interdependent and where they are mutually shaped by their transactions. When understood as functioning that way in democracy today, we come to see why urging one to do “what’s right,” or even castigating liars, is insufficient for producing sustainable honest behavior and the trusting relationships it bolsters. As I will explain in the following sections, it is my pragmatist perspective, which emphasizes human relationships, social intelligence, and motivations for honesty based in truth and civic inquiry that brings a unique and educational perspective to discussions of honesty.

Honesty Based on Pragmatist Truth and Inquiry

Classical pragmatists like John Dewey and Charles Peirce argue that, when we are engaged in inquiry, we are aiming at truth—which may be partial or temporary—because it helps us to better understand our world and act in it in ways that secure our well-being. Pragmatists are concerned with the concrete differences in our lived experiences that an idea being true will make. Pragmatists focus on the consequences of our beliefs to determine whether or not they are true. Ideas become true insofar as they “work” for us, fruitfully combine our experiences, and lead us to further experiences that satisfy our needs. This is the pragmatist version of growth, where truth enables individuals to navigate smoothly from one situation to the next. Truth as ‘what works’ is that which helps us navigate the world, avoid difficulties, and get out of problematic situations.[8] Moreover, these benefits are not just for individuals; instead, a criterion for determining truth is demonstrating that it enables the flourishing of a community.

In William James’s words, “Truth happens to an idea” as we trace and determine its practical consequences. [9] Pragmatist truth is not disconnected from reality, for it is through inquiry and empirical experimentation that we validate our hypotheses and verify their consequences. An idea is no longer true when it no longer works for us—when it doesn’t help us to make sense of or thrive in the world. As a result, pragmatists value fallibilism, asserting that, in almost all cases, nothing is true for certain or always. Rather, truth depends on us. We must identify and be ready to let go of truths that no longer hold and be ready to acknowledge when we are mistaken.

Describing truth in this way may make truth appear to too easily slide into the realm of mere opinion, as if we could proclaim, for example, that “masks are ineffective” simply because it doesn’t “work” for us to wear them because they are uncomfortable or inconvenient for us personally. But that sets the bar for establishing truth too low as we ask “What should we do about COVID-19?” Pragmatism holds that such a declaration would have to be tested empirically, both in the realm of formal science, but also more casually in our day-to-day interactions with our neighbors, looking to see how their well-being is impacted by others wearing masks. Pragmatists do not stop just at our personal desires in the moment. They look at the impact on others and in the long run as they establish truth.     

Recognizing the interconnectivity and interdependencies of living within a modern democracy, we have to take into account how to thrive alongside others as we determine what is true. In other words, even if a belief may seem to “work” for us individually, given our interconnectedness, the belief must also “work” for others in order to be true. Additionally, the differences an idea will make are quite limited if relevant only to one person. Because of this, we must seek out the perspectives of and impact upon others in order to verify truth. Moreover, we must consider the well-being of others, for successful leading through experiences almost always requires working and communicating together, so we must secure the welfare of others alongside our own.

When pragmatist truth is defined as “what works” to enable growth and flourishing,[10] truth becomes more aligned with people and civic relations between them than with objective mirroring of reality. This means that honesty, as sincere, accurate, and forthright seeking and telling of truth, becomes more contingent upon the context and needs of people as they determine what “works” for them. So, rather than getting bogged down in debates today about the “truthiness”[11] of propositions, pragmatists urge us to look at how truth works in practice, seeking to determine whether what we call true stands up to evidence, is affirmed through ongoing inquiry, and serves our needs.

Inquiry is at the heart of pragmatist democracy because inquiry is the process through which we can sort out our beliefs, determine truth, and guide our actions, especially our collective actions aimed at solving shared problems. Inquiry is the way that we not only arrive at answers to “what should we do?”, but how we establish evidence that leads us to those answers. Inquiry proceeds by identifying problems, forming publics to address them, crafting solutions, testing those solutions, and evaluating them. The inquiry process translates into the method of democracy like this:

1. Identification of the problem (agenda setting): to this phase belong formal practices such as electoral consultations, informal practices such as opinion polling, meeting with citizens, public hearings, social surveys, forms of social protest, NGOs campaigns but also practices of whistleblowing that aim at raising awareness about critical aspects so far underestimated; 2. Formation of the public: to this dimension belong the activities of political parties and social movements, but also of all forms of civic non-political association (churches, recreational associations, solidarity movements, etc.) which aim more concretely at producing organized forms of response to collectively perceived problems; 3. Determination of solutions: to this dimension belong formal and informal political practices of political decision-making, including parliamentary debate, expert committees, practices of public deliberation, participatory practices, public hearings etc.; 4. Implementation of solutions: the realm of public policies, but also of actions carried out by administrations, public and private agencies; 5. Evaluation and feedback: to this dimension belong the formal political work of oppositions, voting, the work of journals and media, of NGOs and other formal and informal ‘watchdogs’ and more generally the activities by which individuals manifest their agreement or disagreement with the results of a political action.[12]

Democracy helps us to coordinate our efforts with fellow citizens so that we can better realize an array of shared goods and flourishing.

In sum, expanding the sketch of honesty I offered above by situating it within a pragmatist account of truth and democracy, honesty entails a commitment to ongoing, evidence-supported, civic reasoning and inquiry that one carries out through one’s behaviors. To be honest is to sincerely pursue and share the truth as what verifiably works to ensure personal and community well-being and to hold that truth open to being falsified or revised.

Using Pragmatism to Address Struggles in Democracy Today

Some may find it surprising for a pragmatist like myself to foreground truth, when so many pragmatists in the past have urged others to give up the “quest for certainty.” Critics, such as Daniel Dennett have claimed that too many pragmatists undervalue truth, and others, including Bernard Williams, have argued that pragmatists

encourage us to get beyond fussing about something called ‘the truth,’ and address ourselves just to technical and social benefits, solidarity, democracy, the discouragement of cruelty, and other laudable ends. It seems not to occur to them that even if the ideals of discovering and telling the truth were in themselves illusions, if the ideas of ‘the truth’ were itself empty, those illusions might well play a vital part in our identifying and pursuing those objectives.[13]

The January 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol exposes just how much truth matters; democracy and lives are on the line when citizens struggle to discern truth or adhere to misinformation spread by their leaders and each other. And truth plays a significant role in achieving the aims pragmatists have long sought, even as we have distanced ourselves from it.

To begin to make sense of recent situations in the United States, we must start with the “sobering evidence that our allegiance to truth tends to end where our self-interest begins.”[14] The post-truth era is marked by the tendency to put our own opinions above facts. Often, we are driven to do so because facts and experts don’t align with our interests or don’t help us get what we want personally. “Truth decay” describes the social phenomenon whereby members of a society increasingly struggle to draw clear and sharp distinctions between fact and opinion, where personal experience takes on amplified importance, and where traditionally respected institutions and sources of facts, such as newsrooms and scientific reports, are increasingly distrusted.[15]

Hyper-partisanship is shaping both the makeup of citizen groups and the inquiry that occurs in them. In self-serving ways, citizens increasingly seek likeminded peers whose views, shared through echo chambers on social media and in friendship networks, affirm their own. Sometimes citizens may be prone to motivated reasoning, where they prioritize the stance of their social or political group over new or counter information. And, confirmation bias may lead citizens to only seek evidence that already aligns with their views. Echo chambers, motivated reasoning, and confirmation bias are epistemic threats; they put our ability to make wise and informed decisions at risk. They sometimes lead groups to engage in groupthink, which blocks out alternative perspectives and information, thereby jeopardizing our ability to determine truth and achieve quality civic reasoning.

I want to suggest that a better way of understanding and doing democracy—one grounded in a wider understanding of social life and relationships—might head off the temptation to be dishonest for self-serving reasons. While there is considerable writing recently about the impact of lying amongst political leaders and distrust in institutional democracy,[16] I am focusing instead on how failing to be honest jeopardizes our relationships to each other as citizens and our ability to engage in civic reasoning together to fulfill shared goals.[17] My pragmatist emphasis is on the social nature of democracy. As a result, we must look at how honesty impacts relationships between citizens (especially across different social and hyper-partisan political groups where fear and anger are already high) and the problem-solving inquiry they undertake together as they ask, “What should we do?”[18]

From a Deweyan pragmatist perspective, democracy is the social arrangement where we work together to solve our own problems in ways that are inclusive and cooperative. Our inquiries are improved when we draw upon a wide array of evidence, incorporating multiple constituencies into our investigations. Democracy celebrates these wide and diverse resources for epistemic decision-making, positively exploiting conflicting views and dissenting perspectives to challenge the status quo and consider different alternatives. Even when deep in disagreement, democracy is, in Dewey’s words, a “conjoint” and “cooperative” undertaking.[19]

Situating truth primarily within a social view of democracy, rather than merely a procedural or even a moral one, offers important insight. Whereas a moral conception of democracy explains the meaning of democracy with reference to values (equality, freedom) considered as ultimate ends,

a social approach to democracy is based upon a sociological understanding of human interactions and of how social life should be organized in order to reconcile individual striving toward self-expression and societal constraints relating to social stability. The differences are to this extent major. While moral conceptions are usually introduced with the aim of subordinating politics to a normative ideal, such as that of respect (liberalism) or self-government (republicanism), a social conception integrates moral considerations into a broader picture which also takes conditions of social functioning into account.[20]

This social view enables us to better attend to changes in how people relate to each other (polarization, tribal epistemology, bubble effects).[21] For example, this perspective offers insight into how post-truth claims work to signal likeminded audiences and doesn’t merely manipulate those audiences, but relies upon their collusion in order to flex power.[22]

More significantly, this social understanding of democracy and inquiry provides ways to respond to those obstacles, while still celebrating disagreement as an epistemic resource for making better decisions through inquiry. Rather than common tendencies to assert, or gullibly follow, falsities in the post-truth era, pragmatism offers us a call not to assertion, but to deliberation in an epistemic democracy where we engage in inquiry to arrive at justified conclusions, even if only briefly held.

Cultivating Honesty

So far, I have described some contemporary struggles in democracy related to truth, honesty, and trust. I have put forward a pragmatist account of truth, inquiry, and democracy to suggest a better way that we might understand and enact honesty within democracy. I now turn to how we might teach honesty and improve democracy.

Philosophers tend to describe the promotion of honest behavior in terms of being virtuous, where our character has been shaped to act honestly in accordance with the good, rather than merely being consciously held to rules about good living.[23] Similarly, many commentators on the struggles of post-truth, fake news, and other problems in our democracy today chalk those problems up to the shortcomings and vices of individuals, often pointing fingers at key figures like President Trump. Instead, I take a different approach, one that moves beyond moral motivations to be a good person. I put forward a pragmatist account of habit formation to offer an alternative way to develop and encourage honesty. I then place citizenship education within the pragmatist democratic context in the final section of the paper to offer a way to promote honesty that moves us past simple individual character education or moral blame and into more sustainable dispositions aligned with democratic, social living.

Virtue

Unlike some virtue epistemologists or modern-day civic humanists, I do not believe that we must emphasize honesty as an epistemic good that one should be motivated to pursue intrinsically, simply because it is good.[24] Indeed, I find that such a motivation to be a good or decent citizen sets expectations too high for formal political participation and perfection, and yet also does not go far enough in overcoming some of the problematic trends we are seeing in democracy today, including self-interestedness.[25] Instead, foregrounding a pragmatist account of truth and a social view of democracy, I turn to intellectual and, ultimately, civic reasons for being honest.

While it is good to be honest, my account of civic reasoning and inquiry showcase why it’s good to seek and tell the truth: because it helps us arrive at satisfactory solutions to our inquiries. Shedding light on our current struggles to protect our population in response to COVID-19 or even police brutality, for example, reveals pressing needs to engage in civic inquiry well so that conditions can be understood, solutions can be developed, and lives can be saved. These needs are likely more persuasive, especially when directly tied to the personal experiences of citizens, than just the drive to be a decent human being.

As a result, honesty should be understood more as a civic or intellectual virtue than a moral one.[26] It is concerned with finding and evaluating evidence as citizens engage in civic reasoning. Moreover, given that such reasoning enables civic means and ends, including coordinated communication and living, it is valuable.[27] The bar I set for the motivation to be honest, then, is a more functional one, focused on what is needed for individuals and society to thrive, especially when engaging in civic inquiry. In other words, we should be motivated to be honest for intellectual and civic reasons, because it helps us successfully answer “What should we do?” as we navigate the world together.

Intellectual humility is another intellectual virtue that relates to matters of honesty and truth. Citizens increasingly practice the opposite, intellectual arrogance, today, asserting the superiority of their opinions and seeking confirmation of them in echo chambers and through confirmation bias. Following philosopher Michael Lynch, I recognize the pitfalls of intellectual arrogance. Epistemically, intellectual arrogance inhibits fallibilism. It makes us overly confident about the reliability of our beliefs and unwilling to revise our beliefs in light of evidence, especially if such evidence is presented by groups, leaders, or institutions that we distrust. Intellectual arrogance is often accompanied by a desire for power or to assert one’s affiliation with particular likeminded groups by upholding certain beliefs as true.[28]

Intellectual humility, alongside commitments to truth and honesty, has intellectual and civic justifications. To work against intellectual arrogance, individuals must shift their attitude toward truth and the reliability of their beliefs by changing what they value. As with honesty, I base that value of truth in civic life.[29] When situated within a focus on inquiry and in a deeply social account of democracy, one that affirms the need to work across political groups and care about other citizens, the value of acknowledging one’s own cognitive limitations (prejudices, assumptions), holding one’s views tentatively, and being open to learning from others becomes clearer. “To be intellectually humble is to see your worldview as open to improvement from new evidence and the experience of others.”[30] Dewey might have called this “open-mindedness,” a proclivity to engage in inquiry, public reason giving, and reflection on how we come to believe something is true. Or, in Dewey’s words, to uphold intellectual humility is to assert that “there is no belief so settled as not to be exposed to further inquiry.”[31]

With this pragmatist framework, the effects of honesty on democracy become clearer. Honesty has both content and relationship dimensions.[32] When grounded in civic reasoning, both are important. Our motivation to be honest in content (factual accounting as we seek and tell the truth) is tied to our motivation to flourish together (a relational dimension of interdependency). Finally, honesty enables the justified trust—of institutions, of experts, of each other—needed for democracy to thrive.[33]

Habits

This brings me to the uniquely pragmatist notion of habit as distinct from virtue. I follow contemporary pragmatist, Roberto Frega, in claiming “that habits have a marked superiority over virtues when it comes to conceptualizing their specific contribution to politics.”[34] This is, in part, because civic virtues have a narrower scope of individuals in service of the common good and engaged in specialized political practice, whereas pragmatist habits are demonstrated in much wider social interactions and everyday ways of life in a democracy. This suggests that they should not be whittled down to just those that are tied to the political domain, but rather should be seen in terms of broader social interactions.

As a result, pragmatists are concerned with a wider array of habits that contribute to democratic living, including those that shape epistemic and social endeavors, disposing citizens to be cooperative, inclusive, tolerant, adaptive, and reflective. Moreover, pragmatists understand that what we see in democratic life is a reflection of widespread lived habits, rather than idealized civic virtues. Relatedly, civic republicans and civic humanists, constricted to virtues invoked narrowly in the political domain, are left struggling to attend to recent social and psychological struggles impacting democratic life.[35] Pragmatist habits give us a way to make sense of how those struggles have developed as the result of bad habits and provides ways to ameliorate those struggles through the reworking of bad habits or cultivation of new ones.

Habits are formed through our exchanges with others and are stabilized by social institutions, yet they remain capable of being changed. And, because of the way that they transact with the surrounding world, habits can also change other people and society. As a result, pragmatist habits offer epistemic benefits that grow out of their rich social contexts and can be harnessed to change those environments when they present the very sort of problems mentioned earlier, such as confirmation bias. Habits that become stagnant and harmful can more easily be prompted to change through processes of education and/or for intellectual and civic reasons, providing greater leverage that the moral motivation needed to propel one to demonstrate virtue.

Habits begin with natural urges, often in response to our environment.[36] As we grow and interact with the world around us, our impulses are crafted into habits. People that have similar interactions with their environments tend to reinforce certain patterns of behavior and thereby develop similar habits. When those behaviors serve us well by meeting our needs, we tend to repeat them. We then largely perform these acts without conscious attention. Most people think of habits as dull routines that we repeat exactly, but Dewey views habits differently. He sees them as dispositions, inclinations to act in certain ways.

We reflect on our experiences and our inquiries to determine which habits bring about our growth by promoting smooth and just transactions with the world and with other people. It is the intellectual aspect of habits that gives them meaning and keeps people elastic and growing. Good habits are flexible, enabling us to respond to our changing world and carrying us over from one experience to the next, thereby bringing about growth. Bad habits, however, are those that become fixed and disconnected from intelligence.[37] We cannot easily drop bad habits, but we can work through a process of changing and replacing them with better habits that are more just. Notably, habits can be cultivated and nurtured; they can be revised and improved through education. Ideally, because habits are “adjustments of the environment, not merely to it,” adopting new habits (through a careful process of intellectual reflection) can change the environmental phenomena that produced the problematic old habit, in this case possibly making democracy better.[38]

A pragmatist habit of honesty, then, is a proclivity to engage in thinking and behavior marked by forthrightness, sincerity, and accuracy regarding truth. It is an urge to act in good faith to determine truth as “what works” to secure our flourishing in the world. It is a disposition to consider our relationships with fellow citizens and how the beliefs we assert may impact those around us as we navigate shared problems and seek mutual well-being.

Teaching Honesty

Currently, honesty receives little attention in citizenship education, which is often more concerned with civic content (history, law). And even within democratic political theory, civic humanists, civic republicans, and republican liberals tend to emphasize other civic virtues, like courage and tolerance, over honesty. When it does appear in classrooms, if at all, honesty is typically described in brief elementary lessons about good character—often as a “trait of the week”—not appearing again until high school or college, where students are sometimes required to pledge academic honesty with little discussion of what the commitment means. Largely missing from the formal school curriculum, teaching honesty is left up to parents or religious leaders. Often in those settings, honest behavior is what is said to make you a good person individually, with little discussion of the role of intellectual honesty in the problem-solving of the society.

This proposal grounds citizenship education within the understanding of pragmatism articulated above, where schools would strive to cultivate the pragmatist definition of truth, emphasis on inquiry, and social understanding of democracy. I describe ways that we might better develop proclivities toward and practices of honesty. In particular, I will describe how to cultivate honesty as a habit, understood in the uniquely pragmatist sense.

Before I begin laying out how to teach honesty from a pragmatist perspective, I must acknowledge some limitations. I recognize that the pragmatist vision I hold is quite different from what is typically held in society or reflected in school practices. I’m offering this framework as a way to imagine what it might look like to reorient our classrooms around that vision. If nothing else, it can serve as a foil to help us identify shortcomings in our current citizenship education. Writing for a philosophy of education audience, I am offering a theoretical account of how a pragmatist vision might play out and how it might attend to problems in democracy and better prepare students for facing them. I will save the curricular and pedagogical details tied to real school contexts for a different venue, as my focus here is on sketching an initial framework.

To begin, the means and ends of cultivating honesty should be deeply social. Such learning should be located within classroom communities of inquiry, where students, much like citizens in a democracy, work together to answer “What should we do?” as they develop understanding of the world and their agency in it. Inroads have already been made for such an approach within citizenship education, where inquiry-based and project-based learning, as well as action civics, are highlighted in major national initiatives and are on the rise in classrooms.[39]

Topics of inquiry should be real and meaningful for students and their surrounding neighborhood in order for students to have a genuine interest in the inquiry and to recognize the stakes of their participation in it. Students should seek answers to local problems and work to validate truth through the scientific method, weigh evidence, and assess the impact of beliefs on themselves and others to determine whether or not they “work.” Simply giving students more information or loading them up with facts is not enough to fight post-truth. Students must be engaged in practices of truth determination in order to develop a lasting inclination to act honestly. While direct instruction and using content (stories, examples) that display honesty and truth at work are helpful classroom techniques for showcasing their value, emphasis should be on creating realistic problem-solving situations that provoke and develop habits so that they come more naturally when similar situations unfold in the future and a teacher is not present to give explicit guidance.

Foregrounding communal learning settings in schools can help reveal the epistemic and civic reasons for being honest as well as the positive consequences of honesty, for the knowledge and well-being of that group of students may improve as a result of inquiry guided by sincerity and fallibilism. Moreover, communities of inquiry become places to practice honesty, nurturing dispositions and proclivities toward truth-seeking and -telling. Within these, students can be encouraged to be forthright, sincere, and accurate when dealing with facts and beliefs. Teachers can call out instances of each to draw attention to their use and consequences. Engaging in real-life inquiry together enables students to see positive implications of honesty affirmed, and allows them to build trust between parties as a result.[40] These communities can strengthen relationships between students, enabling students to see not only how their actions impact each other, but also encouraging them to attend to their mutual flourishing. These settings then provide the sense of relational safety and mutual care that can overcome, or at least work against, self-serving motivations to lie.[41]

In these communities of inquiry, students should engage in guided truth-seeking and -speaking, where the teacher both models and facilitates evidence-gathering and deliberation as the group works toward greater understanding of some phenomenon or situation. Such communities of inquiry should simultaneously work to cultivate complimentary intellectual and civic virtues, including imagination, criticality, curiosity, and intellectual humility.[42] In classroom settings, modeling by the teacher, identifying veracity/mendacity, and practicing real-life applications of honesty is essential.[43]

Teachers should also carefully facilitate discussions of current events and controversial issues, guiding students through lessons in distinguishing fact from opinion needed to combat truth decay and offer an informed response.[44] Controversial issues offer opportunities to guide students through confronting ambiguity in factual content and negotiating new meaning together. Classroom communities of inquiry can push back against the sort of intellectual arrogance that leads citizens to put their own opinions above those of experts, science, and other traditionally trusted roles in democracy by demonstrating the deep interconnections between classmates and fostering a sense of how their shared fate relies on making wisely informed decisions together and using the resources of democratic institutions.[45] At the same time, these inclusive and trust-building communities provide a safer environment for sharing and affirming the opinions and experiences of class members as another potential source for evidence and solutions when engaging in inquiry together. This process of developing social intelligence honestly affirms recent trends of valuing personal experience and pushing back against some forms of elitism (but not expertise) that dominate political decision-making without sufficiently attending to the experiences of the poor (including by heavy-handed philanthropists and wealthy corporate leaders), while carefully preventing each individual’s view from standing on its own.

Through dialogue and inquiry, students can come to see both their own cognitive limitations at work and how their own beliefs can be improved through the experience and evidence offered by others.[46] Teachers can encourage what Dewey called, “the habit of amicable cooperation,” where students learn “to treat those who disagree…with us as those from whom we may learn.”[47] While there are limits on what students should be expected to tolerate or engage in educational settings, learning how to listen to and then critique alternative views pulls those views into consideration as potential epistemic sources, rather than excluding them or shutting down further discussion, which we witness in the worst forms of cancel culture today. Students can experience how epistemic habits, such as listening to others generously, testing beliefs through the empirical method, and intellectual humility, enhance democracy. Those experiences can affirm for students that truth and honesty serve their communities well, an experience that can be further highlighted with praise from teachers and through student reflections.[48] Moreover, within those dialogues, students come to better understand their beliefs, and, importantly from a Deweyan perspective, how they think and believe. This metacognitive aspect of reflecting on honesty can further support its development and establishment as a lasting proclivity.

Teachers should then build out from their classroom settings to nurture the disposition to be honest in national and global settings.[49] Transitioning between local and larger arenas, critical media skills become especially important in online spaces where civic reasoning increasingly occurs. Given that online sources are often used to find facts, students need to learn how to scrutinize and verify them. Students should develop strategies to ask useful questions, investigate sources, and verify claims.[50] As they do, teachers should help students see the influence of power, emotions, intellectual arrogance, and more not just on facts, but also on how students perceive and respond to them, including manipulations of their feelings and cognitive biases.[51] Whereas websites and social media sometimes spread false narratives, critical media literacy can help students detect lies, confronting them before they fester and grow, and asserting the value of truth and honesty.[52] Importantly, though, online spaces also offer opportunities for students to construct new media, where they put forward better-informed narratives. Students must learn that the internet doesn’t just reflect reality, but also creates it, thereby heightening the need for skepticism toward it, but also appreciation for its significance as a democratic medium.

In sum, this reflective, active, and community-based citizenship education works to affirm the inclination to be honest. Through repeated exercise, students experience the impacts of honesty, developing a habitual bent toward such action when similar situations arise in the future. This form of citizenship education is more likely to have a lasting impact on shaping the practices and proclivities of budding citizens than memorization of civic content, learning about character traits, or simply being morally goaded to do what’s right.

Conclusion

In this paper, I have described some current problems related to honesty and trust in democracy in the United States and elsewhere. I have clarified how honesty relates to truth and contributes to a vibrant democracy. I have recommended inquiry-based approaches to cultivate habits of honesty. I have couched these recommendations for improved citizenship education within a pragmatist account of truth and social democracy. I offer this new pragmatist framework in order to suggest potential pathways for improved citizenship education that go beyond the content focus of traditional civics and fill gaps in more recent national and international proposals that presume honest and trustworthy behavior.

Abstract: This paper is discussing public education as an extension of a sophistical practice, based on a close reading of Cassin (2014, 2016, 2020), Rorty (1980, 1982, 1990), Rancière (1991, 1999), and Jaeger (1939, 1943) among others. In order to do so it develops critique of a Platonian/Aristotelian line of thought in education and identify an alternative line of though for education, and what is explored as a certain politics of the presence. The paper intends to shift the discourse from science as first philosophy for education, to logos and pedagogy (performativity) as democratic forms of equality, and as such into a language of public education.

The expectations put on public education in Europe as well as the US, at least since World War II, has been to foster the democratic personality rather than the fascist personality, which the war had exposed as a characteristic common in US as well as in European nations, if not spread throughout the world (Herman 1995, Arnstad 2016). After World War II, public education arose as a project of democratization. Public education, publicly funded, democratically controlled and for everyone (Higgins & Abowitz 2011), as such was founded on the need to educate a democratic public as part of the reconstitution of a Europe without war and national violence as driving forces. Today there is plenty of signs that such foundational aim for public education are in decline for other priorities: Such as to be schooling a flexible workforce stuck in a mode of constant learning (Skolverket 2000, Säfström 2004), to be able to adjust to the rapidly shifting demands of late capitalism (Bauman 2000), and to adopt to a language of self-interest, individualisation, competition, effectiveness, and competence (Säfström 2004; Biesta 2006), rather than foster democratic forms of “associated living” through schooling (Dewey 1916, p. 93; Säfström and Månsson 2021). The return of far-right and its aggressive politics of racism, anti-feminism and homophobia, and lately war in Ukraine, the subsequent increase of violence on the streets of Europe (Berardi 2017, Zizek 2008), as well as a sharp rise in inequality producing an ever increasing precariousness of populations (Butler 2004), are also signs of the need to ask some serious questions to the viability of the project of public education as we have understood it up to this point.

The idea of public education as a project of democratization is today clearly in trouble if such expectations on education is only relying on the good will of politics and a certain policy when this policy shifts. When  the politicians have other priorities than the common good of a truly democratic society, the very content of public education change as well. The neo-liberal wave which have washed over the totality of social, political, psychological and economical life (Berardi 2017), with its choice rhetoric, hyper-individualism and aversion against the strong society and the common good, have had deep effects on the very actualisations of the project of democratization through education, particularly breaking down what can be called the publicness of education. According to Berardi (2017) the neoliberal wave have caused a situation in which we no longer can understand our own sensibilities as extensions of others sensibilities, that the vey social fabric of democratic societies are broken down.

In socio-political terms, a reified education gives rise to a particular kind of relativism, in which the theories of educational research themselves becomes or are understood as relative.  While the political aspirations put on education are understood as beyond the relative, to stand fast, and instead are seen as representative of how reality would describe itself, if it could speak, to paraphrase Rorty (1980, 1982)[1]. Political ideologies claim absolute Truth, rather than being an expression of a particular will, the latter which otherwise define and distinguish politics from other aspects of public life (Rancière 1999). This situation also implies that the post-truth of the populist right is not so much post at all, but rather must be understood as something of a superimposed extra-terrestrial Truth. It is a sign, not so much of post-truth but of the post-political per preference, as Mouffe (2005) has described our times. In an post-political neo-liberal hegemony, there is an ever-expanding wish list for what education is to be achieving, and which therefore also can be blamed if it doesn’t succeed in solving those problems. It puts education in a position of constant failure, and a useful tool for politicians for whatever desires they may have.[2]

Therefore, this paper suggests it is necessary to reconnect educational thought to its roots in being the very praxis of democracy. The tension in the above, in which education either belongs to humanity as such or the political desires of the state to steer people in a particular direction, is not new but is instead something of an anomaly within educational thought. It is an anomaly since it cannot be rationally solved. One must choose from where to start, but rather than grounding theory on such a choice, educational theory and practice often seems to have been incorporating the anomaly as tension within its self-understanding. In technical terms, this tension can be understood as the tension between reproduction and change.

If reproduction in education is emphasised, it tends to negate the possibility of change since reproduction focuses on what repeat itself over time, the same over time. As such, educational theories of reproduction, both progressive and conservative tends to cement the idea of an original social order to be reproduced, which they either are critical to (progressives), and tries to overturn for an alternative social order to come but in so doing rather cementing both (see Rancière 1991). Or reproduction is celebrated (conservatives) as the repetition of the same social order, guaranteeing social stability over time. The neoconservatives and the far right are typically holding the latter position in which any disturbance or challenge to the often nostalgically imagined mythological social order are violently repressed since any type of change of that order is believed to be threatening the very existence of the nation as well as the national subjects as such. The myth is what defines the real soul and body of the nation and its true inhabitants. Change is perceived as a fundamental existential threat to that very myth and therefore has to, with all powers be repressed (Orellana and Michelsen 2019).

Therefore, the socio-political expectations and desires put on public education in these two scenarios are quite different and give rise to entirely different and competing understandings of what public education is to achieve, and why. What they both rely on though, is a distinct type of foundationalism which produce the problem in the first place, both progressives and conservatives tends to be fixating the idea of an original social structure, which is an idea as we shall see, emerging at a certain point in history and which put education in a certain relation to the state and the individual.

If not reproduction but the change is emphasised, nothing seems to be standing fast, producing anxieties and irrationality, what Bernstein (1983, p. 18) referred to as “the Cartesian angst”: Either there is something foundational and fixed to ground the totality of life on, social as well as intellectual and psychological, or there is only chaos and despair.

In a discussion on foundationalism in science, Rorty’s (1982, 1990) solution was to suggest therapy for the scientists (or foundationalists) who cannot stand to live with the necessary ambiguity of life itself and to give up their quest for absolute certainty, which seems to have produced more problems throughout history than what it has been able to solve. We are, after all, living in the times of the Anthropocene (Petersen et al. 2021). Moreover, rather than to start from therapy, or maybe as a complement to therapy, Rorty (1980) suggests that we start our theoretical journey before the split between (rational) ideas about and distanced from the world and the direct lived experience of living a life with others in a fallible world. That we start beyond all versions of foundationalism, progressive as well as conservative. Rorty, therefore, goes along the lines established by the Sophists, since they are teachers and educationalists whose main concern was how to live with others in the present city-state and how to navigate to be embodying the ethical and political virtues of their times (See Jaeger 1939, 1943) and not to fixate an absolute frame derived from an idea outside of the everydayness of life itself. That also means that hope for the sophists was, rather than based on ethics, as is the most common today, formed through the Christian tradition of hope as a hope for future possession of that which one hope for[3], the sophists understood hope as an opening of the present and its self-explanatory reality for ambiguity and otherness to enter. That hope or elpis signify ambiguity and the possibility of difference in the present (Cassin, 2016), and not a possession to come and are therefore essentially an open politics of the present: Hope open for different possibilities to move and connections to be made with others within the present state of affairs. There is in that sense no future in the understanding of hope for a morally or otherwise perfect future in Sophists thought (there is either, of course, yet no modern ideas of progress). However, at least in Dewey's (1966) reading of the sophists, there may be a present in which the future is already implied as a possibility of that present but then formed with the desires of growth in modernity.[4]

The concept of hope in Platonian/Aristotelian education

Hope as beyond the Christian tradition, but certainly playing a part in it, is given a particular context and location through Plato’s Republic (Bloom 1991). Hope here can be understood as related to hope for the perfection of oneself, thereby the perfection of society as a whole. The Republic is forming an authentic self in the image of a perfect state or nation:

The perfect man can be shaped only within the perfect state and vice versa. To construct such a state, we must discover how to make such men. That is the ground for the universal correspondence between man and state's inner structure, for the resemblance between both patterns. (Jaeger 1943, p. 259).

What Plato does, according to Jaeger, is to connect the aspirations of the individual to the political aspirations of the state, to establish the authentic citizen as an embodiment of the idea of a perfect state itself. Such idea as the perfect state, in which the individual are already internally linked, functions within the Platonian universe as a representation of the original social order itself, an order which in diverse political theories can either be derived from the past or are imagined as a future constellation fixating the perfection of man and state.

Education in the Platonian universe is therefore necessarily linked with the possibility of perfection of state and nation as such. So hope in this line of thought is necessarily entangled with the hope of perfecting oneself as perfecting the society in which one lives.[5] However, in that perfecting of oneself, one fulfils the state's desires.[6] In the Christian tradition, to possess that which one hopes for is at the same time in the Platonian line of thought to possess that which the state desires in order to be a state of a particular type[7]. Through Aristotle and Plato’s universe, ethical ambitions are made political and rational by making educational thought scientific, conceptualising a particular worldview as foundational for the very possibility of civilisation and education proper, for ethics and politics. Their program was centred on the desire to “dominate education” (Jaeger 1943, p. 318) since education hereafter is the main force to link man to the state and distinguish man from nature.

In order to establish the civilised man, nature also needed to be dominated through science and education. So, what nature had planted in man education needed to be perfecting, but according to a hierarchy and inequality already established, as expressed in the Republic:  “the farmer is a farmer, and the potter is a potter”, says Plato (in Bloom 1991, p. 98, # 421a in the Republic) and the slave says Aristotle, is “a slave by nature” (Aristotle, Politics Book I, section 1252a [1] and 1252b [1]). 

Education and the perfection of nature’s work

At this point, Cassin (2014)  has an exciting reading of Aristotle juxtaposed with a reading of Kant when it comes to education and its relation to nature. The discussion centres on the idea of morality in Kant and its connection to the understanding of nature and radical evil, and the Aristotelian idea of the slave by nature. Interestingly, in this, to a large extent, philosophical discussion on nature is the connection to education and how it qualifies the role of education—particularly distinguishing man from nature by making the natural in man evil—and then understanding education as a necessity to take that evil out of man in order to finalise natures work of perfection (and it is man, there is little room for women in the Platonian Aristotelian universe).

Education is "that [which] perfects nature's work" (Cassin, 2014, p. 154) for both Aristotle and Kant. For Kant, education concerns correcting the child so as he or she will not prioritise self-love but rather obedience to the (moral) law: “Radical evil–fragility, impurity, malice– is ‘perverse’ only because it ‘inverts’ the ethical order by prioritising the motive of self-love over that of obedience to the law. It is the reversal which education is charged with correcting in the child”(p. 154).  Furthermore, Cassin continues further on by quoting from Kant's "On Education", and I use her reading in length: "With education is involved the great secret of the perfection of human nature […] The human being will become “disciplined” (tamed), “cultivated” (skilful), "civilised" (prudent), and "moral" (capable of choosing good ends, namely ones which may be universalised).”(p. 154; emphasis in original).  

Education needs to perfect the human species since man is susceptible to radical evil, which is both of nature and not according to Kant: “Kant ends up positing the existence of this ‘radical innate evil in human nature [but] (not any less brought upon us by ourselves)’”(p 153). The radical innate evil is, says Kant, universal, it belongs to the human species, but not necessary, and therefore the radical evil is linked to, gives meaning to the relation between the human species and education. It defines the place and role of education, its function in producing a perfect (moral) order by correcting the child, taming his or hers innate radical evilness so she can fulfil the moral destiny of her society.

By understanding education as an act of morality, the characteristics of the human species, its’ radical evilness, is individualised and distributed among the population at the same time as it is corrected by education; it is individualised and universal but not necessary. Education is, therefore, possible for Kant as the process of purification of and perfection of the human species to be more fully human, which means to be a morally perfected being. Moreover, as such perfecting the society in which one lives.

What seems to be a problem here, and Cassin dwells on it in detail, is the idea of human nature, the obsession to tell who is human and who is not and that such understanding is to be based on an idea of perfecting natures work through morality.[8] For the Sophists, though, "there is no such thing as nature, and, in particular, there is nothing natural about the so-called human nature” (Cassin 2014, p 161). What Cassin (2014) points at is that the very idea of nature is a construct which emerge at a particular time and place, and which also implies, particularly through the Platonian/Aristotelian universe, a rationalisation of and conceptualisation of that reality. It implies what Rorty (1980) refers to as the invention of philosophy, distancing us from the lived everydayness of living with others as the sole condition for our being in the world. The great contribution of ancient Greek thought says Jaeger (1939), was that they invented man and from such view point nature as well. And also, the very nature that was invented was either “aristocratic”, fixating inequality as a natural condition for man, or as for the sophist, “democratic”, understanding nature as an expression of equality (p. 324).

The invention of  man as well as nature tends, at least in the Platonian/Aristotelian universe to be based on an idea of a particular foundational and original social and political structure of the state, and the role and function of education (see Säfström 2021). Such state, says Cassin (2014) are thought of as a body, in which man and state are embodied as a whole. The image of the original social structure is a hierarchal composed unity of one organism, in which no real autonomy is possible, all parts are defined as such from the viewpoint of the whole. This whole, this organic body of state and man, are as such distanced from nature, at the same times as it gives meaning to nature through education.

For the sophist though education is not about perfecting the body and soul of the state but about how to move with others in the mixture of the everydayness of life. The sophists, says Cassin “takes as its model not the unity of an organism but the composition of a mixture” (Cassin 2014, p. 124). It is a mixture precisely because it is not getting its meaning from an aristocratic unity of body of man and state, but through a radical pluralism. Such pluralism emphasis difference and ambiguity as a condition for the everydayness of life and equality as a condition for political and social life (Jaeger 1939). The sophists, in other words make democracy possible as equality across difference, while the Platonian/Aristotelian education thwarts such possibility in an image of hierarchy and inequality as a condition for political and social life. It produces two radically different types of relations, where the first deals with horizontal relations of equality over a moving plane in a social spectrum and the second with vertical relations of power within a fixed social order. Equality for the Sophists is not to melt pluralism within an organic whole, but to negotiate how to move with others[9] in the everydayness of life, in order to be able to go on together but differently (See also Säfström 2021). The publicness of the public is not formed through the same as an organic whole repeated over time, but the same in the sense of moving together across difference.

And moreover: “Nor indeed are ethics and politics ever matters of nature” (p. 161). What the Sophists emphasise, therefore, is not the nature in man, but logos: “It is words, and not the things beneath the words, that transforms our condition: Words by themselves are capable of reorganising souls" (Cassin 2020, p 47).

Language, words, for the sophists is first and foremost action that can reorganise souls and it is an action that speaks itself into being, which, says Cassin (2020) “Gorgias show [in] that ontology only holds its position, and only takes centre stage, if it forgets not being but that it is itself a discourse”(p. 34). As such, discourse cannot represent the real; “and it should not have to do so, it does stand in for, or make reference to, a thing or an idea external to itself”(p. 35), but it is not representational, discourse rather creates and performs. Discourse understood in this way says Cassin “creates being”, and its meaning “can only be grasped after the fact, in view of the world it has produced” (p. 35): In this way Sophistic discourse is not only a performance “in the epideictic sense of the term, it is in every way a performative in the Austinian sense of the term”(p. 35). It speaks the world into being.

To emphasise logos as a performative in this way also means that the sophist position is not to be understood concerning truth "but with respect to discourse: Being, and truth if one holds to it, is an effect of saying" (Cassin 2020, p 37). In that sense, being and truth is a consequence of a verb, a saying expressed by the sophists in the notion "the one who says says a saying” (p. 37). What this sentence is about, says Cassin (2020), is the inscription of temporal order into the present, in which speech is spoken: "the inscription of time into the logos to come, in the dis-course chain" (p. 37). It is the initiation of time in the present, so as to expand that present from within itself outwards, the present unfolds rather than being linked in a chain of events.

Cassin's readings are here related to her reading of Lacan as a sophist and have consequences for psychanalysis, in which all speech is meaningful in the present. However, education has slightly different consequences since education is not therapy. What follows, though, is that education in being about how to live well with others and how to extend the relations implied by the living with in the presence, is to be understood in discursive terms, as a consequence of discourse, and as an extension of logos, in which hope, if anything, is an insertion of time into the logos to come, the instantiations of time in the present.  The politics of the presence can be understood as this instantiation of time in the present, opening for an ambiguity and difference within that present, and as such making a multiplicity of expanding and new relations possible.

Logos and pedagogy

Logos, for the Sophist, is also connected to pedagogy since, as expressed by Protagoras in the myth of aidos and dike the additional gift of Zeus in the myth, the source of all political virtue implies the sharing of the myth among the citizens. What gives meaning to the myth, says Cassin, is the “sharing of logos by way of pedagogy throughout the entire city, from the wet nurse to the magistrate”(2014, p. 161: my emphasis).

What can be noted then, if one follows the paths of the sophists, is not only the shift from nature to logos, and education for the perfection of self and state to education for living well with others in an expanding public, but also that what those shifts imply is a different understanding of the socio-political conditions in which education is to operate. Education, in a democratic society, is to produce merit as based on skill and excellence, rather than fixate inequalities by reducing them to problems of education rather than politics, such as those inequalities based on blood, race, strength, and so on in an aristocracy: “They [the sophists] held that one skill alone–logos–was the equal of every other…” and Cassin continues: “This skill is both shared by all…and is capable of achieving excellence " (p. 163). Furthermore, she emphasises:" merit and excellence are not to be found in the ethical domain but, from the very beginning, in the political", and this says Cassin "is perhaps among the most important of those elements of democracy handed down by the sophists…"(p. 163).

For hope in educational thought it means that rather than urging us to more effectively realise the desires of the state, of perfecting ourselves in the name of the moral law, it points to the possibility to move differently with and among others in the present. Hope is no longer connected to the image of an foundational original social order but an open possibility within the life we live here and now, and as such have more to do with the confirmation of equality and difference. The very content of hope in education, from being filled with either the possessives of Christianity, and/or the fixation of inequalities of the Platonian/Aristotelian universe or the morality of Kant (2003) in correcting the child, is for the sophists entirely about equality. Or maybe more accurate, sophists education is not primarily concerned with hope, since for them equality is what drives discourse as well as what makes education essentially political. Furthermore, excellence in speaking is something that can be taught, to anyone. Their firm rootedness in a democratic worldview in which equality is possible as negotiation across difference is an expression of a radical pluralism. It is a pluralism, in which any consensus to be reached is not based on the implosion into the same. The same for the sophists is not imploding into the consensus of One, but into a with, within a mixture: A sophistical consensus, says Cassin, “does not even require that everyone think the same thing (homonoia) but only that everyone speak (homologia) and lend their ear (homophonia).” (Cassin 2014, p. 33).

To move with others, in a mixture of the present social life (and not as representing an original social order), in order to find the way in an expanding public, the very publicness of this situation, demands of us to speak with others in our own words and to hear the words of other speaking beings. It is to speak, not as an exercise of power in an hierarchically organised social order, but in a way as to verify the equality of all speaking beings.[10]

Rancière (1999, p. 29) speaks about the difference between noise and voice, that not all are heard, even when speaking, that some are noisemakers whose words lack meaning, and therefore do not form into discourse. In relation to such situation education and teaching is about listening (Todd 2003) to voices that cannot be heard clearly, to turn noise into voice by verification of the equality of logos, and to hear the world in the words spoken, to hear words touch souls.

The politics of the presence is located within discourse, and the ongoing negotiation across difference. It is not, as for example Rawls (1996) about different forms of distribution of goods, rights and duties since these forms always tends to involve a centre of power from which the distribution is organised, over what is basically considered to be a natural and necessary inequality. The politics of the presence emphasises politics as a force which itself cannot be fixated within an image of one or other socio-political order, without being reduced to a violent reification and repression through fixation of that order. In short, a sophist politics of the presence cannot be reduced to education as the very instrument for this repression. It announces another starting point for education as such.

Rather than  through education fixating an original social order uniting the soul and body in the image of the state within Platonian/Aristotelian educational thought, the Sophists educate for and through a discourse of equality. Again, the aim of such educational discourse within the social mixture, is to find workable ways of moving with and among others in the present. Acknowledging that in this mixture there is a pluralism of radically different people rather than a multiplication of one image of a male aristocrat: It is exactly for this reason that democracy is a possibility of the present. The political present for the Sophists is a world of words, of logos, and not conceptualisations of ideas representing an hierarchical order of inequality. Education is not either, as for Kant, to correct the child, not even turn her away from self-love toward obedience to the moral law, but to teach excellence in logos, in order for the child, any child, to participate in the expansion of equality in public life. And as such participate in the performativity of discourse, in making meaning of being in the world in which equality and difference is conditional for its existence.

The politics of presence, implicated by the sophists is something else than the transformation of desires coming from the outside of education and through domination of man and nature perfecting the state. The politics of presence in sophist education,  its “Sophistical practice” (Cassin 2014) do not exclusively belong to the state, and are neither an expression of its desires to form and create man in its image.  A sophistical practice is a discourse that builds on the everydayness of people interacting in the mixture on the presumption of equality. Such educational language is not derived from the idea of One, but on the immediacy of the at least two, it signify a radical openness and ambiguity of life in its everydayness. It is a discourse that speaks the world into being differently and with other words than educational theories reproducing the state and an original social order. A sophistical practice is a language of public education in which discourse necessarily implies equality across difference.

Conclusion

For a sophist understanding, logos are already pedagogy, in the sharing of logos throughout the entire city, which means that anyone can and have the right to speak, even though some are excellent in their speech. Anyone can be taught to be excellent in speech, which does not imply the perfection of the individual as an embodiment of the state, but rather concerns excellence in how to move among and with others within the everydayness of life. It is education belonging to humanity and not the state. Such education is therefore essentially ethical and political, through logos, not nature. Education is about move among and with others who have an equal right to speak in a shared space of publicness. Therefore the very aim of pedagogy and education to spread logos throughout the city concerns the expansion of the publicness of the public and is essentially democratic. It allows more people to be taking place on the scene, to be seen, to appear as a speaking being who speaks and therefore demands to be heard.

A sophist position locates hope in that everydayness of life, not above and beyond the present, but signify an opening of the present in which its contingency and multiplicity are brought out in the light. Hope is not for a future that may not come, but for a present to show itself, and it is a commitment to the equality of speaking beings figuring out how to move together here and now. The very capacity to speak is shared equally in democracy and education, and pedagogy verifies the equality of logos over the social spectrum of the city. This imply that a new publicness of education is no longer dependent on the desires of the state, but are entirely to be understood as belonging to the humanity as such, for which the central concern is how to live with others here and now, and under the conditions set for us by living on this earth at this time.

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Abstract

In our master’s program ‘education from an ecological perspective’, at some point in the pandemic, we (the educators) tended to not make our online meetings any more difficult than they had to be and focused on a pedagogical form that foregrounded the transmittance of knowledge, often from an ‘expert’. But the core principles of our master’s program are complexity; interconnectedness and educational polyphony, which to us means that these principles form the core of our educational philosophy, because we believe that educational practices are fundamentally characterized by these phenomena. And in these ‘expert-meetings’ we and our students often passively listened (no interconnectedness) to empirical researchers who reduced the complexity and educational polyphony of educational practices to a couple of empirically measurable variables. This made us feel uncomfortable.

In this paper, we will describe what happened at a particular meeting when it was unclear whether the ‘expert’ we had invited (Nora Bateson) who accepted the invitation, would be able to attend, and because her work is rather difficult to grasp, we neither knew how we would handle the meeting if she would not be able. We will describe what we call the phenomenon of ‘a shared experience of not-knowing’ which took place at this online meeting, and the effect it had on the meeting. In the end, due to a Covid-19 emergency Nora Bateson could not attend. Secondly, we will describe what a ‘shared not-knowing’, from our perspective, created, namely a sense of intimacy during an online meeting that we had not sensed before. We will do so by presenting two-part ‘thick descriptions’ of that day, written individually by the authors, who are educators in the master, and elaborate on that.

In the second half of the paper, we will analyze how we understand this phenomenon, and, more importantly, what we can learn from it. We ask the questions: 1. What are the conditions under which this sense of intimacy or connectedness happened; and 2. Are these conditions translatable to other (online) educational settings? In our analysis, we will elaborate both on work on ‘genuine doubt’ and ‘wonder’, as well as the idea of ‘aphanipoiesis’ coined by Nora Bateson, and the principles of our educational program, all of which provide us with a guideline that helps us find the right words. As an answer to these questions, we discuss three phenomena around the experience of shared not-knowing, in relation to which -we think- this sense of intimacy happened: 1. Space for wonder to occur; 2. The topic of the meeting: aphanipoiesis; and 3. The ethos of the group.

Introduction

This paper concerns the professional master’s program ‘pedagogiek vanuit een ecologisch perspectief’, at the Hogeschool Utrecht -University of Applied Sciences Utrecht, Institute of Education from an Ecological Perspective (HU-IEP). In this two-year program, professionals from diverse educational practices (e.g., teachers, youth care workers, etc.) are offered the chance to get their master’s degree (Master of Arts). The students work in small teams together with an educator and co-create their own curriculum. It is a uniquely flexible program in the Netherlands, which focuses on self-development, self-thinking, and stimulates the students to be able to co-create the course of the master program while living with the complexity and existential uncertainty of their work contexts (see for example Grol, Mulderij, and Schoenmakers, 2016). The core principles of the master program are complexity (see for example Cilliers, 2000), interconnectedness, and educational polyphony (see for example Naot-Ofarim and Solomonic, 2016; Hermans, Rijks and Kempen, 1993). We will elaborate on the philosophy of our master’s program in the second part of this paper.  

‘Pedagogiek’ in the title of the master refers to the (academic) discipline ‘which concerns itself with the guiding role adults play and should play in raising children to adulthood’ (Wolbert 2018, p. 15). The Dutch word for raising children is ‘opvoeden’ (German: Erziehung), and it is ‘opvoeden’ in the broadest (and normative) sense with which the discipline of Pedagogiek is concerned. It is important to make clear from the start that therefore ‘pedagogical forms’ (the conference theme) are only a small part of ‘pedagogiek’, and, more importantly, that we have chosen to translate ‘pedagogiek’ as ‘education’ in this paper. With ‘education’ we thus mean the whole world of child-raising, schooling, the pedagogical relationship, etc. (see Spiecker, 1984). We assume that this ‘world’ corresponds with the use of the term ‘educator’ in the discipline of ‘philosophy of education’. Moreover, when we stimulate our students to think and act ‘pedagogically’, we do not (only) mean that they are skilled in using ‘pedagogical forms’, but that they navigate through, and live and breathe in, this ‘world’ of child-rearing.

At some point in the pandemic, we (the educators) tended to not make our online meetings any more difficult than they had to be and focused on a pedagogical form that foregrounded the transmittance of knowledge, often from an ‘expert’. In this paper, we will describe what happened at an online educational meeting during the Covid-19 pandemic, when it was unclear whether the ‘expert’ we had invited (Nora Bateson) would be able to attend. We will describe what we call the phenomenon of a ‘shared experience of not-knowing’ (henceforth ‘shared not-knowing’) which took place at this online meeting, and the remarkable and deep effect it had on the meeting. Nora Bateson could not attend due to a Covid-19 emergency, but until the meeting has started this was uncertain. Also, we will describe wat ‘shared not-knowing’, from our perspective, created, namely a sense of intimacy during an online meeting that we had not experienced before. In the first part of this paper, we will present two-part ‘thick descriptions’ that enable the reader to experience the preparation and the experience of the online meeting, written individually by the authors. We follow Ponterotto, who distilled the following working definition based on the original description of Ryle (1971) and further elaborations:

Thick description accurately describes observed social actions and assigns purpose and intentionality to these actions, by way of the researcher’s understanding and clear description of the context under which the social actions took place. Thick description captures the thoughts and feelings of participants as well as the often-complex web of relationships among them. Thick description leads to thick interpretation, which in turns leads to thick meaning of the research findings for the researchers and participants themselves, and for the report’s intended readership. Thick meaning of findings leads readers to a sense of verisimilitude, wherein they can cognitively and emotively ‘place’ themselves within the research context. (2006, p.543).

In the second part of the paper, we will analyze how we understand the phenomenon of ‘shared not-knowing’, and, more importantly, what we can learn from it, i.e., how it led to a form of digital intimacy. We ask the questions: 1. what are the conditions under which this sense of intimacy or connectedness happened; and 2. are these conditions translatable to other (online) educational settings, i.e., can we deduce broader insight from our meeting? In our analysis, we will elaborate both on work on ‘genuine doubt and ‘wonder’, as well as the idea of ‘aphanipoiesis’ coined by Nora Bateson, and the principles of our educational program, all of which provide us with a guideline that helps us find the right words.

1. Thick descriptions and thick interpretations of an online meeting with or without Nora Bateson

Part 1- Preparation

Educator A.: “Nora Bateson responded with an enthusiastic “Hello!! Yes, I'm happy to do this...” it was the last thing I saw on the laptop screen before I stopped working that day and I couldn’t help but grin happily that she said yes. Were we really going to meet? Her work means so much to me personally, but also a regular reference in the master program to look at life from an ecological perspective and better understand complexity. The excitement of having a conversation with all of us! However, nothing was set yet and the further attempts to find a suitable time to meet first, talk about dates, details etc. kept on failing due to busy schedules while Nora Bateson remained interested. Eventually, at our meeting among colleagues we set a date dedicated to the work of Nora. Another email correspondence with her and that date was also good for her. Still, we haven’t met each other yet, three months passed since the first emails back and forth. As the date approached Nora informed me that she had Covid-19 and then that she was slowly recovering. A day before the meeting there was a possibility to meet online, which could not go through. Eventually in the evening, I sent her the link to the meeting, for me the possibility of her showing up was still there. It was an exercise of uncertainty, of not-knowing.

3 hours prior to the meeting we were chatting online (written) with two colleague's and one colleague said she felt tense thinking how the meeting and her contribution could go. Before I knew it, I started typing ‘I absolutely feel the tension too. These are new ideas for me and for the world too … I gave myself permission to not-know and I hope for a conversation that people can follow rather than a ‘lecture’. Seeing this on the screen did something with me. Did I feel tense? How was I supposed to feel? What if Nora Bateson can come after all and take over the lead in introducing her ideas... Writing that sentence felt so true, so logical and so liberating, aphanipoiesis is a new concept, one that refers to vitality in the making that is deliberately(?) and delightfully(?) out-of-sight. Are we willing to explore this, that's the question, not how much we know about it. It's a meeting with a group of people that I respect and care for, that have a common denominator of being pedagogues (in becoming). Are they interested in being there that afternoon and will they remain so? We will see. A stressful tension left and a ‘butterflies in stomach’ kind of excitement took over”.

Part 2 – The meeting

Educator A.

“The meeting started a little before 13.30 by one of the students, I clicked 'join' and saw some students and my colleagues. I felt excited, especially when right after I joined a popup notification appeared on my screen someone logging in with a guest account "waiting in the lobby". Would that be Nora? It's not. That was when I fully let go of that idea, this meeting is among us. I started by greeting the audience, when I mentioned that Nora Bateson wanted to attend this meeting, I saw students looking surprised. I said that I still wanted to give the opening to her, I wanted the first introduction to aphanipoiesis to come from Nora Bateson. We watched the first eleven minutes of a lecture on YouTube with Nora Bateson, in her own words, introducing and explaining what aphanipoiesis is and how it came to be. I watched people's faces when they watched/listened in their homes. They were paying attention as far as I could tell, and I wondered what part of this speech was going to stay with them. I ended the video, took a moment for the words to land. ‘I have watched that short video several times that I can recite parts of it’ I remember saying. ‘For you this is probably the first time. If you did not get it that’s okay. This is a new idea; I would like us to explore this together. What have you noticed in the film, which part of Nora Bateson’s story stuck with you? If nothing did, that is okay too’. A colleague started by mentioning a scene vividly described by Nora Bateson, I heard the notification sounds as more and more people started typing in their responses in the chat. I responded to my colleague and a student joined in the conversation. I noticed that I felt at ease not-knowing everything about, or having fully digested this new concept, it felt like being at-ease was shared. We were thinking together what a process like aphanipoiesis might mean in the pedagogical interaction, how it might influence our work, our life. We puzzled with the idea, and it seemed we were enjoying it.

Educator L:

“As this particular meeting approached, I didn’t hear from my colleague who was in contact with Nora Bateson. I had the feeling she might needed help – I think I was nervous for this meeting, partly also nervous for her (my colleague), and sought a way to reduce my nerves and gain some control over the situation. My colleague replied she still didn’t know whether Nora Bateson would join the meeting and that she would have to think about an alternative set-up for the meeting. I thought: just now she starts to think about an alternative, only days before the meeting?! This did not settle my nerves. I tried to help her, but this was difficult as I did not understand Nora Bateson’s work and world and didn’t really have time to immerse myself in it. My colleague would prepare something and I felt I had to trust her with this but found it difficult.

Nora Bateson wasn’t coming; she was recovering from Covid-19. My colleague started the meeting explaining what happened and that Nora Bateson’s ideas on aphanipoiesis were new for her and that she didn’t know much about it, but that we would try to understand a bit of it together. What happened after that felt as if a world opened for the students. Like a book that falls open – all of a sudden it’s open, free. There is space. At the same time, I felt – behind my own screen, alone in my own home – as if I was inside a warm dark cocoon, very cozy and intimate, and that the students and other teachers were there with me. I can remember that cocoon very vividly. As if I entered a cozy – dimmed lights, soft fabrics – warm and round room with my fellow-learners.

A lot of people engaged in the discussions, particularly the chat screen (Microsoft Teams) was going haywire. I also have the feeling I learned a lot from that meeting, Nora Bateson speaks about the unseen and about unseen streams and when they come to the surface and I have that ‘in my thinking’ now. I was also tired after the meeting, I was conscience of my felt need to help my colleague and make sure that everybody who wanted to contribute, could”.  

Like most other educational institutes, we were confronted with the Covid-19 pandemic. At times our teaching was only possible online, and at times we were able to meet on location, sometimes with limits to the number of people who were allowed in one room, sometimes with 1.5 meters distance, and sometimes with or without a face mask. All these situations required different responses from the teachers and the students and were met with different reactions. In this paper, we will focus on the pedagogical form of our ‘online meetings’, which took and take place in a period where we are allowed to meet in person but choose to continue with partial online teaching (one week ‘live’, the other week ‘online’) to facilitate students and ourselves to be as flexible as possible.

                     In this meeting about the idea of ‘aphanipoiesis’ there were over 100 people present online. Educator A. had prepared the meeting. Four aspects described in the thick descriptions stood out when we discussed our descriptions together: ‘gave myself permission to not-know’ (educator A., part 1), ‘a group of people I respect and care for’ (educator A., part 1), ‘there is space’ (educator L.), and ‘being inside a warm and cozy cocoon’ (educator L.). We regard them as important phenomena, i.e., the phenomena that characterize this meeting, and will interpret them further here.

First, the idea that A. gave herself permission to not-know. The ‘not-knowing’ part has two meanings here. In the first place, it refers to simply not being an ‘expert’ on the matter at hand. This is a rather straightforward interpretation of (not-)knowing, namely the factual observation that one, by far, does not know everything there is to know about the matter at hand. But, and some will already have this thought in mind at this point; what exactly does it mean to be an expert on anything? Does one ever know ‘everything’, does one ever feel like a ‘real’ expert? Probably not, but nevertheless we do agree that there is some objectively determinable threshold for the ‘expert-level’, for example when one has written a dissertation about the subject or has spent years studying the subject. But the question ‘does one ever know everything’ does strike an important other interpretation of ‘not-knowing’. Which is a more fundamental sense of ‘knowing-that-not-everything-can-be-known’: that there remains, and will forever remain, a sense of mystery in the world. This second sense of not-knowing is also present in the described experience. In a practical sense, people working in educational practices know that ‘the truth’ often turns out to be more complex that they thought they knew at first. But also, fundamentally there is a sense of equality in realizing that on a certain level, we all are and remain ‘learners’, and none of us has a monopoly on the truth. What happened in this meeting is that we (students and teachers) felt this equality of all being learners, and as such had an experience of shared not-knowing in the second sense.

A. also gave herself permission to not-know, which to us is another important aspect of the experience. The fact that she consciously gave herself permission reflects the idea that normally, teachers are the ones that need expert-level knowledge of the matter at hand. Above that, those who are ‘raised’ in academia, which both A. and L. are, have internalized the idea that those who know more are better, and certainty is preferred over uncertainty in the teaching/learning dynamic. If you are uncertain about what you know, you need to bluff that you do know, instead of admitting to your not-knowing.  

                     Secondly, A. writes that she wanted to explore the subject with a group of people I respect and care for. When asked, A. explains that the feeling of caring for and respecting these people for her is connected to intimacy and authenticity. She can be herself in this group, respecting the group, not pretending to know more than them, or more than she does, and respecting herself. There is something that connects us all, even if there were over 100 people, something that makes us one group. The 'expert' meetings preceding this one were informative, but not connected. Maybe the thing that connects us is a sense of togetherness: we are all on the same boat, in any case in the same sea of caring for our fellow humans as pedagogical professionals (in becoming). We are all behind our own screen, sharing not-knowing, sharing an interest to learn together. Maybe this equality and togetherness, this shared intrinsic motivation to learn, is an important condition to make online intimacy possible?

                     Thirdly, educator L. explains that the announcement of A. in the meeting, namely that she gave herself permission to not-know, felt like something broke open, like when the sun shines and the sky clears after a grey and rainy day. She felt that there is space. Many students whom we asked about this meeting shared the same experience and explained to us how this contrasted with previous expert meetings, where they often felt too shy or too not-smart-enough to interact in the meeting or ask questions. The educators recognize this too, for example in the way it remains silent when we ask if anyone has a question. It is interesting to explore what makes that students are willing to, or able to, overcome their shyness. And whether this is different in an online setting and a live meeting. One reason must be the way in which A. announced her ‘not-knowing’, which resonated with the shared experience of fundamentally/existentially not being able to ‘know’ (everything).

                     Fourth and last, L. refers to the feeling of being inside a warm and cozy cocoon. It felt like going into a tunnel, which is in sharp contrast to a lot of online expert-meetings, where L. usually finds it hard to concentrate on the screen and rather ‘floats’ in a wide space. On the one hand, the cocoon refers to a high level of concentration, a focus. Because almost literally the rest of the room L. was in disappeared. On the other hand, the warmth and coziness refer to a sense of intimacy, a sense of feeling good and feeling welcome, inclusive. We will now proceed to analyze our experience by making connections with educational theory/philosophy of education and the idea of aphanipoiesis.

1.  Exploring the phenomenon of ‘shared not-knowing’ further

Starting point: Wonder

In their paper, Gilbert Burgh and Simone Thornton discuss the necessity of felt genuine doubt for communities of inquiry (2016, p.1). They connect this to what they call lucid education: “education founded on an epistemological commitment to the absurd” (2016, p.2). Albert Camus defines the absurd as that it “bursts from the comparison between a bare fact and a certain reality, between an action and the world that transcends it. It is essentially a divorce. It lies in neither of the elements compared: it is born of their confrontation” (Camus, 1955, p. 30, cited in Burgh and Thornton, 2016, p. 2). Whereas genuine doubt is surely one part of not-knowing, because not-knowing at least implies the idea that one doubts what one knows, we think that giving ourselves the permission to not-know particularly reveals ‘the divorce’ we experienced between us as teachers-thus-experts, and the permission to not-know. Possibly, this narrative leads to what Freire points to as the central contradiction of “the teacher as the one ‘who knows everything’ and students ‘who know nothing’, which reproduces a relationship of dependence and uncritical obedience, reproducing the status quo between the oppressors and the oppressed” (Freire, 1968 as cited in Tur Porres, Wildemeersch, and Simons, 2014, p.282).

Burgh and Thornton describe, using the example of an encounter with a crocodile, how the absurd is revealed in a moment where our narratives ‘crumble’. A ‘divorce’ happens when you almost get eaten by a crocodile. The narrative in this case: a sense of safety and human superiority, is shattered when you realize that you are ‘no more than a meal’ (2016, p. 3). Analogous to that, our narrative of the teacher-as-expert was shattered.  And it revealed a sense of not-knowing that was fundamental: it made us into a group of people who were in the same boat: we were all learners and could share the experience of not-knowing.

                     However, Burgh and Thornton focus on the aim of gaining insight in prejudices, and we think that although for us as teachers divorcing from our narrative as teacher-experts was a part of the experience (and perhaps the narrative of the student-as-layman was shaken as well by A.’s announcement), we think that the insight in our narratives was not all that happened. Burgh and Thornton also write that “genuine doubt is the seed for wonder, accompanied by the desire to learn” (2016, p. 2). This sentence resonates strongly with the course of the online meeting as we have experienced it. We were in doubt (which was uncomfortable and truly felt, as both thick descriptions show), but this turned into a sense of wonder (was that possible because of the sharing?), wondering about or at (see for example Schinkel, 2017, p. 543) the admittance of not-knowing, as well as about the subject of the meeting: aphanipoiesis, which in itself has a magical ring to it. This was accompanied by, and/or triggered, ‘a desire to learn’, which was visible in the high concentration level (the cocoon).

Cornelis Verhoeven writes that “philosophy is not a knowing; it is better described as a desire, a pathos, a state, than a knowing. Plato gives this pathos a name: wonder. If philosophy stems from wonder, then she is born completely and totally out of it” (1967, p. 9, own translation). Subsequently, Verhoeven argues that if this is true, “philosophy as desire is persistent in staying close to what this desire arouses. She can only be satisfied through her own hunger; therefore, she doesn’t live off what she conquers, but off the endless horizon, and she cultivates that horizon” (1967, p. 10, own translation). Much has been written about teaching from wonder, or wonder-full education, i.e., education that has wonder at the heart of learning and education (e.g., Wolbert and Schinkel, 2021; Egan, Cant, and Judson, 2014). Regardless whether you call it ‘philosophy’ or ‘thinking’ or something else, the presence of this desire that ‘feeds off the endless horizon’, and therefore never fades, connected to how a ‘shared not-knowing’ lighted the spark of wonder and the desire to learn, is what we would call ‘educating from wonder’ and this is – to our minds – (a version of) what happened during our meeting about aphanipoiesis.

This insight immediately brings up a problem, namely that wonder cannot be evoked. You can, however, create conditions in which there is more space for wonder to occur, situations in which it is more likely that wonder can happen (see for examples of such conditions Wolbert and Schinkel, 2021), and we might say that ‘shared not-knowing’ can be seen as such a wonder-stimulating condition.

Aphanipoiesis: the topic of the meeting as part of (an analysis of) the phenomenon

While a thorough exploration of the concept is beyond the scope of this paper, it is a highly recommendable, rich, and delicious full course menu put together by Nora Bateson to be explored. ‘A wonder-stimulating condition’ could in fact be an alternative definition of what aphanipoiesis is, to the best of our understanding of the concept. As mentioned above the meeting was built upon the latest publication of Nora Bateson (at the time) about her newly coined concept ‘aphanipoiesis’ (2021). She asks the question what makes living systems change to generate vitality and proposes that there is an unseen process in it, which she calls aphanipoiesis. Bateson proposes aphanipoiesis as the opposite of an ‘insidious’ process; that is, “a vital force, vigorous, healthy, and energetic spreading, coming together gradually or unnoticed” in comparison / opposition to “harmful, dangerous, unpleasant spreading (of illness, ideas, attitudes, beliefs) gradually or unnoticed” (Bateson, 2021, p. 2). A quick dictionary search shows that indeed we did not have an antonym for insidious that would keep the ‘gradual or unnoticed’ aspect intact but reverse the influence from something harmful to something vital, now we do. Although Bateson does not refer to another resource in her work in explaining vitality, we think that the perspective provided in the book Braiding Sweetgrass (2013) by Robin Wall Kimmerer makes the meaning of vitality clearer. Kimmerer argues for the interrelatedness of life in ecological systems and repeatedly says: “All flourishing is mutual” (Kimmerer, 2013). For us, aphanipoiesis seems to suggest a similar message: when there is mutual flourishing that is because a vital force has been 'touching' all that are involved in an unnoticed, gradual way leading to abundance.

The word aphanipoiesis brings two Greek roots together: ‘afanis’, that is unseen, obscured and ‘poiesis’ that is to make, to bring forth. Bateson suggests the term for a “way in which life forms in unseen ways” and that this forming of life could be interpreted both as:

“1. (n.) An unseen coalescence toward vitality.

2. (n.) A coalescence of experience becoming unseen.” (Bateson, 2021, p. 6)

To put these two definitions into context: We have now an experience of ‘shared not-knowing’ in an online lecture. It was a coalescing of many experiences, including at least the expert’s absence, our felt care and respect for the ecology of our master program, the permission for not-knowing, our preparation and understanding of aphanipoiesis -such as it was-, the attention and engagement that poured into the moment, the feeling of being in a cocoon and feeling the room to explore, the fact that we were at home, working online. Some components of the meeting such as the PowerPoint presentation, the chatlog, and the playlist we put together, are saved digitally. However, it is a learning experience that is now added to our collective memory. This could be interpreted within the scope of the second definition: While this memory is still fresh in our minds and the digital components will remain accessible, this was ‘yet another meeting’, an online learning moment among many provided within the scope of working and studying at IEP. Inevitably it will become obscured over time, and it will not be accessible to new students or those who could not attend, except for the digital fragments. Yet, and this is within the scope of the first definition, the very experience of writing this conference paper based on that experience of ‘shared not-knowing’ is an expression of vitality, especially in a scholarly sense.

By producing this article, we are hopefully contributing to a better understanding of how educational processes and practices during the Covid-19 pandemic have taken form in this context. We explore how from our roles as educators we can stimulate equity in education, how stimulating equity in turn leads to intimacy in an online meeting. We hope this will contribute to mutual flourishing for those in the field of pedagogy, for the readers and for us at the master program IEP. The writing process itself has been a pleasant and educative process too, that on a personal level was a rewarding experience for all involved.

The concept of aphanipoiesis leads to questions such as ‘what might be beyond our perception that is generating possibilities now?’, ‘what interdependencies may be triggered by our (inter)actions or the lack thereof?’, ‘what are the contexts that coalesce in a given interaction?’. Inherent to these questions there is a sense of mystery; they are answerable only to a certain extend and ‘we simply cannot know’ is a valid option too. They are also questions that regard an entire ecology and to provide any answer that stems from ‘knowing’ requires us to fine-tune our “anticipatory systems of perception” (Bateson, 2021, p.1). Aphanipoiesis is an eminently suitable subject to ask such deep and broad questions during an educative online meeting. Yet, we argue that any subject that is presented within its broader ecological contexts has the potential to turn into a wonder-stimulating subject. This would, in turn, enable, and intrigue learners (teachers and students alike) to think for themselves and puzzle together.

The core principles of the master’s program as condition for creating intimacy

The third condition we think contributed to the shared not-knowing to occur, is the specific group of students and educators that were together that day. The point of departure in our master program is emancipation. One of the ways in which we try to contribute to this is the value we give to three core principles: complexity, interconnectedness, and pedagogical polyphony. These principles (or concepts, or phenomena) can be seen as characterizations of the pedagogical practices in which our students work, as well as of the ways in which the educational program is constructed. The title of our master program ‘education from an ecological perspective’ refers to the pedagogue’s awareness of always being in an ecosystem in the broadest sense of the word: the child one sees is in a class, in a classroom, has parents, family, lives in a neighborhood, in a culture, with its surrounding nature, has a socio-cultural history, a family-history, has relations of various kinds, etc. Such an ecosystem is always complex.

Complexity here refers to the idea that complex systems consist of (among other characteristics) a large number of elements, which interact dynamically and nonlinear, and cannot be untangled anymore (see Cilliers, 2000). This creates an unresolvable tension for educators: one cannot ever be really sure that what one does is the good thing to do, i.e., how it will pan out in practice, but: when it’s done it cannot be made undone, and: a ‘quick fix’ is never possible. Educators in our program learn to accept (endure) this existential tension and see it as part of their work/eco-system. Interconnectedness refers to the principle that everything in the ecosystem is connected, and that means, again, that one never just ‘treats the child’ using ‘a method’, but that the pedagogue has to think about whether she has a role in the system, and if yes, what her influence on the system can be. Also, interconnectedness means that one of the important ways in which a pedagogue works is through making a connection with the other, especially children and their adults, i.e., making connections is typical of the way in which the practices of pedagogues work. And lastly, pedagogical polyphony means that educational practices are fundamentally characterized by the fact that there are multiple voices to be heard as well as that one can have multiple voices inside oneself (see for example Naot-Ofarim and Solomonic, 2016). The stories of the children that we see can change, also those of their parents, as well as our own stories.

These three principles all express the ways in which it is up to the educator to endure the gap between theory, methods, solutions on the one hand and the uncertainties and complexity of the pedagogical practices on the other. We as teachers live these ‘truths’ in our role as teacher, and hope that our students engage with them as well. That, to our minds, is one important reason why the experience of shared not-knowing and the felt intimacy could take place. The idea that one ‘cannot know’ was not new for our students, and could therefore be easier embraced than we reckon is possible in a group of students who is used to learning from an expert within a fixed curriculum.   

It is therefore rather peculiar that we – as teachers in this program - retreated to the knowledge-transmittance form in the first place. Was that out of fear for the digital challenges? Or fatigue with the constantly changing circumstances of the pandemic? We have no room to go into these questions now but think that these things most certainly matter in pandemic times.

1. Conclusion

In this paper, we have set out to analyze how it happened that we felt intimacy in an online meeting, which was exceptional, and how we think it was connected to a shared experience of not-knowing. In conclusion, we can say that the ‘divorce’ we experienced from our roles as ‘teachers-thus-experts’ in the conversation was coupled with uncertainty but not with insecurity, and the emerging feeling of wonder functioned as an emancipator.

In the introduction, we asked the questions: 1. What are the conditions under which this sense of intimacy or connectedness happened; and 2. Are these conditions translatable to other (online) educational settings? We have discussed three phenomena around the experience of shared not-knowing, in relation to which this sense of intimacy happened:

1. Space for wonder to occur;
2. The topic of the meeting: aphanipoiesis;
3. The ethos of the group.

We did our best to describe these phenomena the best way we could, and they should be interpreted as a descriptive conclusion, informed by both experience and theory, of what happened that day. To be clear: we do not argue that it is best if the teacher has little knowledge, to guarantee ‘not-knowing’, but we explored how educators in an online setting are still able to create an intimate and vitality-arousing environment, which contributes to the mutual flourishing of the pedagogical ecosystem.

                     We think that it is very well possible to translate our findings to other educational settings, as a matter of fact both ‘live’ and ‘online’, as the phenomena we describe do not uniquely come forth out of this meeting. We think that some aspects of being online contributed to the intimacy in our meeting, for example the feeling of being in a cocoon was reinforced by the screen (e.g., the little cubicles with faces in Microsoft Teams). And for example, the physical distance to other people might have helped people to immerse in the feelings that the meeting evoked (e.g., feeling less ‘looked at’). We do however remain convinced that the space for wonder and the eagerness to learn which it sparked was crucial for the ‘cocoon’ to be able to be felt, instead of seeing ourselves and our students ‘floating away’ to second screens, shyness, and other things.

References

Bateson, N. (2021). Aphanipoiesis. Journal of the International Society for the Systems Sciences, Proceedings of the 65th Annual Meeting of the ISSS, 65(1), p.1-25. https://journals.isss.org/index.php/jisss/article/view/3887/1178

Burgh, G., & Thornton, S. (2016). Lucid education: Resisting resistance to inquiry. Oxford Review of Education 42 (2), 165–177.

Camus, A. (1955). The myth of Sisyphus. Hamish Hamilton.

Cilliers, P. (2000). What can we learn from a theory of complexity? Emergence 2 (1), 23-33.

Egan, K., Cant, A., & Judson, G. (2014). Wonder-full education: The centrality of wonder in teaching and learning across the curriculum. Routledge.

Grol, C., Mulderij, K.J., & Schoenmakers, H. (2016). Ecologische Pedagogiek: Pedagogiek van het goede kinderleven. Een pleidooi voor kritische verbeelding.  Tijdschrift voor Orthopedagogiek, 7, 367-391.

Hermans, H.J.M., Rijks, T.I., & Kempen, H.J.G. (1993). Imaginal dialogues in the self: Theory and method. Journal of Personality 61 (2), 2070236. 

Kimmerer, R.W. (2013). Braiding sweetgrass: Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge and the teachings of plants. Milkweed editions.

Naot-Ofarim, Y. & Solomonic, S. (2016). Educational Polyphony. Studies in Philosophy and Education 35 (4), 385-397.

Ponterotto, J.G. (2006). Brief note on the origins, evolution, and meaning of the qualitative research concept thick description. The Qualitative Report, 11(3), 538-549.

Ryle, G. (1971).  Collected papers. Volume-II collected essays, 1929-1968. Hutchinson.

Schinkel, A. (2017). The educational importance of deep wonder. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 51(2), 538–553.

Spiecker, B. (1984). The pedagogical relationship. Oxford Review of Education 10 (2), 203-209.

Tur Porres, G., Wildemeersch, D., & Simons, M. (2014). Reflections on the emancipatory potential of vocational education and training practices: Freire and Rancière in dialogue. Studies in Continuing Education, 36(3), 275-289.

Verhoeven, C. (1967). Inleiding tot de verwondering [Introduction to wonder]. Damon.

Wolbert, L.S. (2018). Flourishing, fragility and family life. Critical reflections on human flourishing as an aim of education. Dissertation: Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

www.publicatieonline.nl/uploaded/flipbook/15315-wolbert/

Wolbert, L.S. and Schinkel, A. (2021). What should schools do to promote wonder? Oxford Review of Education, 47 (4), 439-454.

Topic:
This round table session will engage participants in dialogue comparing the similarities and differences between the pedagogic principles and educational philosophies of 5 sacred texts.

Abstract:
This symposium will focus on the pedagogic prescriptions and educational philosophies embedded in five sacred texts and their related traditions: Confucianism’s Lunyu, Sikhism’s Guru Granth Sahib, Buddhism’s Pali account of Buddha’s life journey, Hinduism’s Bhagavad Gita and Daoism’s Daodejing. Each presenter has conducted an in-depth thematic analysis of their respective sacred text and identified salient themes about teaching and learning principles and practices as well as the philosophies and traditions of education that shape them. To begin the symposium session, roundtable participants will each explain major educative themes from their respective sacred texts, providing noteworthy citations from the primary sources to contextualize those themes. After laying this groundwork, a moderating member of the symposium will pose previously prepared questions to the roundtable group members. After beginning the session with several of these questions, the roundtable discussion will seek questions, dialogue and responses from the conference participants in attendance. The goal of selecting these sacred texts is to investigate the role of traditions in contemporary global educative practices. We chose not to each represent an entire faith tradition as this would problematically essentialize each tradition. Instead, we sought to find significant themes relevant to philosophy of education and educative practices within specific sacred texts. We hope that our dialogue will invite scholarly discussion about our educative inheritance, increase awareness that our own educative traditions did not arise in a vacuum, and that pedagogic principles whose origins may lie within a particular spiritual tradition need not be ignored by default by those who teach and learn outside of it.

Participants:
Isaac Calvert, Alissa Christensen, Avery Barnes, Jessica Ashcraft, Anna Moon, Ariahna Groesbeck

Individual Participant Abstracts:

Lunyu: A Textual Analysis of its Pedagogic Principles and Philosophies of Education
Alissa Christensen
My contribution to this round table panel is a textual analysis of the pedagogic prescriptions and educational philosophies within James Legge’s 1891 translation of the Analects of Confucius, with an especial emphasis on books 1-9.  After searching for textual themes specifically related to teaching and learning principles and practices, I cross-referenced salient passages with historically significant scholarly commentaries within Confucian traditions. I further triangulated my analysis of these passages by conducting a linguistic analysis of the original Chinese characters from which the Legge translation was derived. Through these several analyses, I have begun to enumerate several noteworthy themes in Confucius’ writing about the nature and value of education. Themes about students include effort as a prerequisite for teachability, perseverance as an ideal student attribute, application of knowledge for the development of virtue and the asking pointed questions. Those regarding teachers include the importance of cherishing knowledge, always continuing to seek further learning, observing and discerning how others respond to one’s teaching, ignoring about the perceptions of the world and virtue as teaching’s principles telos.

Guru Granth Sahib: A Textual Analysis of its Pedagogic Principles and Philosophies of Education
Avery Barnes
I explored pedagogic principles central to Sikh teachings by consulting Sikh-approved translations of one of its most venerated texts, the Guru Granth Sahib. I combined my in-depth textual analysis with contemporary Sikh commentary that discusses what the Guru Granth Sahib says specifically about education and learning. One of the major themes throughout the Granth Sahib is the pursuit of ontological truth which "permeates the whole universe" (Nanak, p. 939). With that belief comes an understanding that secular and sacred truths are one and the same. The text describes that by following eternal truths within the Granth Sahib one can achieve enlightenment and liberation from Haume or the five passions. Before any kind of textual study, for instance, the text prescribes that one pray to "be blessed with an enlightened mind" (Nanak, p. 818). The text further encourages deep pondering and reflection as a primary means of achieving an embodied realization of truth. As the prose of the Guru Granth Sahib tends to be more inferentially proverbial than orthodoxically prescriptive, the elucidation of these themes required a deeper analysis than a cursory reading would allow. I intend to expound upon these pedagogical principles of Sikhism and dialogue with the other presentations of sacred texts on the panel.

Gotama to Buddha: A Textual Analysis of the Pedagogic Principles and Educational Philosophies of His Life Narrative
Jessica Ashcraft
Our initial goal in approaching Buddhism was to investigate core ideas regarding teaching and learning as found in a central Buddhist text. We quickly encountered difficulty in this approach due to the multiplicity among Buddhist canons and the problematic nature of superimposing canonicity itself within a Buddhist frame. Indeed, an attempt to identify a single text as an authoritative voice to represent the complex collage of world Buddhisms is more reflective of what studies in “world religions” have called a “Puritan bias” than an authentic Buddhist lens. We adjusted our approach accordingly, focusing instead on sacred texts and traditional, biographical accounts of Sidhatta Gotama’s journey in discovering and teaching the path to Nibbana. Thus far, our adjusted methodology has led to a wider vision of education according to Buddhist tradition and the identification of several themes in the Buddha’s pedagogy. Prominent among these is the role of application as the purification of knowledge. The Buddha’s own exploration and insistence that followers test his teachings indicate action as the means of obtaining direct knowledge over notional verity. Another overarching idea is the significance of a balanced practice, what Gotama called the Middle Way. A third concept, symbolized in the Pabbajja and key to the Buddha’s achievement of Enlightenment, is the abandonment of incorrect notions in favor of lasting truth. We hope bring the philosophical implications of these educative lenses into dialogue with our colleagues in this round table discussion.

Bhagavad Gita: A Textual Analysis of its Pedagogic Principles and Philosophies of Education
Anna Moon
This study enumerates the sacred pedagogical principles exemplified and explicated in the text of the Bhagavad Gita. Considered to be among the most influential texts within the Hindu canon, the Bhagavad Gita, a revered guide of perennial philosophy, contains valuable insights into the attainment of spiritual knowledge as a means of achieving moksha, that is, the ultimate goal of self-realization and spiritual liberation. While this study focuses on a single text, as we set out to examine Hindu educational philosophy it is not our intent to essentialize the Hindu faith or force its scriptural tradition into a Puritan-colonialist lens, but instead to recognize the wide expanse of Hindu scripture, including that which has been heard and considered divine (Shruti) as well as that which has been remembered and considered secondary (smriti). We present this study of educational philosophy, focusing exclusively on that which is presented in the Bhagavad Gita, as a focused, preliminary attempt to understand Hindu education in the context of one of its most sacred and influential texts. To do so, we undertook an extensive study of the Bhagavad Gita in its entirety, using Eknath Easwaran’s English translation as our main source. From this analysis we identified three main themes, including: first, the sacred and essential role of an enlightened teacher; second, active learning in the form of karmic yoga, or selfless action; and third, the relationship between devotion and renunciation resulting in an ontological shift under bhakti yoga. The unique contribution of this research is to provide a strong foundation of educational philosophy found strictly in the Bhagavad Gita upon which further hermeneutical research can investigate other ways in which that philosophy has been interpreted and practiced by Hinduism’s various denominations throughout its rich history.

Dao De Jing: A Textual Analysis of its Pedagogic Principles and Philosophies of Education
Ariahna Groesbeck
I will contribute to the roundtable discussion by presenting themes from my textual analysis of Daoist educational philosophies as depicted in the Daodejing. To analyze this text, I identified eight prominent translations of the text across various linguistic, historical, cultural, and disciplinary perspectives. After a preliminary thematic analysis of the text, I have identified four salient themes across the eight translations related to pedagogical practices and ideals of teaching and learning. These themes include the following: the Dao as reason and truth, a noteworthy emphasis on the ontological “becoming” process of a Sage through wuwei and reversion to the Dao, basing one’s rule as Sage in oneness with the people, and wisdom and knowledge coming through faith in the Dao. I will engage session participants in dialogue regarding the similarities and differences across this text and those from various religious traditions. It is my hope that this interfaith and cross-cultural dialogue will increase multicultural understanding and educative philosophies whose origins may belong to a particular spiritual traditions but whose lessons and potential applications could be shared outside of those traditions.

Abstract

Even before the pandemic, much had already been written on the accessibility, practicality and equality of virtual learning. Contextual issues, such as poor access to technology and data, as well as inconducive domestic arrangements, are often cited as key impediments to effective and equal virtual experiences for students. In addition, there are growing concerns about the impact of technologies on young people’s ever-increasing reliance on screens – concerns which extend beyond the classroom and into their mental health and capacities for human engagement and relationships (Author, 2021). These concerns  notwithstanding, does the absence of a physical, traditional contact space allow for more open participation and engagement? How might virtual learning lend itself to reimagined democratic spaces for inclusion, belonging and deliberation?

As a contemporary, ‘subverted’ space, virtual learning offers unexplored pedagogical possibilities not typically encountered in conventional classroom settings. Despite blurring the lines between private and public domains, the framing or enclosure of a screen creates a certain detached anonymity, and hence, a perceived measure of safety. Videos can be on or off. So, too, students can choose to display their names, or just their student numbers, thereby controlling the extent to which they make their presence visible and known. Paradoxically, digital screens simultaneously create barriers insofar as students are no longer in the physical presence of others, while also removing the barriers, which necessarily accompany diverse group identities. The absence of physical engagement, therefore, reduces the possibility of the immediate construction of ‘other’ (Levinas, 2003), thereby minimising the interference of the myth of misrecognition, and creating a demographic parity, seldom realisable in traditional classroom settings. 

Nuraan Davids

Teachers recognise the importance of physical cues for human engagement and difference (Friesen, 2011). The more diverse teaching and learning settings, the greater the opportunity for crossing over into different life-worlds and perspectives (Author et al, 2015). But teachers also recognise that classroom or lecture theatre dynamics are inextricably linked to student identity groups. Much in the same way that the proverbial public sphere does not hold the same meaning for all individuals or groups, so, too, those, who constitute the majority almost inevitably dominate class discussions and debates (Peters, 2015). Students, who might find themselves occupying liminal spaces in traditional classroom spaces, are no longer confronted with this barrier, or the myth of who they perceivably are. In a re-imagined way, virtual platforms mean that they are ‘unscreened’ by others; their liminality is removed, countering the predominance of majority groups. Not only are students able to access and participate in a learning dimension unhindered by stereotypes and myths, but they can choose to participate in different modes. In a multi-dimensional way – which includes a parallel textual chat function -  the virtual space dis-enframes the parameters of the teaching-learning encounter, releasing unexplored pedagogical implications for democratic engagement.

Søren  Bengtsen

A recent study of asynchronous supervision and feedback at Aarhus University in Denmark (Author et al, 2021), showed that phenomena often connected with synchronous face-to-face interaction such as presence, embodied voice, empathy, and trust would carry over in an asynchronous online setting. From the study, the discussion arises as to what constitutes ‘the face’ in a Levinasian sense of the ethical interhuman encounter (Levinas 2003), as the study showed that the recorded supervisor voice embedded into the asynchronous online feedback resulted in student experiences similar to the physical and synchronous face-to-face encounter. In an increased technology-mediated higher education, old dichotomies between physical and online spaces have to be readdressed and re-conceptualised (Friesen, 2011). Building on Levinas’ understanding of ‘the face’ and the interpretation of otherness in Levinas’ ethics by Alphonso Lingis (1998), I aim to discuss the blurred and transgressed boundaries between physical and virtual learning spaces and the implications for a future university pedagogy.

Merete Wiberg

Virtual learning settings at universities such as zoom squeeze students and teachers into small squares on a screen. From this position, the students and the teacher have the opportunity to watch, listen, talk and move around within the square. However, is it possible under this condition to conduct teaching in a way that makes it possible for the teacher to bring about ‘pedagogic tact’ (Herbart 20212) and ‘educational listening’ (English 2013)? Is it possible for the teacher to sense and feel the students and the ethical environment (Haydon 2006) of the digital room and bring about good teaching that demonstrates sensibility to the individual student and the group? How to understand the concepts of ‘tact’ and ‘educational’ listening in the digital room? How do we avoid the teacher only listening to himself? “He experiences only his own self, only his own relation to men, only the miscarriage of his own plan..” (Herbart 2012:19). A paradox of virtual learning is that it might have the potential to improve teachers ability to listening to students due to the struggles and defeats teachers experienced during the pandemic.

References

Bengtsen, S., Møller, K.L., & Thunø, M. (2021). Nærvær på afstand. En undersøgelse af asynkron, mundtlige vejledning og feedback. Dansk Universitetspædagogisk Tidsskrift, 16:31, 20-35

Bengtsen, S., Mathiasen, H., & Dalsgaard, C. (2015). Net-based guerilla didactics. In Fossland, T., Mathiasen, H., & Solberg, M. (Eds.). Academic Bildung in Net-based Higher Education. Moving beyond learning (pp.107-127). London & New York: Routledge

Davids, N. (2021) 'Covid-19: Undoing our ‘normal’ to find our humanity, South African Journal of Higher Education, 35(1): 178-191.

English, A.R.(2013) Discontinuity in Learning. Dewey, Herbart and Education as Transformation. New York: Cambridge University Press

Friesen, N. (2011). The Place of the Classroom and the Space of the Screen. New York: Peter Lang

Haydon, Graham (2007) Education, Philosophy and the Ethical Environment. London & New York: Routledge.

Herbart, J.F.(2012[1896]). “Introductory Lectures to student in pedagogy”, i Herbart’s ABC of Sense-perception and Minor Pedagogical Works, edited and translated by W. J. Eckoff. New York: D. Appleton, s. 13-28.

Levinas, E. (2003). Totality and Infinity. An Essay on Exteriority. Translated by Alphonso Lingis. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: Duquesne University Press

Lingis, A. (1998). The Imperative. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press

Peters, M.A. (2015). “Why is my curriculum white?” Educational Philosophy and Theory 47 no. 7: 641-646.

Embodied education: New sensations

Our round table discussion on embodied learning and education revolves around a number of recurring themes. One theme is the very history of embodied education, addressed indirectly through the variety of classical and more contemporary exponents treated in the individual presentations (Montessori, Dewey, Merleau-Ponty, Polanyi, Sellars, Böhme, Gallagher), and, more directly, through a presentation of an evolutionary hypothesis (advanced by Denis Francesconi) about the  the human mind considered as a direct product of the body-world interaction, especially the artificial world (defined as  ‘technology’). In short, the human mind did not create technology; on the contrary, technology created the human mind. In more recent times, this idea emerges in the field of education taking form as a technology for the reproduction and improvement of all the other technologies. Education thus serves to extend further the already extended mind. This raises important ethical challenges. ‘The extended mind’ belongs to ‘the so called 4 E’s’ (‘Extendedness’, 'Embodiedness', ‘Embeddedness’, ‘Enactedness’), central, overall terms which signals the focus of attention in the turn towards the body in cognitive science. The 4 E’s is another theme for our discussion of learning and education. Yet another theme (addressed by Matthew Crippen), are the challenges with respect to the built-in limits of communication which comes with the first-person perspective of our embodied transactions with the world. Thus activity-based learning as a supplement to traditional forms of classroom teaching is argued for, where particularly works of art are considered as involving a kind of unreplicable know-how that formal methods can hint at, but not capture. The inter-relations between accounts of (body)awareness vis-à-vis embodiment and learning  is also addressed at this round table session. Sune Frølund takes site with Böhme in a discussion of Merleau-Ponty’s account of embodiment, pointing out, that consciousness for Merleau-Ponty apparently plays the active part for animating the passive body-thing, whereas Oliver Kauffmann finds valuable material in Polanyi, Dewey and the late Merleau-Ponty for understanding learning as a prerequisite for conscious awareness, and not the other way around. Dag Munk Lindemann, for his part, by drawing on insights from Dewey and Sellars, argues that Montessori, contrary to standard opinion, was markedly ahead of her time by putting purely embodied interactions with the environment as the foundation of human understanding. 

Names of participants
Matthew Crippen, matthewjcrippen@gmail.com , Pusan National University, South Korea, and the Berlin School of Mind and Brain, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany. 
Denis Francesconi, denis.francesconi@gmail.com , University of Vienna, Austria.
Sune Frølund,  sufr@edu.au.dk , Department of Philosophy of Education and General Education, Aarhus University, Denmark. 
Dag Munk Lindemann, dmli@ucl.dk , Teacher Education Funen, UCL University College, Odense, Denmark. 
Oliver Kauffmann, kauffmann@edu.au.dk , Department of Philosophy of Education and General Education, Aarhus University, Denmark. 

Abstract 1 (Matthew Crippen) 
Embodiment and Education: Classic and Contemporary Views
This paper outlines educational implications of embodied varieties of constructivism, which hold that perceiving and knowing necessitates changing conditions under which things are encountered. We see this in distinctions such as those carpenters make between soft- and hardwoods—distinctions rendered concretely according to human needs, but not nominal since they exist in built structures. Other examples of embodied constructivism are somatically enacted rhythms that imbue experience with narrative form, which is a basis of early learning.

A challenge for educational theorists is that the experience got through bodily messing about is of a first-person sort that cannot be easily communicated, even though linguistically relatable knowledge rests upon its foundations. Here, one can consider how the map-based knowledge of a geographer depends on the embodied experience of travelling through mountains, across streams and down streets. We do not, of course, advocate abandoning abstract modes of communication, but do recommend activity-based learning as a supplement to traditional forms of classroom teaching. This recommendation tacitly carries a second idea: that most intellectual endeavors are arts, meaning they involve a kind of know-how that formal methods can hint at, but not capture, because the messy challenges of the lived world often call for unreplicable solutions.

Abstract 2 (Sune Frølund) 
A Critique of Embodiment
The term “embodiment” has predominantly inspired educationalist working in fields like sport, dance, outdoor education or working with other learning processes in which bodily movements are central. It is as if educationalists only consider moving bodies, but not resting, daydreaming, contemplating, feeling or even sleeping bodies as genuine instances of embodiment. Maybe there is good reason to pay more attention to educating such passive modes of the body!

For Maurice Merleau-Ponty we can access our own, living body (corps propre, corps vivant: the body we are) in a non-objectifying way in which there is identity between the subject and the body. However, M-P also talks of our own living body as an “embodied subject” (sujet incarné) which seems to indicate, that the body is conceived of from the outside standpoint of an active disembodied consciousness. Additionally, M-P regards consciousness to be an “I can”, which suggests an activistic interpretation of embodiment that seems to have impacted the majority of educationalists.

Another phenomenologist of the body, Gernot Böhme, has the focus on the “pathic experiences”, i.e. the feelings of our body such as hunger, pain, lust or well-being to which there is no difference between the experiencer and the experienced. For Böhme we have to learn to adapt to and “own” the feel of the body, i.e. being our bodies is an assignment.

Merleau-Ponty, M. (2012): Phenomenology of Perception, transl. D.A. Landes, London & New York: Routledge.
Böhme, G. (2019): Leib: Die Natur, die wir selbst sind, Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag.
Böhme, G. (2003): Leibsein als Aufgabe, Kusterdingen: Die Graue Edition.

Abstract 3 (Dag Munk Lindemann)
Maria Montessori’s philosophy of education: an early beginning of embodied education 
For a century Montessori’s philosophy of education has been understood in separation from Dewey’s philosophy of education. According to Thayer-Bacon [1], a plausible explanation is that Kilpatrick, Dewey’s influential student, rejected Montessori’s system of education [2]. His main objection was that her educational system was founded on an outdated psychology.

In contrast, this paper suggests, Montessori’s educational systems is founded on a psychology which, like Dewey’s, was markedly ahead of her time by putting purely embodied interactions with the environment as the foundation of human understanding.  By comparing Montessori’s psychology [3; 4] to Dewey’s [5; 6] this paper shows their compatibility. The developed pragmatism of Sellars [5;6] and the interactivism of Bickhard [7] further enables us to explain how the prelinguistic human-environment interactions (or transactions), central to Dewey and Montessori, are pure processes [8]. The pure process ontology enables us to see how more complex processes emerge from simpler ones and how learning in the mere causal domain of bodily human-environment interactions can grow into the linguistic and conceptual domain of education.

The ambition is to show that a flourishing interaction between Montessori and pragmatism is possible and preferable if we are to understand the proper role of the body in education.

[1]  Thayer-Bacon, Barbara (2012). Maria Montessori, John Dewey, and William H. Kilpatrick. Education and Culture, 28, 1, 3-20.
[2] Kilpatrick, W. H. (1914). The Montessori system examined. Cambridge, Mass.; The Riverside Press
[3] Montessori, M. (1912). The Montessori method. NY: Frederick A. Stokes Company
[4] Montessori. M. (1949). The absorbent mind. Adyar: The Theosophical Publishing House
[5] Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education. NY: The Macmillan Company
[6] Dewey, J. (1925) Experience and nature. Chicago: Open Court Publishing Company
[7]  Sellars, W. (1960). Being and Being Known. Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, 34, 28-49.
[8]  Sellars, W. (1981). Foundations for a metaphysics of pure process: The Carus lectures of Wilfrid Sellars. The Monist 64 (1):3-90.
[9] Bickhard, M. H. (2009). The interactivist model. Synthese, 166, 3, 547-591.
[10]  Seibt, Johanna (2016). How to Naturalize Intentionality and Sensory Consciousness within a Process Monism with Gradient Normativity—A Reading of Sellars. In James O'Shea (ed.), Sellars and His Legacy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 186-222.

Abstract 4 (Oliver Kauffmann)
Embodiment, learning, awareness
My presentation looks into three early approaches to embodiment in order to (1) trace some deep roles of learning of lasting value to current discussions of embodied education, and (2) pinpoint and discuss three possible ways of seeing conscious awareness in an intimate conjunction with learning.                                   

Central works by John Dewey, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Michael Polanyi harbor different insights on embodied learning, which have had lasting impacts on the growing research field of embodied education. In emphasizing the important role of embodiment for understanding mind and cognition, these thinkers certainly rejected prominent versions of empiricism, behaviorism, dualism, ‘intellectualism’ and materialism, but at the same time wavered between ignoring and silencing conscious awareness. Only reluctantly they approached this knot, in idiosyncratic ways, and displaying a number of peculiar struggles, that are still with us today. But they also shared the basic intuition, that conscious awareness of a learning subject is constitutively related to implicit, non-representational knowledge of its relation to the environment, whether this relation is static or dynamic. In a sense, the very psychophysical problem for Dewey, Polanyi and (the late) Merleau-Ponty, was transformed into and entangled with insights about knowing, about Being, and about acting. These insights are discussed and located as elements of a general theory of awareness as a peculiar kind of learning.

Abstract 5 (Denis Francesconi)
Extending further the extended mind. The problem of education as technology. 
Where is the human mind located exactly? Probably, out of our heads, as some scholars suggest. Starting from this paradoxical question – paradoxical because the mind, differently from the brain, is not a res extensa and therefore has no spatial connotation – I will introduce the concept of extended mind. The extended mind is one of the four dimensions (4E cognition) recently introduced in the international debate by scholars in the field of embodied cognition, the other three being embodiment, enactivism, and embeddedness. The standard argument of the extended mind approach is that the human mind constitutionally depends on the interaction between the body, including the brain, and the world, including the social and artificial worlds (e.g. human communities, cultures, institutions, tools, infrastructures etc.).

In my presentation, I first introduce the hypothesis that the human mind is an evolutionary product of the body-world interaction, and I stress the role of technology in cognitive extension. Such an extended mind – initially based only on stone tools, then more crucially on alphanumeric symbols – has given the genus homo a significant evolutionary advantage in the form of a cognitive power that has transformed a harmless animal into the most powerful and dangerous animal on Earth.

Then, I discuss the role education plays in cognitive extension and empowerment. While almost all the scholars in the fields of cognitive and evolutionary sciences agree on the central role of learning in human cultural evolution, I argue that learning alone is not enough and that nowadays education is more relevant than ever: I suggest that education has a key role in the complexification of human culture and in the modern increment of cognitive power, like a sort of technology that extends further the already extended mind.

I conclude with ethical remarks by referring to the recent debate on sustainable development. Educational scholars often affirm that education can have a positive role on sustainable development by promoting pro-nature awareness, attitude and behavior. However, if what I said before is correct, education is also directly responsible for the increment of the human cognitive power and the reinforcement of the hýbris, the arrogance and the will to dominate and often destroy the nature. New types of collective awareness and responsibility are needed in order to disclose the real danger on this planet – us – and to provide new forms of collective self-govern and planetary stewardship able to take into account the role of education in the extended mind.

Related to the German notion of ‘Didaktische Reduktion,’ pedagogical reduction refers to a variety of educational activities which can be summarised as: selection, simplification, and representation. Educational acts generally involve showing some aspect of the world, or creating conditions for some kind of experience to occur. These educational acts are productive: by forming a kind of aperture, perspective, or environment, they attempt to reveal something but through reducing or concealing something, that is by directing attention or focus. Pedagogical reduction can take many forms, from selecting texts considered important (i.e. canonical), to simplifying the causes of particular events or processes (e.g. the causes of war; or illness like cancer), to building fences around playgrounds to reduce exposure to risks (spatial reduction), to making slow-motion video which can be used to improve some technique (temporal reduction), and so on.

This symposium explores examples of pedagogical reduction to advance our understanding of the scope of the concept and how it can be applied. The concept of reduction can be interpreted both as a noun to refer to a reduced object (e.g. the textbook) or as a verb to refer to practices of reduction (e.g. the give and take of the skilled teacher), but in either case, at least in the English-speaking world, the concept of reduction has to deal with the negative connotations that ‘reduction’ tends to suggest: how to distinguish reduction from reductionism? For instance, Textbooks are thought to essentialise; they are too selective and overly simplistic, even inaccurate and distorted. Do pedagogical reductions create inauthentic scholastic realities? Moreover, aren’t various ideologies or biases evident in the way that subject matter is represented and reduced? Whose interests govern the practices of pedagogical reduction? Notwithstanding these difficulties, this symposium will emphasise the productive nature of pedagogical reduction.

Individual Papers

The Splendour of the Simple
Dr David Lewin (University of Strathclyde)
Of all the concepts that are used to characterise pedagogical reduction (e.g. selection, simplification, generalisation, representation, exemplification), simplification could be regarded as the most controversial. Accusations of essentialism, distortion or misrepresentation are never far away. Not only does the subject matter suffer, but it can be interpreted as an insult to the learner: making subject matter simple so that it is accessible to the learner can seem patronising, condescending or paternalistic. Another concern is that by producing simplified representations, the educator risks eliding the real subject matter, and students may end up grasping the representation at the expense of its subject: the map replaces the territory. These negative interpretations arise from a tendency to overlook the descriptive (non-normative) aspect of pedagogical reduction. My paper seeks to emphasise the productive nature of pedagogical simplicity.

By definition, simple is a relational concept: in relation to complex. But pedagogical simplification can also be relational in another sense: how is pedagogical simplification related to the student? To explore this relation, I will refer to Religious Education to illustrate the virtues of pedagogical simplicity.

Playing with Time: The Artistic Enactment of Everyday Life as Pedagogy
Dr Karsten Kenklies (University of Strathclyde)
The reduction of the complexity of time is one of the ways in which pedagogues can organise the pedagogical environment to enable transformation. This becomes obvious not only in settings of formalised education (e.g. the structuring of teaching time in periods); also outside of such settings this can be seen, e.g. the putting aside of ‘study time’ within the events of the day means to reduce the complexity of unfolding day-time to enable learning. Such insights into the temporal foundations of pedagogy have been known for centuries, and they are embedded in the different ways in which ‘education time’ is marked by rituals of beginning and end.

Less obvious to the uninitiated observer are maybe the ways in which artists use those pedagogical insights to bestow their works of art with educational potential. The presentation will introduce two seemingly very different ‘works’ of art, which will be revealed as closely related in their pedagogical impetus and didactique that uses a manipulation of the time of everyday life to enable an educative transformation: Bill Viola’s short video “The Greeting” (1995), and Sen no Rikyu’s Japanese tea ceremony (16^th century).

Pedagogical Reduction and Virtual Worlds
Nicola Robertson (University of Strathclyde)
The selection, simplification and representation which are characteristic of pedagogical reduction, eventually produce content which can be considered “a facsimile or reproduction of the world… that is ‘better’” (Mollenhauer, 2013, 53). In as much as Mollenhauer is describing the improved replication of [the image of] an existing world, employed with an educational intention, he is inferring the creation of a pedagogical virtual world.

In my presentation, I will speculate on this pedagogical virtual world by comparing it with another virtual world: the Metaverse as conceived by the semi-eponymous tech giant, Meta. In particular I will seek to question: the extent to which both worlds are founded on a system of selection, simplification, and representation; why might a virtual world, in Mollenhauer’s view, be better than the “real” world; and can the Metaverse, become, or at least incorporate, a pedagogical virtual world itself?    

Mollenhauer, K. (2013). Forgotten Connections: On Culture and Upbringing. (N. Friesen, Trans.). New York: Routledge.

The pleasures of pedagogical reduction
Dr Katja Frimberger (University of Strathclyde)
Aristotle stresses the mimetic function of drama to evoke the audience’s pleasure of recognising something truthful about how people deal with each other in the world. Actions are deemed more essential for drama’s pedagogical reductions than characterisation on its own, because ‘well-being and ill-being reside in action, and the goal of life is an activity, not a quality (…)’ (Poetics, 50a24i). Flourishing is achieved in action; and such actions, as to how one flourishes (or perishes) in life and death, are the stuff of theatrical, pedagogical reduction. The poet's mastery of the craft of plot-writing is pivotal in creating compositions that imitate human (and divine) actions plausibly. Bertolt Brecht, like Aristotle, embraces pleasure as a key pedagogical premise for the theatre, affirms theatre’s mimetic function, and its status as the craft of storytelling (Brecht, 1978, p. 183). But he also questions that the characteristic pleasure of drama lies in the arousal of tragic emotions and their physical relief; and interrogates the structure of what exactly constitutes a ‘plausible’ pedagogical reduction of human action. In this presentation, I will look at Brecht and Aristotle’s different takes on the relationship between pleasure and drama’s pedagogical reductions.

References
Aristotle and Heath, M. (transl.) (1996) Poetics (London, Penguin Books)
Brecht, B. and Tatlow, A. (ed.) (2016) Bertolt Brecht’s Me-ti: Book of Interventions in the Flow of Things (London, Bloomsbury).

Focus of interest: What is phenomenological education, and how and why is it significant in today’s school and kindergarten?
 

Introduction

Globally, over the past four decades education has become almost synonymous with learning, achievement and the attainment of predetermined outcomes. There is an impressive body of research that explores neoliberal effects on contemporary educational discourse. There is also considerable research describing how powerful agendas, often external to schools, serve to standardize curricula, increase competition to achieve higher test scores, regulate accountability on classroom practices and fundamentally transform what we understand about teachers and students in the complexity and richness of the pedagogical relationship. Contemporary hegemonic practices seem to operate as if they were objective realities, and the project to commodify education, regulate learners and produce knowledge workers, measure education in strictly economic terms.

But something new and important remains to be said. To the participants of this symposium education is a matter of existence, relationality, common moral and human concerns for that which is human and belongs to the common human world. We give priority to human existence and humanity above objects and issues and offer concrete and evocative descriptions of real-life experiences rather than objectifying language about standards and ideals. We intend to open a space for reflection by claiming human being and becoming at the heart of the educational project.  

From the viewpoint of different pedagogical practices all based in phenomenological education, we will exemplify and discuss educational dilemmas and possibilities. A particular focus will be on issues of power, freedom, democracy, margins and equality. 
 

Presenters and topics
Professor Tone Saevi is the leader of the symposium. She introduces the focus of our round table conversation, as drafted above.
PhD student Judith Ologi: Children with minority language in kindergarten – democracy in the margins.  
Associate professor Wills Kalisha: Minor unaccompanied minors in a foreign country – power, authority and relationality.  
PhD student Helene Torsteinson: Practice of students of nursing, social work and kindergarten – moral disquiet in power relations.  
Professor Tone Saevi gathers threads, and welcome to the conversation, as drafted below.    

Judith Ologi
For children with minority language in the kindergarten. Democracy in the margins
The subjectivity of the child with a minority language in the kindergarten is at stake; especially with the trend shifting towards sole prioritization of the majority language in the kindergarten. Pedagogical practices that existed before, for example the use of bilingual assistants, to help the minority child navigate learning the majority language while at the same time continuing to learn their home language are almost no longer existing. Instead, there is a surgency of hegemonic language interventions and mapping that focus mostly on the majority language and the minority child learning of the majority language before school start.

Some of the arguments given in support for the surgency of such language interventions and mapping are trends that indicates that minority children perform poorly at elementary school level, many of them drop out of secondary school and thereafter also often compete poorly with their majority language peers in the job market.  I will reflect phenomenologically on an example told by a teacher from kindergarten where she experiences a recognizable situation with a minority child. 

Wills Kalisha
An unaccompanied minor’s karate training – anyone’s responsibility?
Ahmed is looking for an adult to take him for a karate training. He has received a rejection to his asylum application, meaning those who were responsible for him, are no longer required to do so. What is at stake here? Is it important to take responsibility for those we are no-longer responsible for? Arendt (1958) points us to the dilemma of our existence in plurality, that it is double edged involving both actions and suffering the consequences of those actions.  The only opportunity we have is to act in our encounter with others which ironically means as actors we are dependent on others for our actions to gain fruition. We can both hurt and be hurt, reject, and be rejected, hurt and injured. Ahmed, who previously could not be denied the benefits of having a home in the reception centre, is now again a refugee in the sense that he is without a safe (or temporarily safe) place to live. He can be forced out of the country at any time, and he does not have the means to protect or defend himself. What kind of responsibility or good pedagogical practice should the teacher(adult) practice?

Helene Torsteinson
A social work student’s lived experiences of moral disquiet
Drawing on a concrete example of students´ lived experiences of moral disquiet, I intend to shed light on the phenomenon as lived through and as an existential phenomenon in human lives. The example I explore has its origin in the students´ periods of practical training in social work-education, and contains unique qualities where a student is facing a dilemma that puts her at unease - an event that disturbs her rational state of being and natural attitude, in the moment of the “now”. An example (anecdote) will both lead my presentation and the phenomenological reflection, where I intend to show the phenomenon´s complexity and meaning structures with an orientation to power and freedom of the student and/or elderly man involved.

Summary and discussion
Tone Saevi
Our interest is in real life examples like the above, and we ask their significance for pedagogical political questions today. How is phenomenology – which per se is a move toward the issue itself – pedagogically relevant and interesting in schools and society. What does back to education itself mean exactly, in the three examples? We consider existential questions to be core in education and in political events relevant to education. Today, education seems to have become the economic and managerial glue of society, and education is commonly seen as the means and solution to a great deal of problems e.g. unemployment, sustainability, economic growth and poverty. We do not disagree that education is a necessary societal and democratic basis of our western society, but we would like to emphasise that education also is about the lives of children and young people, and thus existential qualities of life as lived should be an educational focus. This is what we intend to display, reflect on and discuss with our participants.   

Students’ wellbeing has become a central concern for policymakers and teachers at all levels of our educational systems. Institutions are more and more inclined to implement interventions such as meditation groups, positive education, safe spaces, etc. in order to address increasing problems of anxiety and depression in youth. Inspired by the eudaimonic conception of wellbeing, classic approaches in psychology and philosophy of education have tended to define what wellbeing is (in ideal or non-ideal situations) and to reflect on the best institutional settings, curricular formats, teaching methods, pedagogical or physical activities or psychological interventions we could implement to make such wellbeing possible (John White, Harry Brighouse, Doret deRuyter, Kristjan Kristjansson, Richard Ryan and Edward Deci, etc.). Through their definitions and propositions, these different approaches tend to objectify wellbeing by detaching it from the concrete material experiences of everyday life. It becomes an ideal (or non-idealized ideal) to be reached. One could say that it is being metaphysicalized, to use Wittgenstein’s expression. 

Some critical work has emerged in the past decade (Kathryn Ecclestone and Dennis Hayes, Judith Suissa, Liz Jackson, etc.) to look at unanticipated effects these interventions might have on students and some recent work has also engaged with more “attuned” conceptions of wellbeing (for example Karl Hostetler’s Deweyan approach). In this symposium we want to develop further such critical and postcritical lines of thought. Our purpose is to examine different ways of, and approaches to, being concerned with students’ wellbeing, to consider some practices in which this concern takes life, and to consider what it actually means to be concerned in such a way. In doing so, we also explore and question some of the assumptions that underly the critical / post-critical divide.

Irony as a productive way of theorising students’ well-being
Bianca Thoilliez, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid
I will make the case that the question of a happiness-centred understanding of students’ wellbeing is a very good example of how important it is to evade any form of monolingualism in educational research and, particularly, when theorising education. Although I am sympathetic to the possibilities of thought that open when tackling educational phenomena from a post-critical and more affirmative stand, I find that what we need to look for are productive ways of thinking about education that sustains the promise of education. And what is and what is not productive in any given situation can never be established a priori. This is always contextual and thus requires us to pay attention. This may also imply switching from critical (more negative) to post-critical (more affirmative) modes of theorising education and vice versa, according to the situation. So, in a way, taking a Rortyan ironising approach rather than an essentialist one. I will explore these ideas with reference to the current extensive reform of the Spanish school curriculum (which is characterized, among other things, by a strong accent on emotional factors and students’ wellbeing).

Can current wellbeing techniques be educative?
Marina Schwimmer, Université du Québec à Montréal
Using Foucault and Cavell’s perspectives on subjectification and self-transformation, I examine how certain technologies of the self that are used nowadays in order to increase students’ wellbeing, generally framed as emotional intelligence activities, mindfulness interventions or conflict resolution strategies, may be interpreted and (re)appropriated in two very different ways. First, in the way they are generally prescribed, that is as tools that can contribute to the development of specific social and emotional competencies. This view has been criticized by many for running the danger of contributing to imposed forms of subjectivity, offering a limited view of happiness and not being really educative. However, these technologies can also be conceived, second, as pedagogical exercises that do not have specific aims other than to help students explore and define who they are through expression, attention and conversation. I want to argue that it might be helpful to reconsider the technologies through a framework that puts more fully their possibilities to the front.

Does friendship go beyond wellbeing?
Soyoung Lee, Pusan National University
I will explore the concept of friendship to investigate the dominant discourse of students’ wellbeing. There has been a growing concern with such matters as students’ wellbeing and mental health, particularly around this time of the pandemic. And friendship often appears as an important matter to attend to as it affects students’ mental health and personality. Yet I find that the way friendship is increasingly understood is seamlessly in tune with the language of ‘classroom management’. I attempt to show why this is problematic and also to show how this represents the way the current discourse of wellbeing understands individuals and their relation to others. The idea of wellbeing, when it is understood narrowly, cannot accommodate friendship in its fundamental sense and can end up excluding negative aspects of human experience, surreptitiously feeding into the language of control and management. To clarify this, I explore Derrida’s account of friendship. In The Politics of Friendship, he writes: “No friend without the possible wound.” And I will attempt to show how a radical understanding of friendship can help us either to dispense with the concept of wellbeing or, at least, to see it differently, with a better perspective on the good life, life with others. 

Wellbeing, criticism, nihilism
Paul Standish, University College London
Two interconnected strands of argument: (1) In its dominant incarnation, wellbeing seems a depleted version of eudaimonia, which it purports to translate: it suggests the nihilism of Nietzsche’s Last Man (a life of comfort and ease). But a life can be good without this being  equated with wellbeing. In response, the wellbeing advocate may say: “Whatever good life you are thinking about is part of what ‘wellbeing’ means: wellbeing has to do with how a life is lived well.” This shows the term’s capacity for “high” and “low” redefinition, as casuistically the circumstances require: “That’s not what I mean by ‘wellbeing’” / “‘Wellbeing’ already covers that.” I shall resist this and provide examples of a life lived well in ways that can be taken to be cases of wellbeing only where that term departs substantially from the ways it is currently used. (2) The critical/postcritical distinction warrants questioning as it reinforces the association of criticism with negativity – especially the equation of criticism with a debunking of the ideas and practices under consideration. I criticize and pathologize the tendency to debunk, suggesting that its eclipsing of praise colludes with the nihilism pointed to above.

Chair and respondent: Itay Snir, The Max Stern Yezreel Valley Academic College

In many respects, education of children, both by parents and teachers, is premised on a set of self-evident truths that we wish, in this panel, to call into question. Among these beliefs, children are viewed as vulnerable (and therefore in need of protection), not fully rational (and as a result, their freedom must be limited), “innocent” or authentic (and therefore must not be corrupted by the adult world). Also and in a somewhat contradictory way to understanding childhood as a unique experience, children are seen as adults-to-be and in need of preparation - intellectual, political, moral, and occupational - for grown-up life. Lastly, children are perceived as bearers of the future and as reasons for hope for the rest of us and hence are worthy of great and unquestioned investment.

These assumptions about the nature and value of childhood have been called into question by historians, sociologists, and other scholars working in the field of children studies and in philosophy of education. The reexamination of the nature and value of childhood opens many educational questions that concern adult-child relationships, moral education, children’s creation and acquisition of knowledge, and more in general, the agency of child. Among other things, reconsidering common views of childhood may help educators confront the rising uncertainty about the future (caused by the climate crisis among other global changes), an uncertainty that may reflect on the child as the signifier of that future.

In this panel, we wish to point to several new and emancipatory ways to think about childhood and suggest ways to educate according to these alternative views. Specifically, the presenters will question the limits of the child’s political ability and rights, the prevailing developmental model of childhood and the “natural” hierarchy between children and adults in various spheres of everyday life.  

 These are the four presentations included in the panel:

1. Childism and the empowerment of new generation teachers
   Tanu Biswas, University of Stavanger
   In my presentation, I address two levels that I assume to be central in developing and implementing an alternative approach to childhood and their educational implications. The alternative approach I present will is the philosophical perspective of childism, which aims to deconstruct adultism in theory and practice in order to transform social and scholarly norms to include childhood and children's perspectives. I argue that pedagogy is an intergenerational relationship and therefore it should not be solely directed towards treating children and childhood as the 'default addressees of pedagogy'. In other words, pedagogy is also about adults' capacity to practice systematic critical self-reflection in relation to children. Thereafter, I will discuss the practical implications of childism in the context of what and how new generations of teachers should and should not be taught pedagogy. I illustrate my point in reference to a classic textbook used in Norwegian Teacher Education. In summary, I emphasise why one of the central tasks of a transformed Teacher Education should be empowering teachers not to reproduce the adult ideological viewpoint in their daily practice. 

Biswas, Tanu (2020). Little Things Matter Much: Childist ideas for a pedagogy of philosophy in an overheated world. Büro Himmelgrün.

Wall, John. (2019). From childhood studies to childism: Reconstructing the scholarly and social imaginations. Children's Geographies, 1-14.

Imsen, Gunn. (2020). Elevens verden: innføring i pedagogisk psykologi (6th. ed.). Oslo: Universitetsforlaget.

1. Children of the Apocalypse?:
   On the Future in Precarious Times as Expressed in the Figure of the Child in Apocalyptic Films
   Or Aroch, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

The social category of childhood is dominated by a progressive temporality that values children as the future of the individual and society. As such, children have become a prevailing symbol for the future in many cultural domains and are utilized to establish a moral ground, shape political stances, call into action or inspire hope. But what happens to the child's symbolic value when the future is becoming increasingly precarious and fraught with uncertainties and risks, especially in light of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic?

In my talk, I will suggest different answers to this question through analysis of the representation of children in western apocalyptic films, a genre that encapsulates the limits of contemporary cultural imagination about the future. In many of these films, the figure of the child maintains its role as the bearer of the future and continues to reproduce repressive values and social anxiety. But in other cases – in which this presentation takes interest – children are used to express alternative attitudes towards the future and its interaction with related institutions such as family, reproduction, education and the non-human realm. The reading of the "apocalyptic" children will involve a post-humanist perspective and will apply Lee Edelman's queer theory about childhood. This analysis will eventually serve as a basis for reexamination of the theoretical triangular relationship between the future, childhood and education.   

Edelman, L. (2004) No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive. Durham: Duke University Press.

Földváry, K. (2014) "In Search of a Lost Future: The Posthuman Child". European Journal of English Studies, 18(2), 207-220.

Balanzategui, J. (2018) The Uncanny Child in Transnational Cinema: Ghosts of Futurity at the Turn of the Twenty-first Century. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

Trimble, S. (2019) Undead Ends: Stories of Apocalypse. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. 

1. Hope as a childish endeavor (and this is a good thing)
   Oded Zipory, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

In his latest book Klara and the Sun, British novelist Kazuo Ishiguro is wrestling with the question what it means to be human and what is humanity comprised of. His point of entry into the discussion or rather his objects of inquiry are children of various kinds – healthy, sick, made of flesh or of metal, unpredictable or predetermined. Faced with a crisis which threatens the very concept of childhood, the children in Klara are engaged in both hope and despair and allow us to distinguish between several approaches to the future.

In my reading of the book, I will employ Lyotard’s concepts of the inhuman and of infancy and critical scholarship on hope and despair to argue against a developmental view of childhood on the one hand or a romantic view on the other and for an education that hopefully infantilizes the student in the specific sense of attention to silence, irrationality, immediacy, and a radical openness of the future.    

Ishiguro, K. (2021). Klara and the Sun: A Novel, New York, NY: Knopf.

Lyotard, J. (1992). The Postmodern Explained to Children: Correspondence 1982-1985. Eastborne, UK: Gardners Books.

Lyotard, J. (1991). Lectures D’Enfance. France, Paris: Galilee.
 

1. Citizenship Practices of the Children’s University
   J. Marshall Beier, McMaster University

This paper investigates children’s university programs as engaged forms of rights education promoting democratic inclusion of children. To the extent that they produce opportunities for children to discover themselves as participants in knowledge production and transmission, they also promote the ability to recognize their own extant (not just deferred) potential to make a difference in their societies. Meaningful participation, in turn, underwrites possibilities both for children to be seen as and to come to see themselves as practicing a fuller citizenship as children – that is, premised on their present assets, capabilities, insights, and experiences and not just on preparation for eventual ‘ascension’ to adulthood. The participation rights laid out in the UNCRC herald just this promise but, in practice, little progress has been made on their implementation in the more than three decades since the Convention came into force. Also largely unfulfilled is the UNCRC commitment for states to educate citizens (including but not limited to children) on the Convention and its provisions. Building from original research on children’s university models in Europe, Canada, and Hawaii, I highlight the contributions of a central ethos that explicitly positions children as indispensable acting subjects in knowledge practices, not merely a recipient audience.

Claire Cassidy. (2017). "Philosophy with Children: A Rights-based Approach to Deliberative Participation.” International Journal of Children’s Rights 25(2): 320-334. doi: 10.1163/15718182-02502003.

J. Marshall Beier and Sandeep Raha. (2020). "Cultivating an Ethos: Collegial Co-Discovery in a Children and Youth University." Children’s Geographies 18(1): 44-57.

In this working-paper I have the following question: What is a lockdown? I want to point out four answers, highlighting political, philosophical, social and pedagogical levels of explanation. These levels that have their own circulating context and effect, where one answer reinforces the other, filling out the contours of the concept of lockdown. The analysis is based on a book I wrote last year on the subject (Rømer 2021).

The first and most defining answer is political: A lockdown is a term for an immediate collapse in the democratic distinction between state and society. The whole of society and all its sectors are subordinated to a statistical biopolitical logic, whose numbers, layers and interactions subsequently explode into almost chaotic quantitative processes and demands on both global, national and local levels. All practices in society are – in principle at once and instantly – redefined by a new, reduced and all-encompassing concept of health: “Health” as effective and global realtime biostatistics.

This collapse of politics ruins the precondition for democracy. In several societies, including in Denmark, this has happened in a more or less open confrontation with the countries' constitutional traditions. The collapse happened instantly, by the actual lockdown-decision as such. A new political structure was launched, and the rest was just a consequence of this revolutionary moment. Well, in a way “revolution” is a wrong word, due to the fact that revolution is a political action while lockdown is rather a destruction of politics and plurality as such. It is a antirevolutionary revolution.

This establishes a biostate. The biostate was not established with modernity, as Foucault believed. For until March 2020, we had a democracy with the separation of people and state and the basic premise of this state was a situation where biopolitics was only a minor part of the practice of government and life. It was only at the moment of the lockdown that the state seized society and transformed the people from what was before a precondition into a statistically defined “zoe” under the realm of shifting and chaotic quantitative goals.

In this perspective, the so called “reopening” is not an alternative to a lockdown, as it is sometimes declared. A reopening is rather a reinforced lockdown, ie. the name of the process by which the lockdown cascades out of its “moment” and into the disrupted spheres of life in the form of “restrictions” and new moral and behavioral standards. This is seen, for example, when you “reopen” the schools with massive behavioral regulation, mask requirements and test-structures that have their own educational effects on the school's staff and on students and parents. Thus, “reopening” become a kind of biopolitical experimentation destroying and affecting all practices rooted in the history of natural law and civil life. Thus, Lockdown and “restriction” is not the same: Lockdown is anti-political politics and restrictions are policy.

Second, there is also a philosophical answer to the question of the essence of lockdown: A lockdown is a destruction of freedom. This is seen, for example, when Slavoj Zizek speaks for a new world communism, controlled by global organizations (Zizek 2020). In Zizek's case, there is a form of symbiosis between technocracy and hegelianism. We get a world spirit disguised as numbers and evidence. Under this new hegemony, the traditions of freedom, which has deep liberal, social and republican roots, cannot survive. This transforms the constitutional principle of "freedom as a precondition" with its associated natural law and human rights, into mathematically defined behavioral permissions, sometimes called “reopenings”. These permissions can be withdrawn overnight due to some statistical flux.

With this transformation, there is a trivialization of “freedom”. Freedom and liberal democracy are reduced to Trumpism and neoliberalism, e.g. in this quote from M. Peters, who draws on Roberto Esposito’s distinction between “community” and “immunity”, although he somehow forgets the “community”-part:

“The shift in immunology from philosophical metaphors of ‘immune self’ to dynamic ecologies may well indicate a necessity in the choice of political vocabulary metaphor that no longer models itself on Western culture with its liberal and neoliberal emphasis on individuality and homo economicus, but adopts a immune-biopolitics of the state that looks to a transformation of social relations anticipating future pandemics, climate change, sustainability, and coexistence that helps to guarantee humanity’s survival” (Peters & Besley 2022).

The consequences of this radical reduction of “communitas” to “immuntias” for all of society's educational, scientific and social activities and freedoms are uncontrollable. Actually, Esposito himself is also worried on behalf of freedom. In an interview from April 2020, he says:

“Our democracy cannot survive long with this deficit of freedom and social interaction” (Gøttske 2020, my transl.)

Esposito is concerned with what he considers to be “the vital organs” of society.

Thirdly, there is a sociological and psychological answer: The democratic collapse, by which society is swallowed up by the state, as well as the rise of a new technical world spirit, which destroys the traditions of freedom, can be extended to a wide range of other global issues, e.g., climate- and identity politics as was also the case in the above quote from Peters. Lockdown becomes a policy-method of implementation to “guarantee humanity’s survival”, whereby the political and philosophical essence of lockdown can be expanded and transported into further anti-democratic and technocratic experiments on all levels of society.

Human existence is now surrounded by catastrophic hyperfacts, which problematize and catastrophize all forms of natural contact with other people and with the layers of things and nature. Everything comes under the statistics of “infections” or “Co2” or “identity”. Thus, a deep and anxious loneliness becomes a new basic psychology. We end up with what is sometimes called a “dark pedagogy” (Lysgaard a.o. 2019). Social and moral “existence” in plurality with others with others, is now changed into constructed “identities”, with vast distances in between. In order to convey these constructed distances, a completely new language of statistic and technology is being developed, which I, in order to protect our natural language, call “infectish”. So we get a statistically and technologically defined loneliness, where everything is dangerous and infected. This loss of a common world is associated with grief and mourning, which is the defining emotions of the biopolitical epoche.

Fourth, there is an educational answer. The lockdown is a radicalized continuation of the neoliberal standards of the 2000s where pedagogy was turned into a symbiosis between global learning statistics and learning technocracy; a symbiosis that already contained the destruction of the relationship between society and state that I mentioned above, and which also had the technical-global dimension as an intrinsic aspect. The lockdown is, in a sense, an extension of anti-education – of “the age of measurement” as Gert Biesta has called it – to all social terms and areas of behavior.

These definitions are the reasons why powerful global forces are very happy about political possibilities of lockdown. Thus, some nation states have entered into agreements with the World Economic Forum, which, via the so-called "great reset" ideology, have declared an interest in a new global and biotechnologically hegemony. This strategy is also supported by the Global Monetary Fund. Obviously, the interests and the power of the tech-industry and the global medical organizations and businesses is sky-rocketing at the same time. Between the isolated individuals, new technologies dwell, ie. changing teaching into zoom- and social life into anti-contagious-apps.

Andreas Schleicher, an influential statistician and director of education at the OECD, very early welcomed the pedagogical consequences of the lockdown. His affirmative approach was – in my view – a direct consequence of his views in a 2018-book, where Schleicher highlighted the Chinese educational system due to both its statistical-evalutional performativity and the socalled 21-century skills (Schleicher 2018). This emphasizes my thesis about the conceptual connection between the new biopolitics and a neoliberal educational ideology, which in the former decade was carried forward by the OECD's measurement systems and the neo-liberal states. Global education is going to play a major part in the new biopolitical reality. In that sense, Zizek's world communism has both concrete names and organizations.

These processes also have connections to the transhumanist ideology, after which Man as a species dissolves into new technological formats. Here, the modern left and the old neoliberal organizations are part a strange techno-global symbiosis, leaving the entire postwar-humanism in the dark.

Let me return to the political level. Some believe that a lockdown is an expression of the renaissance and strength of the nation state. This is a mistake. Rather, a lockdown is an expression of a liquidation of the nation-state. After all, the entire democratic-humanist foundation for the state is taken away, and instead the states become subject to the new quantitative-global principles, which I have just outlined. Furthermore, a number of highly discriminatory practices concerning vaccine-passports has been developed. In my view we are in a rebirth of the 1930s due to this mixture of totalitarian politics and discriminatory practices. We have moved from a strong and passive state to a weak and active state. I fear a modern version of the 1940s.

So overall, lockdown is a destruction of the entire democratic-humanist tradition that was developed since World War II, reinforced by the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, and which itself has roots further back in European cultural history. This destruction will probably lead to a lockdown of educational philosophy as well, which must now submit to the new system, e.g. by turning Hegel into a global emperor of counting. Soon, the rest of this entire tradition of thought will follow suit or rest into peace.

Different countries have had different political-legal processes, but with almost the same effect. In Denmark, society has been moved from the influence of the constitution to an epidemic law of exception, even against the recommendation of the health authorities, even though the government claimed the opposite on lockdown day. This epidemic law, this law of exception that covers the inconsistent lie of public recommendation, was later normalized, so it is now almost impossible to leave the structure of lockdown. In direct continuation of this, the press and the parliament, during the lockdown-period, was transformed into a kind of junior partner for the now weak and activist state. In Denmark, we say that we went from a "principle of proportionality", which is the administrative principle of democracy, to an "extreme principle of precaution", which is the administrative ideology of the new biostate. Perhaps we will be allowed to go to the cinema for a few months, a behavioral admission from the new totalitarian moment, but nobody knows when the prevailing philosophy and the structure of the lockdown materializes. It may happen overnight.

Thus, I have drawn the picture of the essence and effect of the lockdown.

Of course, these problems have been discussed all over the place and I have already mentioned some. Criticism of this powerful process stems from people with roots in social-poetic traditions, including Georgio Agamben and a number of democratic and liberal circles around the world (Agamben a.o. 2020). This establishes a democratic alliance between historical-poetic socialist critics and various liberal and neoliberal views that cares for the concept of freedom in different ways. There is also a vast critique from many doctors and health professionals who knows that health is something that must first and foremost take place in civil society rather than through detailed behavioral regulation on behalf of a failed state.

Finally, I would like to mention that two 92-year-old left-wing icons, Jürgen Habermas and Noel Chomsky, have both endorsed the premise of biopolitics, although, to my knowledge, without Zizek's Hegelian premise (Habermas 2021). Zizek, who is not a young man himself, is scared to be ill, he says in his book on the matter. It is, in my view, highly immoral for old men to deprive children and young people of their opportunity to live and begin anew inside a free society. In Germany, Habermas was criticized by Die Welt's cultural editor, Andreas Rosenfelder (Rosenfelder 2021). Furthermore, the leading German political scientist, Professor Ulrike Beate Guérot, has also criticized both the lockdowns, the collapse of European post war-solidarity and the views of the left wing that I have just outlined (Goerot 2022 and Goerot & Hunklinger 2021). I do not know to what extend Chomsky's views have been the subject of debate in the United States.

Literature:

Agamben, Benvenuto & Foucault (2020). “Coronavirus and philosophers”, European Journal of Psychoanalysis. http://www.journal-psychoanalysis.eu/coronavirus-and-philosophers/

Guerot, U. & Hunklinger, M. (2021). ”European Democracy after Covid 19”, Democratic Theory, vol. 2, no. 2. https://www.proquest.com/docview/2532091180

Guerot, U. (2022). Interview, Information, 10. January. https://www.information.dk/udland/2022/01/tysk-fransk-politolog-venstrefloejen-omfavner-ukritisk-staten-coronakrisen-lader-bunden-samfundet-betale-prisen

Gøttske, M. (2020). ”Når corona-stormen er drevet over, kan Europa stå svækket tilbage”, Information, 7. April.

Habermas, J. (2021). “Corona und det Schutz des Lebens”, Blätter, September 2021. https://www.blaetter.de/ausgabe/2021/september/corona-und-der-schutz-des-lebens

Lysgaard, J. & Laugesen, M. & Bengtsson, S. (2019). Dark Pedagogy – Education, Horror and the Anthropocene, Springer.

Peters, M.A. & Besley, T (2022). Biopolitics, conspiracy and the immuno-state: an evolving global politico-genetic complex, Educational Philosophy and Theory, Vol. 54, issue 2 2022, p.111-120.

Rosenfelder, A. (2021). ”Die Habermas-diktatur”, Die Welt, d. 11. October. https://www.welt.de/kultur/plus234125124/Corona-Politik-Die-Habermas-Diktatur.html

Rømer, T.A. (2021). Den store nedlukning – dagbog fra biostatens første år, U Press.

Schleicher, A (2018). World Class – how to build a 21^st-Century school system, OECD.

Zizek, S. (2020). Pandemi, Politisk Revy.

Working paper

As a political term, populism has a long and varied history (Abromeit, Chesterton, Marotta, & Norman, 2015). Myriad political incarnations have been described in such ways, particularly in recent history. Encompassing administrations such as the Presidency of Donald Trump, governments and leaders in countries such as Venezuela and Peru, alongside political ‘opponents’ such as Marie Le Penn in France, populism is variously described as ideational (Mudde, 2017), political-strategic (Weyland, 2017), and socio-cultural (Ostiguy, 2017), impinging on the mechanisms of government and governance in relation to individual, group and national identity. Although some ask whether populism is a cause or consequence of democratic deficit (cf. Petrie, McGregor, & Crowther, 2019), now emerging is a desire to identify how populism interacts with democratic education through an analysis of theories for the latter and their relation with and perhaps as a challenge to the former (cf. Mårdh & Tryggvason, 2017). This is especially true given recent political events in Europe; as Mårdh & Tryggvason (2017: 602) state ‘…scholars can no longer afford to ignore the implications of populism in the context of education’.

Dichotomously, populism has been described as corresponding to and forging ever increasing antagonistic relations across western societies, but also as the essence of politics (Sant, Pais, McDonnell, & Alvarez-Hevia, 2017). Importantly, Zembylas (2020) argues that viewing right-wing populism as a result of rampant neoliberalism and globalisation is inadequate for this ignores affectivity in social and political processes and movements. Indeed, categorising populism solely as a right-wing, nationalistic entity is challenged by the rise of left-leaning groups such as Syriza and Podemos (Brubaker, 2020). Although early Latin-American populism emerged via charismatic leaders seeking developmental and redistributive economic policies which undermine the growth of neoliberal populisms in the region (Brubaker, 2020), the conjoining of right-wing populism with neoliberalism misses both what populism is and how is comes into being.

Populism’s recent shift from the political periphery to centre-ground challenges grand narrative views of nationalism in favour of possibly banal, locally defined definitions of the latter which ‘challenge’ democracy (Brubaker, 2020). When attached to race, gender, ethnicity, reproductive rights, justice systems, etc., populism presents a shifting series of statements and counterstatements which bend and shift at will and in response to prevailing social, political, and economic conditions. Its position on the political left-right axis may be more clearly defined locally, but nevertheless is ill-defined between and across borders, as it is subject to localised interpretations. When tied to historic ‘myths’ of nationhood, statehood, and the polity’s place in intra- and inter-country relations and disputes, populism often presents as the antithesis of democratic endeavours in favour of strong (often male) leadership and blatant ‘electioneering’. As Robbins & Bishop (2019) state, a celebration of difference often lauded as the foundation for democracy,  ‘…has become one group’s fodder for participatory forms of democracy, [and] another’s existential threat around which to foster exclusionary politics in the name of a narrowly defined “people.”’

But populism is not built upon a foundation of opposition to democracy per se, but rather rests on challenges to government that willingly, at least for right-wing incarnations, prioritises the rights of minority groups over the (often God Fearing) majority. Left-leaning populism challenges the tenets of neoliberal capitalism as the instigator of nefarious social, political, and economic policies that further disenfranchise ‘ordinary people’. In both scenarios, populism might be referred to as 'the return of the oppressed'; a way for the marginalised to vent anger (Petrie et al., 2019).

Variously built around intersecting axes of the ‘high’ (political elites maintaining power over ‘the people’) and the ‘low’ (manifestations of ‘the people’) with left-right political positioning, populism offers deep connections to social history, group difference, identity and existing or historic resentment (Ostiguy, 2017). However, social grouping often does not correlate well with political identity. Historic views that the left is the province of the ‘working-class’ and the right that of the ‘elite’ is now challenged by populist discourse but also shifts in the orbit of left-right politics (Ostiguy, 2017).

As a matter of social, public, and economic Big-D/Discourse (Gee, 2012) education is subject to and the subject of populist calls. Left-leaning populism often articulates a vision for education centring on the emancipation of ‘the people’ against the forces of naked capitalism while right-leaning populism often seeks to return education to its mechanism for the re-birth of national pride or as an agenda specifically designed to augment calls for a return to ‘moral-ness’. Such calls have emerged in social and political objections to socio-cultural-educational visions such as Critical Race Theory (as seen in some US states) or in strong drives to constrain curricular scope through a return to teaching as the best that has ever been said and done (cf. England). As an organisational feature these reflect an educational vision seeking to deliver justice and progress to the underclass-masses (left-leaning) or re-embolden and reinforce control by those who seek ultimately to return education to the custodian of ‘right-minded’ and ‘right-thinking’ people currently disempowered by the actions of administrators, educators, and commentators ‘captured’ by the narrative of ‘the Other’ (right-leaning). For the latter, as Robbins & Bishop (2019: i) state when writing about Trump’s social media attempts to formulate and sustain an official, acceptable narrative, the result is …’an alphabet soup of very rarely coded nativism, isolationism, conspiracy theories, and wounded white male entitlement’. Alternatively, populism is used to bolster progressive politics that align education and action (Petrie et al., 2019). Both views sustain difference as

…one group’s fodder for participatory forms of democracy, another’s existential threat around which to foster exclusionary politics in the name of a narrowly defined “people” (Robbins & Bishop, 2019: iii).

Petrie et al. (2019) highlight that in the decline of the hegemony of ruling forces, but where new political forms cannot yet be born, 'strong men' appear who channel the collective will of the people to solve the problems of the day. This may lead to either authoritarian measures or progressive political outcomes.

Pedagogy is obviously implicated here. An Anglocentric vision of pedagogy as the methods and practices of teaching fits with both sides: the deployment of ‘officially sanctioned’ method controls professional activity, often towards pre-defined educational outputs (Adams, forthcoming). Such methods rest on ‘evidence’ and ‘best practice’ to return ‘teacher-taught’ interactions to ‘common-sense’ visions that orbit ‘traditional’ versions of education and nation-state building/economic success. Here method offers simple interpretations such as a smorgasbord of ideas or prescriptive and proscriptive approaches to matters of ‘teaching and learning’ (Bell, 2003). Contained here are beliefs that practice is ultimately means directed, so confining pedagogy (and ultimately education) as the means to achieve pre-determined attainment (Adams, forthcoming).

Here, populist approaches signal intent to control curriculum and teaching through ‘acceptable’ methods and practices which are ‘obviously common-sense’ while deriding other forms as ‘progressive’, ‘child-centred’ or ‘unfit’. Here ‘the people’ are identified as those who realise the importance of strong knowledge-based endeavours against an ‘elite’ educated in nefarious pedagogic arts with ‘post-modern’ views of knowledge and facts. In effect, such populist forms hang on the view that ‘we have had enough of experts’, a statement made by Michael Gove during the Brexit debate. This mirrors historic attempts to control and constrain pedagogy, captured through debates between ‘traditional’ and ‘progressive’ approaches.

Set against this is pedagogy as being in and acting on the world with and for others (Adams, forthcoming). With more than a nod to continental/Nordic perspectives, such a pädagogik standpoint favours alternatives to post-industrial, empirically based Anglo-American approaches (Klitmøller, 2018). By shifting emphasis from that undertaken through directive ‘teacher-taught’ relationships, this ‘worldly’ view offers challenges to such an Anglophonic position of methods and practices, instead signalling a shift ‘up-stream’ away from practical endeavours to matters of philosophy and values. For Gough (2012: 46) this ‘…invites us to understand our physical and social worlds as open, recursive, organic, nonlinear and emergent...’.

Here populism offers pedagogy, curiously, hope. The above description of the utilisation of populist narratives to drive singularly technical interpretations of pedagogy deploys at the same time, anti-democratic and democratic challenges. For the former, it seeks to deny agency to those whom populists rail against, usually through dog-whistle politics delivered by ‘credible’ and ‘strong’ advocates (Petrie et al., 2019); what Claxton (2021) describes as the simplicity of methods such as direct instruction through a knowledge rich curriculum. This seeks to elide conversation and has been allied with structural reform to effectively remove democratic oversight (cf. England) or the introduction of ‘consumer choice’ as envisaged by parental choice and free schools (cf. Sweden) or voucher systems (cf. Chile, Madrid). These play to the populist gallery: ‘the people’ know best and ‘common-sense’ dictates. Writing about lifelong learning, Petrie et al. (2019: 490) note that over time such hollowing out has

generated the conditions for ‘epistemological populism’, marked by the open hostility towards intellectuals in democratic life, a studied impatience for complexity in the face of ‘crisis’, and a concomitant valorisation of ‘common sense’ solutions

Alternatively, populism provides for a deepening sense of democracy in that it requires pedagogy to understand its own central tenet: to challenge and deepen educational D/discourses. As Petrie et al. (2019: 491) note, agonistic democracy ‘is based on the ontological proposition that social identities and practices (at any scale) are radically contingent, only secured through the precarious exclusion of other possibilities’. This position highlights how liberal democrats may well seek to engender harmony and contentment, but in fact they themselves often locate ‘the unacceptable Other’, a common adversary. Whereas populism mostly identifies ‘the people’ set against a corrupt ‘elite’ such bifurcation often occurs in liberal democracies as well whether of the left or the right (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985). Provocatively, Petrie et al. (2019) propose that the contingent ‘filling out’ of populist rhetoric could provide the impetus for greater involvement in politics and democratic movements given that ‘politics as normal’ has not resulted in the reigning in of inequality or poverty. A notable example of how populism might be garnered to develop democratic engagement is the Scottish Independence Referendum of 2014 which drew the largest ever voter turnout (Petrie et al., 2019). Robbins & Bishop (2019: iii emphasis added) put it succinctly, this

raises essential questions about not only the durability and elasticity of liberal, representative democracy and civic engagement, but also how people learn to live with this contemporary antagonism and, importantly, with and for each other.

Pedagogy as being in and acting on the world with and for others (Adams, forthcoming) requires a burgeoning of democratic education, not towards an end of simply identifying the importance of voting rights or success at the ballot-box, but rather to understand possible socio-cultural horizons and the means to achieve this. It asks questions about what should be in a public sense whilst challenging simplistic conceptions about effective education. Rather than seek to disavow populism therefore, here pedagogy constantly requires thinking and debate about what it is we do and do not value (Klitmøller, 2018). Such pedagogy is, then,

…not just ‘being in a relationship with a child’– it is also insisting on keeping alive the discussion of what counts as valuable and desirable, even if at times such judgements may seem obvious and self-evident (or perhaps particularly when this is the case). (Klitmøller, 2018: 846)

By acknowledging democracy’s often utilisation of populist tactics rather than seeking to elide these as unacceptable political tactics, such a pedagogy turns from 'how do I get what I want?' to 'how do we go forward in mutual understanding?’

In this paper, I shall attempt to elaborate on these thoughts and ideas to consider how pedagogy might enrich education about/for/through/with democracy through its subversion of hitherto rejected populism. I shall examine how the tenets of populism offer a means to challenge pedagogy as polarisation, instead locating pedagogy as living with and in complexity.

References

Adams, P. (forthcoming). Scotland and pedagogy: moving from the Anglophone towards the continental? Nordic Studies in Education.

Abromeit, J., Chesterton, B. M., Marotta, G., & Norman, Y. (Eds.). (2015). Transformations of populism in Europe and the Americas: History and recent tendencies. London: Bloomsbury Academic.

Bell, D. M. (2003). Method and Postmethod: Are They Really So Incompatible? TESOL Quarterly, 37

(2), 325. doi.org/10.2307/3588507

Brubaker, R. (2020). Populism and nationalism. Nations and Nationalism, 26

(1), 44–66. doi.org/10.1111/nana.12522

Claxton, G. (2021). The Future of Teaching and the Myths That Hold it Back (1st ed.). Abingdon: Routledge.

Gough, N. (2012). Complexity, Complexity Reduction, and ‘Methodological Borrowing’ in Educational Inquiry. Complicity: An International Journal of Complexity and Education, 9

(1), 41–56. doi.org/10.1017/S0007087400014436

Klitmøller, J. (2018). Between ‘pedagogy’ and ‘Pädagogik’: a critique of lived pedagogy. Education 3-13, 46

(7), 838–850. doi.org/10.1080/03004279.2017.1373138

Laclau, E., & Mouffe, C. (1985). Hegemony and socialist strategy: Towards a radical democratic politics. London: Verso.

Mårdh, A., & Tryggvason, Á. (2017). Democratic Education in the Mode of Populism. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 36

(6), 601–613. doi.org/10.1007/s11217-017-9564-5

Mudde, C. (2017). Populism: An Ideational Approach. In C. Rovira Kaltwasser, P. Taggart, P. Ochoa Espejo, & P. Ostiguy (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Populism

(1st ed., pp. 1–25). Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198803560.013.1

Ostiguy, P. (2017). Populism: A Socio-Cultural Approach. In R. C. Kaltwasser, P. Taggart, P. Ochoa Espejo, & P. Ostiguy (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Populism

(1st ed., pp. 73–100). Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198803560.013.3

Petrie, M., McGregor, C., & Crowther, J. (2019). Populism, democracy and a pedagogy of renewal. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 38

(5), 488–502. doi.org/10.1080/02601370.2019.1617798

Robbins, C. G., & Bishop, J. (2019). Against Reactionary Populism: Opening a Needed Conversation in Education: Editorial. Journal of Culture and Values in Education, 2(3), i–vi.

Sant, E., Pais, A., McDonnell, J., & Alvarez-Hevia, D. M. (2017). Social Fantasy vs. Radical Democracy: two competing views of populism and how they challenge education. In Y. Arkbaba & B. Jeffrey (Eds.), The Implications of “New Populism” for Education (1st ed., pp. 41–52). Essex: E & E Printing.

Weyland, K. (2017). Populism: A Political-Strategic Approach. In C. Rovira Kaltwasser, P. Taggart, P. Ochoa Espejo, & P. Ostiguy (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Populism

(1st ed., pp. 48–72). Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198803560.013.2

Zembylas, M. (2020). The Affective Modes of Right-Wing Populism: Trump Pedagogy and Lessons for Democratic Education. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 39

(2), 151–166. doi.org/10.1007/s11217-019-09691-y

Sub-theme: Senses and the Body in Pedagogical Practice

This working paper is a conversation between two authors about the possibilities and limitations of an educational approach that seeks to emphasise educational attunement.

The concept of educational attunement is one that is currently being developed by the first author. At a previous conference presentation, the first author proposed the concept of educational attunement as a potential corrective to, broadly, some of the limitations of technicist educational approaches such as outcomes-based learning, and more specifically, some of the difficulties associated with online learning.

Much of the existing educational literature on attunement comes from educational psychology, in which it has been used as a construct to examine the degree to which teachers are aware of the social dynamics of their classes and the social characteristics of individuals in class. There is also some literature pertaining to cultural attunement with reference to multicultural classrooms, which looks at a teacher’s ability to communicate to students in a way that is compatible with the home cultures which students coem from. However, the idea of attunement that the first author seeks to develop is more aligned to one that might be seen in contexts such as youth mentorship or spiritual directorship, that is, contexts in which a person in authority has a facilitative role in the broader self-development of a person entrusted to their care. A notion of ‘mentor attunement’ has been explored by Julia Pryce (2012), building on work that has been done on attunement in the literature on therapeutic relationships. Based on empirical work, Pryce developed a continuum that distinguished between highly attuned, moderately attuned, and minimally attuned mentors, based on the degree to which they actively sought to adjust to the verbal and nonverbal cues of the youths regarding their concerns, preferences, and emotions.

At that previous conference presentation, the first author developed a tentative conceptualisation of educational attunement suitable for the classroom setting: (1) it involves a teacher’s active desire to understand the interority of students through their verbal and nonverbal cues, (2) it involves a sensitivity not just to the students not merely as they were in the the teaching setting, but also to the students’ world, that is, their experiences outside the classroom, the culture they belong to, and so forth; and, (3) it involves a teacher’s attunement to broader aims of education beyond the specific class; in other words, it requires that the teacher views education as a larger process that transcends the specific objectives of the class or even the discipline, and recognises that the class is only one component of the student’s overall journey towards human flourishing.

A concrete hypothetical example may help to illustrate the potential of educational attunement. Let us suppose that at a university, a tragedy has happened. News has gone around campus that an undergraduate student has suddenly passed away. A teacher working within the framework of a strict outcomes-based approach would make certain adjustments to ensure that the students are still able to attain the learning outcomes of the session, given the known limitations   of the class: some students will be distracted, others will be in shock, or in mourning. A goo  outcomes-based teacher, then, might give the students  more time to accomplish their tasks.

However, this is different from what an attuned teacher would do. An attuned teacher would recognise that the broader meaning of education is not limited only to the desired learning outcomes of the class, or even the module. The attuned teacher might believe that, in its wider sense, education is concerned with students’ human flourishing. In relation to that, the teacher might thus realise that the students are not  in the right frame of mind to be talking about today's learning outcomes at all. Rather, as one who is committed to these broader aims of education, they might decide to completely forego the lesson for the day, and instead use the time to connect to the students on a more human level by asking how they are and offering them the time and space to help each other process the feelings that they have that day, possibly even participating in that process. In other words, based on an attunement to the students’ interior movements, the teacher might decide that their most important educational task for the day’s session is to accompany the students during these difficult moments.

At the moment, the first author is fine-tuning this conceptualisation of educaitonal attunement by drawing on a teaching journal that she herself is keeping as a newly hired member of the teaching staff at a university in England. This working paper seeks to provide even greater clarity to the concept by exploring the limitations of educational attunement. 

An educational approach that emphasises an attunement to students’ interior lives and that perceives education to go beyond merely helping students attain specific, discipline-based objectives, raises the question of what the limits of that approach might be in relation to the teacher’s professional role. The role of the teacher is different from the role of the youth mentor, spiritual director, or therapist, indicating than any concept of educational attunement will also have qualitative differences from those of attunement in those other settings.

Moreover, arguments about the impropriety of intimate relationships between faculty and students also indicate the necessity of reflecting on the professional limitations of such an approach. In an essay about sexual relationships between faculty and students, Amia Srinivasan (2021) suggests that, notwithstanding the assurance of consent, intimate, sexual relationships between teachers and adult students undermine the pedagogical relationship, harming the teacher’s ability to teach well. The teacher has the responsibility, she argues, to deflect students’ desire away from themselves and direct it ‘towards its proper object: [the student’s] epistemic empowerment’. By pointing out the harm that an intimate relationship of a sexual nature might do to the pedagogical relationship, Srinivasan’s argument indicates that in an educational approach that emphasises attunement, it is all the more important for professional limitations to be spelled out. Such an approach is concerned with the students’ interiority and is therefore directed towards more intimate knowledge of students than in conventional educational relationships; this raises the question then of what the limitations ought to be on such an approach. It is hoped that this conversation between the two authors may lead to greater clarity on this question.

References:
Pryce, J. M. 2012. Mentor attunement: An approach to successful school-based mentoring relationships. Child and Adolescent Social Work Journal 29: 285-305. DOI 10.1007/s10560-012-0260-6
Srinivasan, A. 2021. The Right to Sex. Bloomsbury.

Abstract:

In the final years of his life, Bernard Stiegler (1952-2020) took stock of the pharmacological possibility (poison and cure, breakdown and breakthrough) of humanity’s collective intelligence by turning to Russian geochemist Vladimir Vernadsky (1863-1945), Jesuit priest Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955), and biologist Alfred J. Lotka (1880-1949) to account for the history of the biosphere or organic life on the earth and to consider the respective senses of the noosphere in Vernadsky or ‘terrestrial sphere of thinking substance’ in Teilhard. The noosphere – literally mind-sphere - is a concept which emerged in Paris in the 1920s. The mathematician Édouard Le Roy, French philosopher and student of Henri Bergson, Teilhard de Chardin and Vernadsky are all connected with the elaboration of this idea. It is said the idea of the noosphere was raised at the Sorbonne University in the 1920s. The noosphere concept sees life on Earth as a unity constituting the biosphere and geosphere, with the consciousness of life as a unity discontinuous but coextensive with life itself. It describes life’s terrestrial evolution, which subsumes and transforms the biosphere. The human is living matter realised according to Vernadsky. For Vernadsky (1945), the noosphere – the ‘terrestrial zone containing life’ - was construed as negentropic living matter acting upon the earth – a process which resists or slows entropy, and in Teilhard’s theosophy or terrestrial Gnosis, especially in his Le phénomène humain [The Phenomenon of Man] (1955), it was deemed ‘the skin of the earth,’ destined to reach a final spiritual Omega point. What Stiegler took from this was to envisage the noosphere as symbolising negentropic possibility or bioinformational resistance to the entropic tendency of information as it is now disseminated on the World Wide Web. Stiegler stressed that we need to find an affirmative model to the Anthropocene. He proposed the portmanteau concept neganthropocene as an alternative. The focus on negentropy and the neganthropocene (portmanteau of negentropy and Anthropocene) comes amid the mushrooming of a myriad other ‘-cenes’: the Anthropocene, the Holocene, Moore’s Capitalocene, Haraway’s Chthulucene, Hornborg’s Technocene, Parikka’s Anthrobscene, to name but a few. Stiegler put forward the idea of the neganthropocene along with the “ecology of the spirit” as positive motifs to diagnose the existential and psychical reality of the Anthropocene, which is the time of un-knowing (inscient) consciousness. Here there is a direct connection with how to understand sense and the body in pedagogical practice.

Thinking the passage and connection from the biosphere, noosphere, to the technosphere and beyond, to the exosphere (exospherical control technologies or Gestell in Heidegger – now understood as the ring of satellites encircling the globe), Stiegler began to talk of the noetic necromass as emerging from the exosomatic humus, that is, dead living matter or humus housed in vast archives, ancient libraries, schools and universities, in other words, concrete forms of human knowledge or tertiary memory retentions stored and passed down the generations. He foresaw the necessity of a ‘battle of intelligence’ to retrieve from the noetic necromass the ‘improbable’ possibility of producing negentropic knowledge or positive bifurcation. For him, negentropic knowledge or positive bifurcation was a sign of resistance to the homogeneity of thinking, a means to slow the entropy or break up of knowledge. Positive bifurcation was a line of flight that somehow escaped the codification of established paradigms and patterns and could not thereby be anticipated. It expresses the singular as such. Stiegler was increasingly critical and pessimistic about the entropic tendency of Big Data corporations, so-called platform capitalism, and the trend towards algorithmic governmentality, which he claimed destroyed creativity and the possibility of difference as such. One key concept here is the “global mnemotechnical system” which we can understand as a World Brain or noosphere which is toxic in its current iteration but nevertheless has the possibility to produce curative effects. Here Stiegler speaks of the task of the university faced with this global mnemotechnical system: “The mission of universities is to reconstruct deep attention with digital technologies of spirit and mind which are those that implement the global mnemotechnical system at the heart of which psycho-technologies hegemonically submitted to marketing produce effects that are massively toxic, even if it is also possible to locate curative effects.” For Stiegler, the World Wide Web in its current iteration was destroying human knowledge through processes of homogenisation and standardisation through the reliance on algorithmic decision making.

The claim is that if we are given entirely over to information there is a corresponding deficit of knowledge production. According to Husserl, knowledge production has been the traditional preserve of ‘the functionaries of the humanities’, of which philosophy is pivotal. Yet without pedagogical curation, without therapeutic and curative care by the functionaries of the humanities or the archivists of knowledge (savoirs), what we are left with is collective amnesia, a forgetting of the noetic necromass, a crisis of the memory or what Stiegler calls the mnemosyne as such. This is a diminishment of the improbable, or ‘the unhoped-for coming of the immemorial’. 

For Stiegler, ‘the astral figure of humanity’, the project of the becoming-astral of man, the spiritual elevation of (hu)mankind, was imperilled by this tendency. From my perspective, the promise of collective intelligence as espoused by Pierre Lévy is being derailed by a toxic, stupefied ‘collective algorithmic unconscious’ (my suggested concept to explain the mental ecology of the moment) – a process which appears hell bent on disseminating mental pollution of the very worst kind. Lévy is much more euphoric than Stiegler regarding the possibility of collective intelligence. He writes: “[t]here is only one spirit, omnidirectional, interior and exterior, East and West - only humanity. We are only one humanity, all of us’ (my trans): “The more consciousness is awake, the more it is free, the more it discerns potentialities in what is offered to it in contemplation and the more it generates a rich, living world. All of cosmic history is an exploration of potentialities present at the origin. The whole cosmic story is creation and it continues to be creation” (my trans). Through his reading of Gilbert Simondon, Stiegler is at pains to stress that what is at risk is the destruction of the psychic and collective individuation, and with it the collective transindividuation of the noetic necromass. Due to widespread digitisation, Stiegler was concerned that ‘the astral figure of humanity’ was being transformed into a monstrous figure of posthuman becoming.

With this in mind, this presentation offers a rumination on the question of whether we are becoming more autonomous or enslaved by collective intelligence. To answer this, the author considers an array of thinkers to balance and contextualise Stiegler’s concern with the pathological effects of collective unintelligence in the time of new information ecologies. To problematise any unthinking affirmation of planetary computerisation, the presentation questions the (im)possibility of educational emancipation in light of the pharmakon of new knowledge ecologies, (AI, automatism, autonomy, augmented intelligence, cooperative learning, collapse of symbolic and biological life etc). At stake is the question of whether ‘the astral figure of humanity,’ as Stiegler puts it, is imperilled and consequently whether the promise of collective intelligence (affirmed by Pierre Lévy, Guattari, Vernadsky, Teilhard) is derailed by what one can call a toxic, stupefied ‘collective algorithmic unconscious’.

I will explore what sense I can give to the ‘collective algorithmic unconscious’ by exploring a number of thinkers and their concepts. These will be the aforementioned Vernadsky’s and Teilhard de Chardin’s differing senses of the noosphere, Stiegler’s global mnemotechnical system, Pierre Lévy and his concepts of collective intelligence and philosophical humanism, Catherine Malabou and her sense of brain plasticity, Yuk Hui on cosmotechnics and aesthetics in education, Félix Guattari’s notions of universes of reference and Integrated World Capitalism, and H G Wells’s idea of the World Brain.

“Americans swim in a sea of Disney images and merchandise” said Henke (1996, p. 229). “Children can watch Disney videos before they brush their teeth with Disney character
toothbrushes, go to sleep in Beauty and the Beast pajamas, rest their heads on The Little Mermaid pillow cases, check the time on Pocahontas watches, and drift off to sleep listening to
Cinderella sing” (p. 229). Americans are not the only people affected by this global phenomenon, however (Atwal, 2003, p.13).Beyond merchandise, in October of 2021, the Walt Disney
Company reported 118.1 million worldwide subscribers to their newly released streaming service, Disney +, more than 4 times the amount of viewers reported the previous year (The Walt
Disney Company, 2021, p.6). Perhaps originally intended primarily for children, the feature films on this streaming service and elsewhere are “currently being consumed by a large global
audience that crosses language, age, and gender” (Hubka et. al., 2009, p. 430). Perhaps in part because of their ubiquitous and almost unparalleled “availability, influence, and cultural power,”
Disney films seem to “demand that they become part of a broader…discourse” (Giroux, 1996, p. 111).
Part of that broader discourse includes Disney’s singular focus on “adult–child interactions and relationships'' within their animated feature films (Hubka et. al., 2009, 430).
From 1937 to the present day, this focus has shaped how children and adults treat one another (Giroux. 1996. p. 90) and laid the “groundwork for young children's understanding of themselves
and others” (LaCroix, 2004, p. 227). It has since been suggested that the relationship taking place between a student and their teacher can greatly impact children beyond school and well into their
adult lives (Bernstein-Yamashiro & Noam, 2013; Martin & Collie, 2019; Ruzek et. al., 2016).
This concept was added to by Attick (2016) through an exploration of the role that Disney has played in shaping the way educators are viewed. Attick stated, “Most of us… will encounter
more fictional teachers over time… than actual teachers in real classrooms” (2016, p. 140) with Disney not the least of these sources (Morning Consult, 2021, p. 145). These fictitious teachers
are said to leave lasting impressions on the lives of viewers (Burbach & Figgins, 1993).
One possible answer as to why this happens lies “in the development of a better understanding of the power and subtlety of film imagery” (Burbach & Figgins, p. 65).
Recognizing the broad expansion of research currently available on this topic, we acknowledge the profound effect Disney has had on the understanding of who and what a teacher is. This
constitutes a significant contribution to the philosophy of education by analyzing a globally-scaled application of foundational educative thought through academically-grounded
frameworks including Vogler’s analysis of Jungian “mentor” archetypes within Campbell’s “monomyth” framework. Together with adding to the burgeoning discourse around the power of
Disney films mentioned earlier, this paper seeks to identify major teacher archetypes depicted in Disney’s feature-length animated films and to analyze the pedagogical principles and character
traits they embody in order to further understand the implicit messages that are being carried to children about the nature of the student-teacher relationship and the character and role of
teachers generally.

Method
We began our examination of Disney teacher archetypes by limiting our analysis to films which met five key criteria. First, we focused only on Disney’s full-length animated feature films
as these had the greatest global impact and portrayed narrative arcs more suited to Vogler and Campbell’s frameworks. Second, we only analyzed animated films as these are most directly
marketed for children and as such are widely regarded as the sort of entertainment parents allow their children to watch (Asawarachan, 2016, p. 70). Thirdly, we only analyzed original films, that
is, excluding all sequels, as Disney’s original movies are generally more highly regarded and so have greater capacity to influence children’s developing worldviews. Fourth, we excluded
animated films without words or dialogue (e.g. Fantasia) as the actions, reasoning, and descriptions of the characters within them are often portrayed in a way that does not lend itself to
Vogler and Campbell’s monomyth framework. Lastly, because of their significant influence and popularity among audiences, we chose to include Pixar films in our analysis.
Using Vogler’s framework in The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers together with Campbell’s The Hero of a Thousand Faces, we then developed a method to identify which
characters in these films constitute teacher-mentor archetypes. Both Campbell and Vogler describe the role of a mentor as so central to the Hero’s Journey as to often be portrayed as
“speaking the voice of a god or…inspired by divine wisdom” (Vogler, 2007, p. 39). Expanding on Campbell’s idea of the “Wise Old Man/Woman,” we took Vogler’s view that mentors are
more defined by their function in teaching and guiding the hero than by age or physical description. Of the seven dramatic functions which Vogler attributes to the Mentor, teaching is
among a Mentor’s most important and key functions (Vogler, 2007, p. 40). While there are numerous teaching moments that take place in Disney films, these illustrations are more
impactful and leave lasting impressions on viewers when they specifically involve the mentor’s relationship with a hero character or protagonist. Therefore, we primarily focused on
teacher-mentors that fill both the mentor and the teacher archetypal roles as outlined by Vogler.
This means that not only does the teacher need to aid by way of providing explicit instruction to another character, but the character that this instruction is given to must be the hero of the film.
Once we identified the teacher-mentor archetypes in these particular films, we wrote ethnographic portraits of each character, analyzing specific character traits such as age, gender
and personality. We then isolated specific scenes in which these characters explicitly taught the hero character. We then watched and transcribed the dialogue within each of these scenes and
conducted an in-depth, qualitative textual analysis looking for specific themes about teaching, learning, the teacher-mentor relationship and the role of the teacher within the story itself. We
then compared themes across mentor archetypes to look for common threads that appeared repeatedly across these films. While this process of identification, transcription, textual analysis
and thematic synthesis are ongoing, we discuss our preliminary findings briefly in the section below.

Preliminary Findings
Multiple Mentors
In our preliminary analysis, we found that the archetypal Disney hero was often confronted with multiple teacher-mentors competing for the hero's attention. These teachers were often divided into two opposing groups of dark and light mentors (subtypes of the mentor archetype in Vogler’s framework) who would fight for the hero’s attention, allegiance and learning. While dark mentors distracted heroes from the next step of the Hero’s Journey, light mentors attempted to lead the hero down what was clearly depicted in the narrative as the proper
path. It often resulted, then, that the hero’s principle quest became to discern which source was correct. Aligning with a perennial Disney theme of good versus evil, such journeys through
distraction and indecision carried significant moral dimensions into the teacher-mentor archetype. This theme appeals to fundamental questions all children grapple with as they grow
up: Who is telling the truth? Who is pretending? To whom should I listen and give my allegiance and trust? In this sense, each analyzed film presents a lifetime in microcosm in which the hero
teaches (both implicitly and explicitly) the viewer how to make these decisions for themselves.
The early Disney film Pinocchio presents an example of the hero’s struggle between listening to dark and light mentors. Pinnochio begins his journey with a core group of light
teacher-mentors (including Geppetto, the Blue Fairy, and most predominantly, Jiminy Cricket) and learns what he must do to become a real boy. However, once Pinocchio accepts his mission,
he receives conflicting messages from characters like Honest John and Lampwick who do their best to lead him astray. The overt presence of dark and light mentors competing for Pinnochio’s
attention presents a stark dichotomy that could suggest to students that teachers only come in two types: infallibly good or irredeemably evil. The breaking of these archetypes through the lived
experience of encountering teachers whose characters are more nuanced than these archetypes could be potentially jarring to a child’s education more generally.
Inner Mentors 
According to Vogler, inner mentors appear when a hero has “internalized the archetype and it now lives within him as an inner code of behavior” (Vogler, p. 47). In our preliminary
findings we discovered a unique way that Disney has repeatedly woven the inner mentor into their story plots. While remaining an internalized archetype within the hero, the inner mentor is
repeatedly personified in the form of another character.
For example, in Ratatouille, the main teacher-mentor Gusteau appears throughout the film as a representation of the hero’s mind. At 1:13:15 Gusteau tells Remy, “I am a figment of
your imagination. You did not know, how could I?” (Ratatouille, 2007). Despite residing in Remy’s mind, Gusteau is physically represented as a separate character that teaches Remy. In
Pinocchio, Jiminy Cricket plays the role of Pinnochio’s conscience, personifying an inner voice pointing the hero toward right decisions. When Simba is reminded of his rightful calling, the
strength and knowledge inside of Simba is made visible through the reflection of Mufasa himself in the water.
This theme led us to wonder what messages are being related to children when inner mentors are physically represented. Is the inner mentor so valuable that Disney was compelled to
represent it in such a pronounced way? Physically representing an idea is potentially more accessible to young children’s understanding. It is also worth considering that portraying the
inner mentor in this way externalizes the source of learning and could amount to an implied condemnation of autodidactism in the rising generation.

The Learning Process
Both Campbell and Vogler outline the Hero’s Journey and include a mentor’s influence as an essential element to the story. Throughout our preliminary investigation into Disney mentors,
we have discovered a salient pattern that occurs within the teacher-mentor’s story arc (see Image 1.1). This pattern begins with the mentor-teacher presenting the hero with a lesson. This lesson
can be a call to action, a reminder of the hero’s future responsibilities, or simply the teacher informing the hero of something new to them. This lesson is minimally received by the hero. The
hero often continues a previous course of action, unchanged and unaffected by the mentor’s influence. The teacher then realizes that they must deepen their instruction in the hopes of
inducing the hero to change their ways or alter their thinking.
After this, the teacher-mentor’s efforts are then fully rejected by the hero. This is more significant than the first rejection as the hero has more understanding regarding the weight of the
challenge presented by the mentor. This refusal to listen typically comes from a realization that what the teacher-mentor has asked the hero to do is difficult or uncomfortable to carry out. When
this refusal takes place, the mentor expresses frustration which leads to a separation between the hero and the teacher-mentor. This most commonly occurs because the hero either runs away or
begins to follow a path that the mentor cannot morally condone.
During this time of separation away from the mentor, the hero often experiences a turning point in which they realize the error of their ways. This results in them changing course to follow the proper
hero’s path. The hero’s change of heart then leads them to accept the lessons they received before, resulting in the mentor and the hero being reunited. Once the hero and the teacher are reunited, the hero’s learning is solidified and internalized.
Figure 1.2 illustrates this pattern in The Sword in the Stone.

Conclusion
It is our hope to engage conference participants in dialogue about the potential implications of Disney teacher archetypes for the philosophy of education more broadly conceived.

References

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Attick, D. (2016). Images of teachers: Disney channel sitcoms and teachers as spectacle. Counterpoints (New York, N.Y.), 477, 137-147. https://www.jstor.org/stable/45157192

Atwal, K., Millwood-Hargrave, A., Sancho, J., Agyeman, L., & Karet, N. (2003). Where are the children? deconstructing the ontario autism program. Ryerson University Library and
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Introduction

Henri Bergson (2010), Michel Foucault (1995), Marc Augé (1995), Michel de Certeau (1988), Zygmunt Bauman (1998) and more recent theoreticians – Ian Buchanan, Gregg Lambert (2005), Katharine Malabou (2005) – and some other scholars rethink a new perception of space and time, which is very important to understanding school culture. From thinking about manipulation by power they move toward a new perception of time as an inner duration, considering diachronic time and time plasticity for the sake of creativity, and in the same way moving from the limitation of space by power toward non-space, transitional space, virtual space, space of others, etc. In that way people can escape control that paralyzes liberal and creative process of living. Deleuzoguattarian inventions toward humanity related to space and time are especially interesting and worth to consider, and even to take as grounds for the further investigations of future education culture. The intrigue of Deleuze and Guattari’s theory is the concept people-yet-to-come (2013), which gives a kind of key for rethinking the future. Who are the people-yet-to-come? Are they the people of the future, or of the present? The concept seems perfect for discussing such a difficult and sometimes schizophrenic situation and position of the teachers as well as students (Webb, 2015), which are required to solve current problems, be oriented to the future, and to take into account the lessons from the past, to be related to their localities as well as to the global space, operating with the concepts and perceptions of time and space in both traditional and novel ways. The term of the Anthropocene, which is entering the discourse of educational science, gives more room for understanding the perception of time and space, new features of the present society, and especially prognosis of schools in the future. The recently published book Education, The Anthropocene and Deleuze/Guattari (Cole, 2022) inspires us to rethink this junction between the Anthropocene and people-yet-to-come in relation to a new understanding of time and space. In Cole’s words, the Anthropocene is seen in the “Deleuze/Guattari term as the future rupturing the present” (ibid, annotation on back cover). The people-yet-to-come are seen in the future perspective, but it is misleading to think that they are only people of the future. Following interpreters of French philosophers Deleuze and Guattari (Hroch, 2014; Cole 2014) they are living among us now. These people can’t be described through the perspective of divided time; they are in becoming and moving from the past to the future permanently, without any possibility to draw clear divisions.

The questions arise: Why should we destroy such a useful and pragmatic educational culture tool – divisions between the past, present and future, between the global and local, natal and cosmic, real and potential, territorial and deterritorialized, and why do we need to avoid polarization, dichotomies, and classifications, which are still strong in educational documentations and regulations? What kind of people are we educating for the future? To answer these questions, I will (1) present a definition of the concept people-yet-to-come in the future educational perspective, focusing on space and time, (2) discuss this concept in the context of the Anthropocene, and (3) present interviews with scholars on the issue. Their released imagination will aid us in finding the main prognosis of school future, focusing time, space, and people-yet-to-come as the foundation of a school community.

People-Yet-To-Come: In Between Times and Spaces

Deleuze and Guattari, in their criticism of capitalism, say “We lack creation. We lack resistance to the present. The creation of concepts in itself calls for a future form, for a new earth and people that do not yet exist” (Deleuze, Guattari, 1994, 108). It seems that they describe future people as those who are coming and still not existing, but later on we find that these people are defined as being in becoming. They are “becoming-people.” Becoming, thus, means a permanent process of Infinitive Now (Bogue, 2011).

This becoming allows us to perceive the dynamics of time and, following Deleuze’s predecessor Henri Bergson (2010), the inner duration of time, as well as the dynamic of life, creation, the changeable state of things, people etc. It brings potentiality, creation, novelty, resistance. “Deleuze and Guattari’s plea for a people-yet-to-come does not presume that the pedagogical or political process of transformation at work is one through which pre-existing (though not – yet-existing) ‘people’ will come to adopt a pre-existing “idea” over time. Rather, they understand the people present in the present as already the ‘people-yet-to-come’” (Hroch, 2014, 50). Hroch, as well as Cole (2014), sees these people as nomads, perpetually in movement, both in the physical and mental sense (Braidotti, 2013).

Cole in his book Education, The Anthropocene, and Deleuze/Guattari (2022) discusses the future of pedagogy in the Anthropocene, mainly related to climate change issues. Pretending to capture the immanence of the Anthropocene, based on the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari and through an “expanded time dimension as now (Nx)” (ibid, 19), Cole turns to a new perception of time. In Cole’s words, time in the Anthropocene is very specific, it is an atomic time and a naturally flowing time that would be “beyond human measurement, linearity, and imposition on the complex unfolding in and of time (as a thing apart)….” (ibid., 94). “Atomic time” stands to define the time after 1945, after the dropping of the atomic bomb, and on the other hand it is a historical continuation of atomic theory and its developments for “separating and individualizing us as atoms” (ibid., 86). It is a “dark time” of climate change, based on the fragmentation and destructive activities of humanity; nevertheless, it can be turned toward the direction of escape from such a predicament through the use of collectivity, and connectivity with the flow of forces.

As well as the flow of forces, the movement of people also acquires a new specificity. In  Buchanan and Lambert’s view (2005), the young generation is not connected to place as it was in the past. They are mostly in a transitory position, virtual communication or in a “non-place” and “non-space,” following the ideas of Augé (1995). Such are the peculiarities of the nowadays’ globalized world and speed of life. It establishes connectivity between a group of elements and at the same time can change connectivity by abandoning or integrating other elements (virtual and actual, material and ideal), thus changing its space assemblage. In other words, it marks a permanent change of territorial assemblages, a search for the resonance of elements, and consequently events, which can have a radical effect on the circumstances. “Deleuzean space is not above and beyond nor is it inside or outside, but rather self-referential in its time as an event” (Dewsbury and Thrift, 2005, 105). This may be understood as a new spatial feature of education, reality which combines virtual and actual.

In discussing the concept of people-yet-to-come, Cole sees them as people reinventing themselves through experimentation and imagination, in that sense becoming a new kind of people (ibid, 147–148). Exactly these people should find or already have found new paths that are not in sync with green capitalism and the main political strategy; they behave using drives, which created the Anthropocene, though in the contra direction.[1] Turning one’s mind onto non-linear and ruptured perceptions of time is an especially strong tool in education, which, in Cole’s words, provides “non-linear escape routes through education” (2022, 147). These people are the people everywhere, because in the Anthropocene “there is nowhere to hide” (ibid. 152). Space becomes smooth both in the cataclysmic sense and in the sense of the unavoidable participation and activity of all groups, including the groups which were marginalized for many years, like the indigenous, shamans, sorcerers etc., sometimes described as more-than-human (Abram, 1997; Malone, 2018). They should also be included in this smooth life space of the Anthropocene.

These ideas toward the future of education and the future people are reconsidered in a few radically different directions and draw different portraits: some are based on fantasy and imagination – in the dystopian or merely creational-artistic and metaphorical perspective – and yet others are based on the absolutely different (and very practical) way of movements of youth activists, like those of Fridays for Future (social movement initiated by Greta Thunberg)

Keeping my research at a distance from portraits of cyborgs (humans-machines) (Haraway, 1991) and more-than-humans (those extending their abilities through nature) (Malone, 2018), as they are described a lot already, I find important to mention portraits of strange beings, which gives space to the imagination: kind of monstrous, beasties with no clear location and identification (Levis, Kahn, 2010). Such is the privilege of exopedagogy. “Exopedagogy exists in an unhomely home—an uncanny, imaginary location that is neither inside nor outside, self nor other” (2010, 13). Outlining unsafety and stressing the exceptional in favor of the traditional, normal, or easily recognizable, Tyson E. Levis and Richard Kahn draw an imaginary project, a vision of living in a different world filled with exceptional creations. It sounds a little scary, quite different from the much more “friendly” or at least neutral Deleuzeoguattarian concept of the people-yet-to-come, though Levis and Kahn’s intention is not to paint some apocalyptical picture but, on the contrary, to emphasize the openness of our mind to the difference.

                     A manifestation of the future people is also evident in the movement of youth activists, especially climate activists, relating pandemic situation to the crisis of climate. They use the drive of affectation to increase their power and make their voices heard. They fight for realistic scenarios, without imagining any monstrosity but rather thinking of the planet’s safety. These young people are active in creation and initiatives and tend to take responsibility for their actions, though their ability to do that is doubted (Koupannou, 2020). Hannah Arendt in 1960s argued that education stems from a connection between adults and children, somewhere in between and the purpose of educator is to intervene between the old and the new (Arendt, 2006). However she believed in educational power of adults and youth activists demonstrate revolutionary attitudes taking responsibility for themselves and others and keeping adults at a distance. This raises some questions about the ambitions and maturity of young people, mostly school students to take responsibility for the global and political decision making. Can we say that these activists are people-yet-to-come? No doubt. There are no limited descriptions of people-yet-to-come; moreover, the concept and its contents can be subject to change at any time.

Releasing the Imagination of Present-Day People: Concerning People-Yet-To-Come

For the analysis of how we can treat the future of society and education, 6 experts were interviewed on the topic. This research is part (first step) of broader scenario development for the future school in Lithuania. The experts consist of a sociologist, sociolinguist, IT specialist, biologist, philosopher, and astrophysicist-paleontologist. All are related to the educational field by any special aspect (research interest, non-formal education, etc.), though not directly, while some of them work at universities. Their age range is from 35 to 43 years old. I expected to grasp potentially and/or virtually projected insights for the future – conscious or unconscious - by raising semi-structural questions. The interview consists of several thematic items related to the future. I am focusing on time and space perception of future generation, especially people taking part in education.

The results give a broad picture of educational and school future, partly corresponding with the insight of the abovementioned theoreticians, yet partly diverging from their views, sometimes strongly criticizing such radical imaginational portraits of future education and people in education as well as unmasking manipulations based on time and space concepts. However, some of the interviewees presented quite novel imaginations on time and space in school culture, as well as different portraits of people that might become involved in creating school culture in the future.

References:

Abram, D. (1997) The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World. New York: Vintage Books.

Arendt, H. (2006) Between Past and Future. New York: Penguin Publishing Group.

Augé, M. (1995) Non-places. Introduction to Anthropology of Postmodernity. Transl. J. Howe. London-New York: Verso.

Bauman, Z. (1998). Globalization: the human consequences. (New York: Columbia University Press)

Bergson, H. (2010) The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, Inc.

Bogue, R. (2011) Deleuze and Guattari and the Future of Politics: Science Fiction, Protocols and the People to Come. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/273355673_Deleuze_and_Guattari_and_the_Future_of_Politics_Science_Fiction_Protocols_and_the_People_to_Come [accessed May 10 2022].

Braidotti, R. (2013). The Posthuman. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Buchanan, I. (2005). Space in the Age on Non-Place. In: Deleuze and Space. Deleuze Connections, I. Buchanan, G. Lambert (Eds.), 16–36. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Cole, D. R. (2014). Inter-collapse…Educational Nomadology for a Future Generation. In: Deleuze and Guattari, Politics and Education. For a People-Yet-to-Come. Eds. M. Carlin, J. Wallin. New York, London: Bloomsbury, pp. 77–95.

Cole, R. D. 2022.  Education, the Anthropocene and Deleuze, Guattari. Bloomsbury Academic.

Deleuze, G. and F. Guattari. 1994. What is Philosophy? Trans. H. Tomlinson and G. Burchell, New York: Columbia University Press.

Deleuze, G., Guattari, F. (2013). A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. B. Massumi, London, New Delhi, New York, Sydney: Bloomsbury.

De Certeau, M. (1984). The Practice of Everyday. Trans. S. Rendall, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press.

Dewsbury, J. D. and Thrift, N. (2005) “Genesis Eternal”: After Paul Klee in Deleuze and Space. Deleuze Connections, Eds. Ian Buchanan, Gregg Lambert. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Foucault, M. (1995) Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Books.

Gamble, Ch., N., Hanan J. S. & Nail T. (2019). What is New Materialism? Angelaki, 24:6, 111–134, DOI: 10.1080/0969725X.2019.1684704.

Haraway, D. J. (1991). A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century, In: Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge.

Hroch, P. (2014). Deleuze, Guattari and Environmental Pedagogy and Politics: Ritournelles for a Planet-yet-to-Come. In: Deleuze and Guattari, Politics and Education. For a People-yet-to-Come. Eds. M. Carlin, J. Wallin. New York, London: Bloomsbury, pp. 49–77.

Kouppanou, A. (2020) Environmental education and Children’s Agency at the Time of the Anthropocene.  Journal of Philosophy of Education.

doi.org/10.1111/1467-9752.12483

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Posthuman Age. New York: Palgrave, Macmillan.

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Friendliness in Cities. London: Palgrave, Macmillan.

Malabou, K. (2005) Plasticity. The Promise of Explosion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Webb, P. T. (2015). Fucking Teachers. Deleuze Studies. Guattari. Schizoanalysis. Education. Eds. G. Thompson, D. Savat. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 9 (3), pp. 437–452.

Introduction

The concept of education is traditionally closely linked to the concept of self-development, self-perfection or at least self-improvement. Due to enormous progress in digital technology in the last decades, possibilities of comprehensive and fast data collection and evaluation have become part of our daily routine. One's own life is digitally recorded, numerically represented, and analysed in (almost) all its facets. This may be understood as a natural development, tracking the data from the daily morning jog cannot be that bad an idea. However, the implementation of such applications in schools, often recognizing them as already employing cultural techniques, is imminent. The resulting debate is characterized by its polarity, intensity, and a time pressure that I consider to be very serious. One party deems increasing digitalisation to be an inevitable progress that offers unprecedented opportunities and expresses their fear that not partaking in this development would result in disadvantages in global comparison. The other party considers the use of digital media in the educational system to be categorically counterproductive and anticipates a negative influence on learning opportunities; indeed a “dulling” of pupils is prophesied in certain incredulous books. It goes without saying that both sides of this debate have been exaggerated here; of course, there are more moderate voices in this discourse. In this paper, the possible liaison between increasing digitisation in schools and successful educational experiences will be explored, introducing the concept of resonance (as coined by Hartmut Rosa in his work Resonance: A Sociology of Our Relationship to the World) and embedding it in an educational context.

Where are we?

The questions that schools and universities must ask themselves today are certainly not easy ones. How can we educate our children so that they are able to find their place in the economy of the 21st century? How can we educate our children so that they develop a sense of their culture, home and identity while being integrated parts of a global society? And: How do we navigate education when seeing each other in person is not an option, as was the case during the Covid-19 pandemic?

The answers of the current education system to these questions are flawed, unsuitable to equip children with what they need for their future and leave the system unprepared to adopt to challenges. Children are still “trained” instead of “educated” according to the principles of past times, more specifically the intellectual culture of the Enlightenment and the economic principles of industrialization. In the German language, there exists the differentiation between ausbilden and bilden, distinguishing the specific training for a profession (which is geared to developing skills that prove practical everyday life) from the broad education that is not concretely applicable in workaday life (or so it seems), but that revolves around understanding the past, shaping the present and cogitating about the future. Training here may be understood as “instruction and practice aimed at reaching a particular level of competence or operative efficiency. As a result of training, we are able to respond adequately and appropriately to some expected and typical situation.” (Dearden 1984, p. 58). Training equals practicing the tried and tested method of reaching a certain goal (be that flying a plane or solving a specific type of equation). Meanwhile, education remains a more nebulous term, often associated with character building, becoming a citizen, and deep reflections. I would like to strengthen the aspect of creation, compared to application of already existing principles, tools, or thoughts. According to Emerson, education helps us to “animate” dimensions of the world around us and very much focuses on the importance of creating instead of drilling when it comes to college education (see Emerson 2000, p. 51).

“At its best, education develops the capacities for seeing possibilities and for relishing the world across borders we might otherwise not have dared to cross. Education must lead us beyond these borders if it is to be more than training for a role that has already been allocated to us by the powers that be.” (Roth 2015, p. 5, emphasis by the author).

Public education itself was a revolutionary idea: previously, there had been no tax-financed, free education, nor was there compulsory schooling. During the founding of schools, the idea of intelligence as it was at the time of the Enlightenment, was implemented in the system. Accordingly, “real” intelligence would be understood as and measured by the ability to reason deductively, made apparent by the knowledge of old classics, especially ancient literature and philosophy. This idea is partly still anchored in the spirit of our school system: whoever manages to manoeuvre the system with success is attributed more intellectual abilities than someone who has troubles doing so. And at the same time, it is not a system that makes success easy: based on an organizational principle inspired by industrialism, schools are structured through separation of subjects in disunited institutions and isolated rooms (see Foucault’s term enclosure; the “specification of a place heterogeneous to all others and closed in upon itself” with the goal of distributing individuals in space to exercise discipline, Foucault 1995, p. 141). Children are being educated in bundles, passing through the system in groups of the same age, being divided and re-sorted at certain age points. The success of the children with regard to the given, standardized curriculum is measured by equally standardized tests and compared internationally without taking any influencing factors of individuals, schools or locations into account. The fact that this system does not contribute to a successful learning experience, but instead amounts to memorization under pressure, can be seen in the health of the pupils and students[1]. These obvious problem areas of the school system cannot be justified by anything at present, they are not a bitter pill to swallow if one wishes to create an educated youth. On the contrary: in the past it was certain that if you worked hard enough, made an effort in school and had a successful degree in your pocket, a job was automatically as good as secure. There was a stable job market for which one could prepare oneself, work towards a profession and most likely work in that desired profession for a long time. This guarantee can now no longer be given. No one knows which professions will disappear, which new fields will be created and how soon all these changes will take place. One can speculate about the upcoming demands in the work field; however, the meaning of school is no longer the same. The methods and techniques have remained as rigid as if nothing had changed, but without the former security of arriving in the professional market as well, they have lost their justification more and more.

A glimpse into the future

Global society is a secularized and increasingly interconnective, network-like community based on rational principles. A succinct understanding of human beings as rational is prominent, stating that they seek the greatest personal advantage in all matters. The utilitarian philosophy of life quite resembles the rational-choice theory: man acts rationally, i.e. in accordance with the rules of the markets and weighs both effort and result (see Schirrmacher 2014). Particularly critical voices ascribe to him the ability to rationalize even feelings such as love to a cost-benefit game in which successful teamwork is essential in that both parties can gain advantages from being together. From this point of view, education is nothing more than a way to secure advantages in the game that is the job market (and, in a broader context, society). It thus degenerates “[...] to the strategic safeguarding of one's own well-being without foresighted consideration for the survival conditions of the coming generations: the education of the coming generation is reduced to the equipment for the fight for participation in the power to save as much of the diminishing cake as possible for itself in the national and global distribution struggle.” (Dauber 1997, p. 35, translated by the author). The principles that guide our schooling, the grades, the discipline and the rigidity of the syllabus, are (re-)producing this competitive attitude. Moreover, our school system is structured in such a way that adapted, efficient students with the ability to learn by heart are particularly successful. It produces anemically drilled and over-bred efficiency-technocrats (see Precht 2015, p. 87) who plan on polishing their resumes with what they think employers want to see from them.

The topicality of this debate between training-as-education or “education” becomes obvious when one considers that a significant upheaval in the education system is imminent. Many current thinkers are proclaiming a change that will result in the long-term transformation of our world; there is even talk of the greatest upheaval in our society in 200 years (see Precht 2016). It is all about a radical implementation of sophisticated digital technologies into one's own life, about the rise of artificial intelligence (hereafter abbreviated AI). This so-called 4th Industrial Revolution reinforces a world view shaped by instrumental reason; an ideology already (partially) discussed earlier. This manifests itself in new technology: self-observation and evaluation, or lifelogging, depicted by some as a new cultural technique. Naturally, when maximizing the advantages and benefits is the ultimate goal, minute attention concerning the self is not only understandable but respectable. And the more knowledge can be accumulated, the better, because only with precise information can one improve their performance.

Self-evaluation itself is not a new phenomenon; people have always observed and described themselves, whether by keeping diaries, by self-portraits or by listing all income and expenditures in their book of household accounts. Now, however, this self-evaluation has been given a new objective, namely that of remedying deficiencies. Lifelogging is an efficiency technique, appropriate for a “society under pressure to optimise” (Selke 2014, p. 77). We are familiar with lifelogging as an app that records our jogging route on a digital map, as a wristwatch that measures our pulse, analyses our calorie intake, our sleep cycle and counts our steps. The human being can be displayed numerically, can identify deficiencies and work specifically on their improvement (for example, adjusting the composition of the daily calorie requirement from proteins, carbohydrates and fats). This recognised method of self-measurement is still only practised in private life, but the incorporation of such techniques into the public education system is seen as the solution to how to deal with the upheavals caused by AI. So-called learning analytics are the algorithmic recording of a learning process and can document data-based information about learning behaviour, learning activities and attitudes in real time. Student observation systems are developed on the basis of AI and techniques such as “[...] eye tracking, speech and gesture recognition or augmented reality are being used. [I]t is investigated how these can be applied in learning and working scenarios in a meaningful way ... For example, by measuring the temperature of the face with infrared cameras, the stress of learners can be determined. The combination of such data sources with intelligent algorithms, such as deep learning methods, enables completely new insights into individual and group dynamic learning processes.” (Hensinger 2018, p. 39, translated by the author).

The hope that explicitly measured students, supported by a perfectly aligned algorithmic teaching agent will also show better performance and compensate for the uncertainties of the future economic system seems to be too short-term. The benefit and usability of “education”, as it is found in the efficiency thinking of modernity, will play a subordinate role. The British philosopher Alfred Whitehead explains in his essay on education that “[c]ulture is activity of thought, and receptiveness to beauty and humane feeling. Scraps of information have nothing to do with it. A merely well-informed man is the most useless bore on God's earth.” (Whitehead 1967, p. 1). In a world with impending upheavals in the workplace and no job guarantees, incredibly complex challenges in the environmental and political sphere concerning liberty, equality and civilisation, there is nothing we need less than the insular bureaucrats that come from education-as-training. Scraps of information, that is exactly what one accumulates about themselves through lifelogging in educational institutions. The integration of data-based self-measurement in schools will not be educational, but purely informative. However, it is very important to stress that being informed alone will not be the appropriate way to deal with the challenges of the future. While attempts are still being made in the same old school system to make the future more accessible through subjects such as programming, the effectively important characteristics are largely ignored: it is nothing but scraps of information that are taught. The methodology of teaching would become even more detailed and numerically representable through the introduction of learning tracking, but it would remain unchanged.

Proponents of lifelogging state that nowadays, data is knowledge, and knowledge famously is power, which then enables societal progress. Yet, knowledge alone does not appear to be sufficient if one takes a look at the labour market of the future. AI can retain incredible amounts of information and has learning skills unmatched by those of human beings. AI is even catching up in more complex cognitive skills, with machine learning as a separate branch in research. The quest for individual competitive advantage via scraps of information - the quantitative increase in data collection - is no longer truly helpful in securing one’s future. Though, it needs to be stressed that the application of AI agents in educational institutions is not inevitable, but the result of societal decisions. The objective of improvement comes before the use of enhancement technologies. Therefore, the question must be asked what capabilities and forms of performance enhancement are desired. “Technology is never deterministic “(Harari 2018, p. 42), the shaping of the future, the ideas and wishes we have for it are directly related to the school system in which we prepare young people for this very future.

Reimagining modern schooling

It can be assumed that in a school system that is supposed to meet the challenges of the future, humanistic aspects of education (rather lost in the current system) will gain a new relevance. Hence, “[…] higher education is to be an intellectual and experiential adventure and not a bureaucratic assignment of skill capacity” (Roth 2015, p. 8). It will be of great importance to provide not only information-based but also emotional education, character building, intellectual adventure, and room for experimentation.

So, what could an educational idea look like in which the hectic pace and competition of modernity is not attributed any significance? An educational concept characterised by leisure and resonance can be the necessary readjustment of our perspective!

Lack of resonance in society and the educational system
The sociologist Hartmut Rosa analyses in his book Resonance – A Sociology of Our Relationship to the World the connections modern man has to his environment in a very detailed and enriching manner. Drawing on Bourdieu, he states that every person has certain kinds of capital, not only financial, but also social, cultural, health, aesthetic or educational. In our society, it seems crucial to develop this capital permanently, through social events, visits to museums, healthy nutrition or botox. Nowadays, a successful, happy life is equated with a good supply of resources, i.e. a lot of capital at all levels. The expansion of these resources is a permanent, obligatory life project - and one that exerts great pressure on individuals. The rush for self-improvement, “[t]he constantly present feeling of being driven by markets, innovations, competition and rivals, the fear of being left behind immediately and losing everything, one could only allow oneself a break, the fatalistic idea that one is not the designer of the future but can only react to its challenges, the approval of a world in which supposedly the constraints and the ever threatening competitor hardly allowed for reflection and alternatives - all this sabotages any thought of phases of calm and reflection. (Liessmann 2017, p. 26, translated by the author). Rosa’s starting point is the realization that the quality of human life (and thus of the social conditions in which this life takes place) cannot be understood and measured according to available options and resources, but rather requires an examination of the relationship between man and the world (see Rosa 2019). On the contrary, the modern logic of everlasting accumulation becomes a burden, leaving human beings with dimmer ways of relating to the world.

“In this way – and this is the central argument with which I am concerned here – the dominant strains of sociology, philosophy, and happiness studies contribute to making [an unsuccessful] attitude toward life appear to be the natural, normal, and rational mode of relating to the modern world.” It is a failed experience of the world “[…] because it allows the subject to approach the world without relating to it, as a dead resource and malleable object, thus inhibiting the process of adapting to the world, which is the only way individuals become capable of experiencing themselves as alive, rich, and ‘sustained’ …” (Rosa 2019, p. 46f.).

At the same time, the feeling of inner emptiness is no longer an isolated phenomenon. Burnout is the peak of exhaustion, alienation, and lack of positive connection with the world: a circumstance described by Charles Taylor with regard to the increasing secularization of modernity. He defines experiences of harmony and fulfillment as well as experiences of estrangement and desolation as the two basic modes of experiencing the world, that are on opposing extremes on the scale of being-situated-in-the-world (as Rosa would say).

And these modes of experiencing the world can be seen in an educational context: relating to the world at school (the environment as well as the content) as a dead resource, or in the case of successful experiences: oceanic moments of fulfillment, feeling borne by the world, relating to content out of sheer pleasure. The imperative of the educational system as it is now, in which a lagging behind (i.e. not understanding the curriculum, a bad grade, etc.) immediately has negative consequences, cannot and could not accommodate an pedagogy inspired by resonance. There are hectic and restlessness; all capacities of the pupils are to be exploited, the output of the educational institutions is to be increased. The implementation of intelligent tutoring systems would underline these principles and enhance the grip they have on the students. Education and learning lack any possibility of curiosity, desire for knowledge, fascination, or enjoyment of the beautiful.

Rediscovering resonance

Rosa argues that a fixation on resources that lacks any possibility of rest, leisure and reflection does not lead to a happy life. He introduces the concept of resonance: Resonance takes this struggle on all levels and draws a picture of openness, communication with the world and inner belonging. The things that trigger one’s resonance are subjective, it can be anything besides theatre, art, music, nature, other people, or ideas - the solely crucial aspect is that we are to be absorbed in the moment, that time no longer plays a role. In a world full of possibilities for self-optimization it is difficult to reach this time-independent state. In order to counteract alienation, one cannot force resonance, but one can create own preconditions in order to take advantage of the possibilities that the world offers. Thus, Rosa does not generally plead for more slowness in general, but rather for influencing one's own basic attitude. Anxiety, stress, and time pressure are factors that radically minimize the probability of entering a resonance relationship. It is important to allow for sensitivity and empathy - this is how we manage to construct favourable conditions for such a subject-world relationship.

This principle should be integrated into our understanding of education. Education can “[...] be an opportunity for the individual to find and form his or her own identity in the self-active confrontation with the world” (Dauber 1997, p.27). For this, however, the possibilities and freedoms for a view of the world are needed. Humanistic education is irreconcilable with the idea of disenchanted chunks of information being taught in schools. Education is a complex, adaptive, organic process - not an industrial one. Every educational institution is a living community of people with individual relationships, biographies, and personalities. Every school has its own “feeling”, its own rituals and routines, its own myths, stories, jokes and rules of behaviour and its many subcultures of friends and factions (see Robinson 2015, p. 66).

Students today have their own values that they want to try out, to live out. New standards of solidarity, tolerance and openness often apply among young people. In order to explore these, they need room for manoeuvre. The human being is not an object, he has the possibility to unfold and develop his abilities: apart from certain physical and biological parameters, these are individual talents, abilities, interests and energies. They are nothing external to man, he does not face them “[...] in the attitude of mere acceptance, so that they would be nothing but an object of contemplation for us, for example.” (Stolzenberg, Ulrichs 2010, p. 191). They are included in a development through activity, we do something with them and thus also from them. Realities arise from pure potential. Here the idea of self-design is present, similar to self-optimization by means of digitalization. In Nietzsche's educational concept there is also self-realization in the sense of self-improvement, he calls it overcoming the self. But there is one notable difference: our educational system trains the skills that are in demand on the labour market and in competition with other people in our society, creating a society characterised by the imperatives of advancement and acceleration. The implementation of digital possibilities of self-measurement only supports these processes, it reinforces them. Nietzsche, however, spoke of developing the “best forces” of an individual. He argued against referring the self-conquest of education to skills that “[...] allow us to survive the struggle for life and survival” (Stolzenberg, Ulrichs 2010, p. 192). The virtues that Nietzsche instead emphasizes for this self-development, which accompany this process and develop through it, are honesty, cheerfulness, and constancy - not speed, efficiency, and accuracy.

Rosa employs the idea of a responsive relationship using termini of Sigmund Freud, using the notion of a structural model of the psyche that suggests a assimilative process (superego versus appetitive id) through our ego is borne. Resonance then is described as a multidimensional process that plays out between different psychological levels, the physical and mental spheres of the subject, and between the self and the world (see Rosa 2019, p. 198f.). The body and mind, the self and the world surrounding the self enter what Rosa calls an energetically charged form of contact (see ibid.) This interaction between the ego and the world may be presented as a resonant relationship; a mutual connection of sincere depth, a mutual questioning and answering. And resonant relationships are crucial in schooling: “The mind is never passive; it is a perpetual activity, delicate, receptive, responsive to stimulus. You cannot postpone its life until you have sharpened it. Whatever interest attaches to your subject-matter must be evoked here and now; whatever powers you are strengthening in the pupil, must be exercised here and now…” (Whitehead 1967, p. 6). Instead of assuming that knowledge can be extensively filled into pupils and students, instead of further standardization, a reflection on freedom of interest, possibilities of leisure and individual care without direct fear of negative consequences in case of first failures seems highly advisable.

Conclusion
“In an age of seismic technological change and instantaneous information dissemination, it is more crucial than ever that we not abandon the humanistic frameworks of education in favor of narrow, technical forms of teaching intended to give quick, utilitarian results.” (Roth 2015, p. 10).

Digitization in all its facets seems inevitable, almost a deterministic technology of the future, to which we must surrender, otherwise we will lose touch with the rapid progress. The techniques of self-measurement, the desire to improve the self and objective analysis through numbers are not per se condemnable or dangerous. However, the irresponsible incorporation of methods such as lifelogging, learning tracking or similar into the current educational system cannot be done in the interests of children and young people. The education system follows principles of quantifiability and standardisation, which run the risk of being only further removed from the actual concept of education by such advanced forms of self-optimisation. The basic assumptions of the introduction of digital self-improvement in educational institutions, however, follow an image of man (homo economicus) and a social principle of rationality and the compulsion to improve performance, which is difficult to reconcile with the concept of education presented last. It is obvious that the possibility of such applications alone does not have a good or bad, helpful or impeding effect on educational processes. Resonance can occur just as well in a streamed song as in opera. However, before the application of digital self-recognition can be successful and positively productive, the system must be changed. If this does not happen and the digitization of schools and universities is simply continued blindly, we will not have achieved a quality gain in the learning process, since the new technology reinforces performance imperatives that are neither healthy for the students nor necessary for their future.

The reduction of decisions and feelings to biochemistry, of performance to achieved scores and of success to lack of time corresponds to a world view that is currently being lived and is therefore the "true" world view of our time. However, if we include resonance as an actual and valuable phenomenon in our world view, there would not only be more possibilities for a more relaxed, relaxed feeling in everyday life, but also educational experiences based on enlightening, touching moments would gain validity. The concept of education would be expanded, from being informed to being enthusiastic, from helpless hectic to stability in moments of leisure. Resonance “irrationalizes” our physical from machine to living body and our psyche to soul. Consequently, the figures of the educational system cannot adequately describe and categorize the human being, nor can the data from life logging or other self-measurement and enhancement strategies.

Sources

Literature:

Bartneck, C.; Lütge, C. et al. (2021): What Is AI? In: An Introduction to Ethics in Robotics and AI. Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 5–16.

Dauber, H. (1997). Grundlagen humanistischer Pädagogik: Integrative Ansätze zwischen Therapie und Politik. Schriftenreihe zur humanistischen Pädagogik und Psychologie. Bad Heilbrunn: Klinkhardt.

Dearden, R. (1984): Education and Training. In Westminster Studies in Education 7 (1), pp. 57–66.

Emerson, R.W. (2000). The American Scholar. In: The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson. New York: Modern Library.

Flitner, A.; Giel, K. (Hg.) (1960): Humboldt, W.: Theorie der Bildung des Menschen. In: Schriften zur Anthropologie und Geschichte. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.

Foucault, Michel (1995): Discipline and punish. The birth of the prison. 2. Vintage Books ed. New York: Vintage Books.

Harari, Yuval Noaḥ (2018): 21 lessons for the 21st century. London: Jonathan Cape.

Hofstetter, Y. (2016). Das Ende der Demokratie. Wie die künstliche Intelligenz die Politik übernimmt und uns entmündigt. München: C. Bertelsmann.

Liessmann, K. P. (2017). Bildung als Provokation. Wien: Paul Zsolnay Verlag. Retrieved from www.hanser-literaturverlage.de/9783552058248

Precht, R. D. (2015). Anna, die Schule und der liebe Gott: Der Verrat des Bildungssystems an unseren Kindern (Taschenbuchausgabe, 1. Auflage). Goldmann: Vol. 15691. München: Goldmann.

Robinson, K. (2015). Creative Schools: Penguin Publishing Group.

Rosa, Hartmut (2019): Resonance. A sociology of our relationship to the world. Cambridge, UK, Medford, MA, USA: Polity Press.

Roth, M. S. (2015): Beyond the university. Why liberal education matters. Paperback edition with a new preface. New Haven, London: Yale University Press.

Schirrmacher, F. (2014). Ego: Das Spiel des Lebens (Vierte Auflage). München: Pantheon.

Selke, S. (2014). Lifelogging. Wie die digitale Selbstvermessung unsere Gesellschaft verändert. Berlin: Econ, S. 73-97.

Stolzenberg, J., & Ulrichs, L.‑T. (2010). Bildung als Kunst: Fichte, Schiller, Humboldt, Nietzsche (2nd ed.). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter Inc.

Wagner, G. (2017). Selbstoptimierung (Dissertation). Campus Frankfurt / New York, Frankfurt/Main.

Whitehead, A. N. (1967): The Aims of Education and other essays. New York: The Free Press.

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Olivier (2017, 27. Februar): Selbstmord bei Kindern in Japan: die häufigste Todesursache von Kindern. Humanium. https://www.humanium.org/de/selbstmord-bei-kindern-in-japan-die-haufigste-todesursache-von-kindern/. Retrieved: 09.09.2019.

PISA Studie (2015): https://www.pisa.tum.de/fileadmin/w00bgi/www/Berichtsbaende_und_Zusammenfassungungen/Graphiken_PISA_2015.pdf. Retrieved: 14.09.2019.

Precht, R. D. (2018, 1. Februar): DsiN Kongress 2016: Richard David Precht zur "Zukunft der Bildung". [Videodatei]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfRD-tHafxg. Retrieved: 10.09.2019.

Robinson, K. (2010): Bildung völlig neu denken. Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung. [Videodatei]. www.bpb.de/mediathek/158066/ken-robinson-bildung-voellig-neu-denken. Retrieved: 09.09.2019.

Introduction

In this presentation, I explore how students can go through the process of subjectification, i.e., becoming a subject, in a Rancièrien manner with particular attention to speech. Jacques Rancière states a subject is the operator who reconfigures him/herself consisting of the identity and capacity defined by the conventional social order (Rancière1998, p.40). In pursuing this theme, I refer to Tojisha-Kenkyu, a psychotherapeutic programme started in Japan with people experiencing mental illnesses, including schizophrenia.

While the pandemic brought a new form of education, that is, online classes which we would otherwise not have thought of implementing as extensively as we have done in the past two years, many people, including myself, believe that online classes cannot completely substitute for in-person classes. This can be especially so education as ‘subjectification’, which is concerned with the reconfiguration of the basis of our thoughts and actions. I argue that subjectification is a pedagogical form that is critical to revisit and is currently being readdressed.

I put a particular focus on speech as subjectification because it has not been sufficiently addressed in school settings, especially in Japan. As Rancière argues, schools are the central institution for ‘the integral pedagogicisation of society’ (Rancière 1991, p.133) in which ‘the instruction of people’ is of ‘the ignorant’ and thus, students are not expected to have their own voices in such a condition. However, I seek to look for a way to aliment subjectification in school settings.[1]

Several scholars, such as Gert Biesta, have underscored the importance of speech as subjectification. However, how this process takes place has not been explored in detail. Accordingly, I aim to explore this point by referring to the Tojisha-Kenkyu. I argue that people practising Tojisha-Kenkyu demonstrate a form of subjectification and that examining the process has meaningful implications for education.

This abstract consists of three sections. First, I briefly examine the process of subjectification and its implications in the field of education, particularly exploring the idea of speech as subjectification. Second, I present the background of Tojisha-Kenkyu and discuss how it can be considered speech as subjectification. Third, I discuss the implications of Tojisha-Kenkyu for speech as subjectification in the school setting by introducing the idea of ‘initiation’. I propose three conclusions: (1) subjectification has an aspect of ‘initiation’; (2) subjectification has not only a politically agonistic aspect but also an aspect of inner transformation of an individual and the community; and (3) for subjectification to occur in school settings, it is necessary to create a supportive environment. In the presentation, I hope that I can further and extensively discuss this part, i.e., how to create such an environment at schools.

1. Speech as Subjectification

According to Rancière, subjectification is an embodied act in the framework of aesthetics.[2]  He states that it is ‘the production through a series of actions of a body and a capacity for enunciation not previously identifiable within a given field of experiences, whose identification is thus a part of reconfiguration of the field of experience’ (Rancière 1998, p.35). To understand this statement, we must address Rancière’s distinction between two forms of politics. The first form is called ‘police’. It is the conventional social order and the activities to maintain it. In a social order, what we can and cannot see or know are defined and shared. Such an organisation is called ‘the distribution of the sensible’ (Rancière 2004), and the ‘field of experiences’ in the above quotation is identical to this distribution. By contrast, politics, the second form, is the process of becoming a political subject and subjectification for Rancière. It involves the redistribution of ‘the sensible’ or the redistribution of what we can and cannot, see or know. In this process, a subject shifts the position given to her/himself in the social order. A political subject does not exist prior to the political act, but is rather constructed through the act (Rancière 1992, p.62). This point confirms that subjectification is based on aesthetics and an embodied experience.

Biesta differentiates speech as identification in which one speaks with words ‘that are already possible within the existing [social] order’ (Biesta 2010, p.547) from speech as subjectification. The former is considered as concomitant with police as the conventional order, whereas the latter is associated with politics as subjectification. Biesta claims that speech as subjectification should be based on equality not as a goal but as an axiom, and is ‘to come to [one’s] own speech’ ‘using [her/his] intelligence’ (Ibid., p.548)’.

Biesta neatly illustrates how speech as subjectification is differentiated from speech as identification based on Rancière’s discussion of subjectification and an axiom of equality, and refers to Rancière’s statement that,  ‘in the act of speaking, man doesn’t transmit his knowledge, he makes poetry’ (Rancière 1991, p.65). However, his focus is not how speech as subjectification occurs in school settings. Therefore, I seek to examine this point further.[3]

2. Tojisha-Kenkyu as Subjectification

Tojisha-kenkyu started in Bethel House, a group house of people experiencing mental illnesses, in 2001. Bethel House was established in 1984 by patients of Urawa Red Cross Hospital and a social worker, Ikuyoshi Mukaiyachi. Tojisha-Kenkyu is a form of psychotherapy, and at the same time, a method of research and self-help, as well as an educational project.

In Tojisha-Kenkyu, members bring stories of their experiences, including the issues that they suffer, or that they identify as ‘problems’ or ‘successes’ (Mukaiyachi 2020a). They reconstruct the stories as research topics, probing the meaning and issues behind them, and figure out ‘ways of self-help’ (Ibid.) by uniquely conceptualising their experiences with the cooperation of other members and affiliates, including medical doctors.

By redefining their own lives and giving new meanings to each word, the participants of Tojisha-Kenkyu subjectify themselves and overcome the problems of the medical model. In Tojisha-Kenkyu, hallucinations, for example, are not considered a ‘problem’ or ‘handicap’ whose diagnosis is made only by doctors and is something to be removed by experts. By redefining the ‘problem’, it becomes something which one deals with together. In fact, some participants give names to hallucinations and introduce the episodes to other members using humour.

      The dialogue process of Tojisha-Kenkyu takes place in the following way (Ibid.).

(1) Participants disclose their issues and speak their mind to others, in turn sharing their troubles  and how they feel weakened with others.

(2) Participants discuss how to live with trouble with others.  

(3) Participants plan to overcome problems with others.

(4) Participants redefine the meaning of failures and problems.

Although this process is influenced by social skills training (SST), Bethel House adopted it in a radically different way from the SST initially introduced to Japan. Mukaiyachi emphasised the ownership of the participants (patients, in the medical context), in turn retrieving responsibility and subjectivity for those living with symptoms.

When SST was introduced in Japan, educational activities were considered to be the work of medical experts. Moreover, doctors and medical experts were in charge of diagnosing and treating sickness, and those suffering from symptoms and members of their support structure were not involved in either medical education or diagnosis (Mukaiyachi 2017, p.39). In the conventional medical model, therefore, the subject of education was the medical experts and those living with the symptoms were regarded as those to be educated.

By redefining SST, the participants of Tojisha-Kenkyu and members of their support structure radically shifted the place of patients in the conventional medical and social order, in turn gaining ownership in the educational process. This made it possible for former patients to speak using their own words (although not completely excluding medical terms).

3. The Implications of Tojisha-Kenkyu for Education

In the last part of the presentation, I examine speech as subjectification from the aspect of ‘initiation’. It is an occasion for the inner transformation of both the individual and the community to which they belong. Mukaiyachi considers ‘initiation’ in the following way (Mukaiyachi 2020b, p.54):

      We created research questions and themes from the events and medical conditions which are apparently ‘problems.’ They include what we call ‘what we can hear’ and ‘what we can see’ (hallucinations) and ‘explosion’ (tantrum). This process of research is initiation.

In other words, people recreate their world by telling stories (Itokawa 2020, pp.52-54). Mukaiyachi suggests that ‘not necessarily sickness, but each one of us has some story of recovery’ (Mukaiyachi 2020b, p.56) and the experience can be developed in various ways. Education is one such occasion.

Tadashi Nishihira, a Japanese philosopher of education, argues that the process of ‘initiation’ is also the process of ‘unlearning’. ‘Unlearning’ is to ‘break away (leave or free)’ from what we have learned before (Nishihira 2020, p.26; Nishihira 2006). By breaking away, we open up the possibility of an alternative process which we would not have come up with had we stayed in the conventional learning context and process. In many cases, people live according to ‘boundaries’ already existing in conventional society, and ‘crisis’ is the condition in which such boundaries disappear (Ibid. 2020, p.27). What Nishihira calls ‘boundaries’ resonates ‘the distribution of the sensible’, as Rancière argues. A crisis is a condition in which the distribution collapses. Moreover, the process of ‘unlearning’ entails the conscientisation of habits and customs, in turn recovering the movement of body and mind, which is not fixed to a particular or given way of being (Ibid. 2020, p.29).

In this way, facing a crisis is the process of ‘unlearning’ and the opportunity of recovery of body and mind in which one can directly touch the world without being fixed in place in a conventional social order. In school settings, a crisis might not occur as frequently as people with illnesses may face. However, this argument implies that it is critical for students to encounter events (including others’ opinions) which upend conventional values and ways of thinking while being attentive to their feelings and speaking what they feel and think.

In Japan, for instance, when bullying becomes public, there are cases that bullies are punished, and the incident may be hidden, because bullying is considered unacceptable in society. However, if not only bullies but also each one of the community, including the students and teachers, were to allow their weak self and create new stories, an initiation may take place, enabling each person to shift their body from the conventional place and become the subjects. Tojisha-Kenkyu suggests a way to trust the transformation of individuals and society and to create a community together instead of pretending something has not happened or avoiding unfavourable or uncomfortable issues.

In addition, the case of Tojisha-Kenkyu suggests the need to create certain conditions to make the subjectification of students possible. In the political context to which Rancière refers, an agonistic circumstance is supposed. However, if we consider the subjectification of students or people with special needs, the members of the community, including the support structure, need to pay attention to the fact that the previously oppressed can feel safe to speak. How to create such a supportive environment without falling into paternalism and/or Socratic dialogue, which Rancière criticises, is another issue to be discussed further.

References:

Biesta, Gurt, ‘Learner, Student, Speaker: Why it matters how we call those we teach,’ Educational Philosophy and Theory, Vo.42, Nos. 5-6, 2010, pp.540-552.

Itokawa, Masanari, in Itokawa, Masanari, in Itokawa, Masanari and Mukaiyachi, Ikuyoshi, ‘Kokorono yamai wo kangaeru (On Mental Illness),’ Ed. Mukaiyachi, Ikushoshi, Yowasa no Kenkyu (Studies on Weakness: Reading the time of Corona Crisis with the Concept of Weakness), Kumpuru, 2020, pp.13-80.

Mukaiyachi, Ikuyoshi, ‘Tojisha-kenkyu and sosharu waku (Tojisha-kenkyu and Social Work),’ Ed. Ishigaki, Takuma, et al. Minna no Tojisha-kenkyu (Everyone’s Tojisha-kenkyu), 2007, pp.36-41.

Mukaiyachi, Ikuyoshi, Tojisha-Kenkyu: Rinen to kozo (The Philosophy and Structure), retrieved on 25 February 2022 from the Website of Tojisha-Kenkyu Network: toukennet.jp. (Mukaiyachi 2020b)

Mukaiyachi, Ikuyoshi, in Itokawa, Masanari, in Itokawa, Masanari and Mukaiyachi, Ikuyoshi, ‘Kokorono yamai wo kangaeru (On Mental Illness),’ Yowasa no Kenkyu (Studies on Weakness: Reading the time of Corona Crisis with the Concept of Weakness), Kumpuru, 2020, pp.13-80.

Nishihira, Tadashi, Keiko no Shisho (Philosophy of Keiko) (Chapter 6), The University of Tokyo Press, 2006.

Nishihira, Tadashi, ‘Mushin no kea to iu mondai teiki (Conceptualisation of Care Based on the Buddist Mindlessness),’ Ed. Sakai, Yuen, and Nishihira, Tadashi, Care of Mindlessness, Koyo Shobo, 2020, pp.21-43.

Rancière, Jacques; The Ignorant Schoolmaster Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation,  Stanford, CA : Stanford University Press, 1991 ; Le Maître ignorant : cinq leçons sur l’émancipation intellectuelle, Paris : Librairie Arthème Fayard, 1987.

Rancière, Jacques, “Politics, Identification, Subjectivisation,” October, Vol. 61 (Summer, 1992), Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992, pp. 58-64.

Ranciére, Jacques, The Politics of Aesthetics, New York, NY: Continuum, 2004; Le Partage du sensible : Esthétique et politique, Paris: La Fabrique-Editions, 2000.

Ruitenberg, Claudia, Learning to Articulate: From Ethical Motivation to Political Demands, Ed.  Biesta, Gert, Philosophy of education 2010, Urbana, IL: Philosophy of Education Society, pp. 372-380.

Philosophy for children (P4C) has a long and well-established history in classroom-based teaching. Increasingly, both philosophers and pedagogues have begun to take an interest in film as a medium for ‘doing’ philosophy also, although opinions vary as to both the mode by which such philosophising is carried out and the ends to which it is oriented. This paper will provide a survey of some of those modes and ends, before exploring the idea that the educational character of film may lie more with its cinematic qualities than its reducibility to any preconception of what philosophy does or ought to consist in. 

The most convincing arguments for inclusion of film in the curriculum are largely predicated either on their potential to offer cognitive gain (Reid, 2019), moral education (Wonderly, 2009; Laugier, 2021), or an aesthetic education in cinephilia (Bergala, 2016; Henzler, 2018), often with some overlap between the three. Of the first, the idea that films have something to teach young people in a substantive sense has the strongest allure, as it appeals to the scientistic possibilities of measuring the benefits to be accrued from vilm-viewing. Cognitive approaches to film such as that of David Bordwell and Noël Carroll draw upon developments in psychology and neuroscience to explain aspects to audience response and understanding in relation to film (Bordwell, 1989; Carroll, 2008). The attraction of cognitive approaches to film is their focus on “the relevance of empirical evidence and the standards of science (where appropriate)” (Plantinga, 2002: 20). The endeavor, then, is to give film analysis more secure foundations in science (natural as opposed to human).  

There have been further arguments made for the potential of films to ‘do’ philosophy independently of the ideas they are meant to illustrate (e.g. Mulhall, 2001; Wartenberg, 2007). The problem with these views is that they inevitably depend on a strong notion of what philosophy truly consists in, and therefore that film is somehow in service to that notion. As such, we could say that Thomas Wartenberg’s notion that film can do philosophy if what we are saying is that “some filmmakers have philosophized by means of their films” is basically correct – we can surely see this in the work of directors such as Terrence Malick, Claire Denis, Bela Tarr, etc. – but here the emphasis has to be on the “some” of Wartenberg’s phrasing: it must be less clear that all filmmakers are carrying out such an exercise, particularly if their cultural background is less informed by the same criteria for “philosophy” as the aforementioned. It would be presumptuous to suggest that the films of Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Kenji Mizoguchi or Youssef Chahine conform to a Western understanding of what it means to do philosophy enough for their films to be described as being or not being philosophical.  

So perhaps the anxiety after philosophy is misplaced: why can we not just let films be cinematic? It still feels as if there is something to do with proving a film’s worth here, that places a requirement upon it to be philosophical or do philosophy in order to elevate it to curricular legitimacy. But, to paraphrase Walter Pater, all art need not aspire to the condition of philosophy. Equally, and in turn, films do/should not need to justify themselves as philosophical in order to be of educational value. My own departure from the positions outlined above is not to deny the value of any them as activities in and of themselves, but to suggest that the educational place of film operates in relation to a slightly different set of coordinates than they assume. Which is to say that if we are not to elide the meaning of education with cognition, with cinephilia, or with morality, then film must withstand the attempts to be reduced to any of these agendas in particular. Film is not a means to the end of being philosophical, but rather the means to the end of being. 

So what would it look like to introduce film into the classroom on its own terms? And to what end might this introduction be of benefit? My sense is that films will always occupy an uncomfortable and problematic relationship to the curriculum, as they do not operate according to the same notion of content. There may be more cache associated with philosophy and its engendering of specific modes of thought, but film is unique in its capacity to show – rather than effect – aporia, dichotomy, ambiguity, etc. Film is a means all of its own, to an indeterminate end, and is put to best use in celebration of that fact. I take part of my cue here from a recent re-appraisal of the P4C programme by Tyson Lewis and Igor Jasinski. Lewis & Jasinski argue that often Philosophy 4 Children remains too directed in its philosophicality. Perhaps as a consequence of the increasing need for educational activities in institutions to demonstrate evidence of learning outcomes, P4C too has come to desire ends of reasonableness and democracy too much for the exercise to be truly about voice. Their view is that we should abandon some of the thinking around ends, and emphasise merely the joy of the means: “there is something about letting students speak, about abandoning them to their capacities for speech, about enabling them to adventure with saying what can be thought and think what can be said. And there is nothing we—as teachers or facilitators—could say that would add to their experience and might, in fact, diminish or even destroy it” (Lewis & Jasinski, 2022: vii).  

Inspired by this “end-less” education, the final part of my paper explores the potentiality of a Film-philosophy for Children with a small ‘p’. Film-philosophy for schools could introduce film into the curriculum as a mode of showing young people worlds other than their own, and giving them th eopportunity to speak in response. As a result, the question of what philosophy is/might be remains open, including to the possibility that film both does something different to – and can change the nature of – philosophical thought itself. Film-philosophy for Children (Fp4C) is therefore seen to preserve is the notion that film must be its own means to educational ends (as yet not defined), and that those ends are distinct from philosophy precisely because film is not philosophy, but film.  

References: 

Bergala, A. (2016) The Cinema Hypothesis: Teaching Cinema in the Classroom and Beyond. Vienna: FilmmuseumSynemaPublationen. 

Bordwell, D. (1989) “A Case for Cognitivism.” Iris 9 : 11–40. 

Carroll, N. (2008) The Philosophy of Motion Pictures. Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell.. 

Henzler, B. (2018) ‘Education à l’image and Medienkompetenz: On the discourses and practices of film education in France and Germany’. Film Education Journal. 1-1, pp.16–34. 

Lewis, T. & Jasinski, I. (2022) Rethinking Philosophy for Children: Agamben and Education as Pure Means. London: Bloomsbury Academic. 

Mulhall, S. (2001) On Film. London: Routledge.

Reid M. (2019) ‘Film, Arts Education, and Cognition: The Case of Le Cinéma, cent ans de jeunesse’. In: Hermansson C., Zepernick J. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Children's Film and Television. Springer International Publishing.  

Wartenberg, T. (2007) Thinking on Screen: Film as Philosophy.  

Abstract:

Utilitarianism, both as an ethical tradition and public philosophy has deeply influenced education since the 19^th century. In this paper, I revisit the influence of utilitarianism on education and link it to current development in the field. I suggest that it is possible to distinguish between two major strands within the utilitarian view of education: one that focuses on promoting the happiness of each individual and the other on enhancing the happiness of the greatest number by creating facilitating social conditions for it. I link the first to the writing of James Mill, J. S. Mill and Henry Sidgwick and the second to Jeremy Bentham.  I then claim that while the first strand has had only a limited influence on education, the second has played a central role in shaping the development of modern education. I also link this strand to the way economists view education and maintain that it still deeply effect educational policy today through their work. I also argue, however, that we are currently witnessing the emergence of an old-new form of utilitarianism in education. I conclude the paper by providing a short reflection on what history can teach us about the future of utilitarianism in education.

Introduction:

John Stuart Mill was born on the 20^th of May 1806 in greater London. His father, the radical philosophers James Mill, took charge of his education and schooled him at home. James aimed to provide his son with an education based on utilitarian principles that would render his life as happy as possible by teaching him to follow only rational calculations (E. S. Anderson, 1991). John’s education was rigorous and from a very early age he learned, among else, Greek, Latin, history, physics, economics and philosophy. John, however, had little contact with peers, and his education did not include the cultivation of the imagination or emotions because these were perceived as possible threats to his rationality and happiness (Capaldi, 2004). John Stuart Mill’s education turned out to be both a glaring success and a failure. On the one hand, J. S. Mill’s brilliance was quickly recognized, and he became one of the 19^th century most celebrated moral and political philosophers. Mill (2009) himself attributed much of his success to his unique education. On the other hand, at the age of 20, J. S. Mill (2009) suffered a mental breakdown and a period of depression he grew out of only by abandoning many of the principles he was brought up upon and were supposed to make him happy. Eventually, J. S. Mill would revise the foundation of the utilitarian theories that underlay his education.            

The story of J. S. Mill’s education is not just one person’s story. In many ways, it encapsulates the influence of utilitarianism on education. Like in the case of J. S, Mill, this influence stems from noble ideals, but, in practice, these were repeatedly misused with grave consequences. Like in Mill’s biography, utilitarianism has had a lasting beneficial effect on numerous aspects of education but is responsible for many of its defects. In addition, like in the story of Mill’s education, utilitarianism can be criticized but it cannot be ignored. It serves as a touchstone for our thinking about education.

 In this paper, I want to revisit the influence of utilitarianism on education and link it to current development in the field. I suggest that it is possible to distinguish between two major strands within the utilitarian view of education: one that focuses on promoting the happiness of each individual and the other on enhancing the happiness of the greatest number by creating facilitating social conditions for it. I then claim that while the first has had only a limited influence on education the second still plays a central role in shaping current educational policy through its influence on economics. I also argue, however, the we are currently witnessing the emergence of an old-new form of utilitarianism in education and provide a short reflection on what history can teach us about the future of utilitarianism in education.

The paper proceeds as follows. The next section introduces the two strands of utilitarianism that influence education. It then discusses the views of James Mill and J. S. Mill while focusing on the notion that education should directly promote the happiness of individuals. The third section discusses the utilitarian strand that is associated with Jeremy Bentham and how it evolved. The final section examines some current changes in educational policy and how they relate to utilitarianism.   

The Education of Utilitarians

The classical utilitarians’ contribution to education extends well beyond their ethical views (Halévy, 1955). Bentham surveyed human knowledge and ordered it in a way that could serve as the basis for creating a school curriculum (Itzkin, 1978). He also wrote on teaching methods and school organization (Bentham, 1816). James Mill helped advance the idea that education should be based on the study of psychology and promoted the establishment of non-denominational schools (Burston, 1969). Together with Bentham, he played an instrumental role in creating the University of London, the first secular university in England. J. S. Mill’s writings on education for democracy, autonomy and sensibility were innovative and influential (E. Anderson, 1998). J. S. Mill also helped theorize the limits of state intervention in education and stirred a long-lasting debate about it (Harris, 1994). Moreover, with his wife, Harriet Taylor Mill, he advocated significant reforms in women’s education (Dineen, 2021). Inspired by Mill’s ideas, Sidgwick did much to expand the university education open to women. This eventually also led him to propose significant reforms in the university curriculum (Blanshard, 1974).

Analogously, the influence of utilitarianism as an ethics that concentrates on promoting happiness and well-being on education far exceeds that directly stemming from the writings and ideas of those who can be identified as utilitarians. The influence of utilitarianism on education, I want to suggest, can best be understood if we divide it into two strands. The first strand emerges from the ideas of James Mill, J. S. Mill, Sidgwick and many who followed them. The emphasis in this strand is placed on educating happy individuals that could also contribute to the happiness of those around them. It asks how education can help make individuals happier and educate moral persons. Historically, this strand has had only a limited influence on the development of education. The second strand can be linked to Bentham and his followers. Although this strand did not originate with Bentham and had deep roots in the eighteen century, Bentham and other utilitarians significantly contributed to it and provided its ethical basis (Gilead, 2021).[1] This strand aims at creating the social conditions that will maximize aggregated happiness through education. It focuses not on the happiness of specific individuals but rather on that of the greatest number (Hans, 1954). Here the emphasis shifts to education’s role in promoting social efficiency. Historically, this strand prevailed, and it will not be exaggerated to claim that it was one of the primary forces shaping modern educational systems (Labaree, 2010). The rest of this section will be devoted to the first strand. The second strand will be discussed in the remainder of the article.

James Mill’s entry titled “Education” published in 1818 Encyclopedia Britannica, can be viewed as the first step in forming a utilitarian pedagogy that emphasizes individuals’ development and happiness (Halévy, 1955). Mill opens his essay by stating: “The end of Education is to render the individual, as much as possible, an instrument of happiness, first to himself, and next to other beings” (J. Mill, 1969, p. 41). To achieve this dual end, he argues, education must ensure that feelings and thoughts that hinder happiness will be replaced by those conducive to it. What Mill proposes is a plan of physical and moral education steeped in an associationist theory of the mind (Burston, 1969).[2] Discussing domestic education, social and political education, and technical or scholastic education, Mill argued that promoting the happiness of individuals and those around them required the development of three basic qualities. The first was intelligence, which refers to the ability to acquire knowledge and properly use it for directing one’s decisions. The second is temperance, which is the ability to control feelings and desires. The third is benevolence which refers primarily to increasing generosity and a sense of justice (J. Mill, 1969). James Mill’s utilitarianism, then, led him to remain within the confines of traditional views of the objects of education while justifying it through an emphasis on promoting happiness. On one point, however, James Mill differed from most of his contemporaries as he insisted that his proposed education would be provided all classes. Against the arguments that over-educating the lower classes might be dangerous, he wrote: “As we strive for an equal degree of justice, an equal degree of temperance, and an equal degree of veracity, in the poor and the rich, so we ought to strive for an equal degree of intelligence” (J. Mill, 1969, p. 106). For Mill, education was to make as many people as possible happy and moral by developing in them what he perceived to be the needed qualities.

J. S. Mill, James’ son, contribution to utilitarian thinking about education stems from and reflects his general contribution to utilitarian ethics. While James’ education program focused on directing people towards promoting their happiness and that of others, J. S. Mill centered on education’s ability to develop people’s capacities to experience ever-higher forms of pleasure (Kitcher, 2011). Dwelling on the failures of his own education, J. S. Mill emphasized the role of education in enhancing personal autonomy and cultivating sentiments. Enhancing personal autonomy, he thought, opened to door to the pleasures of the imagination, making judgments and directing one’s life, and cultivating sentiments to those of caring for others, enjoying their happiness and doing what is right (E. Anderson, 1998). In practice, J. S. Mill supported classical liberal education that included ancient history and literature because it could develop the intellect and lead to elevated forms of flourishing. At the same time, he rejected the view that education should serve economic purposes but accepted that studying the natural and social sciences was important (Kitcher, 2011). For Mill, the main function of education in promoting happiness was to help develop culture and science to bring humanity to enjoy higher forms of pleasure. Like J. S. Mill, Sidgwick also advocated liberal education, but unlike him, he attacked the predominance of classical studies. Sidgwick called to make liberal education more relevant by placing a greater emphasis on modern languages and science. Nevertheless, he too thought that the main purpose of education is to enlarge people’s horizons and stimulate higher forms of cultural engagements (R. White, 1986).

From a historical perspective, the strand of utilitarian education discussed in this section did not have a long-lasting influence. It did help enlarge the curriculum of liberal education by opening it to new forms of knowledge (R. White, 1986). It also helped strengthen the link between education and happiness. With time, however, the idea that education should directly enhance individual happiness came to be shaped and dominated by other educational traditions, such as the one stemming from Rousseau, Pestalozzi and Frobel, rather than the utilitarian. Over the years, some attempts have also been made to revive utilitarianism in education by making it the basis of moral education (Levy, 1990). Hare (1992), for example, suggests a two-stage utilitarian moral education in which students first acquire virtues and then, at a later stage, learn to follow the principles of utilitarianism. Nevertheless, since utilitarianism is very abstract and could not be easily taught to children, it did not develop into an influential approach in moral education. Moreover, as ethical utilitarianism became more and more technical, its relationship with education was lost. In the final section of this chapter, however, I will claim that the strand of utilitarian education discussed here has much to offer to current-day education despite its marginalization.

Education for the Greatest Happiness of the Greatest Number        

Bentham, like many other utilitarians, was fascinated by education. He wrote a few pieces about the subject and a book titled Chrestomathia, which means useful knowledge.  Bentham also played an active role in advancing the development of schools and institutions of higher education (Bentham, 1816). Like James and J. S. Mill, he closely linked education with happiness. He wrote: “The common end of every person’s education is happiness” (Bentham, 1842, p. 71). In addition, he was also persuaded, like them, that the provision of education was an essential ingredient for promoting happiness and that no one should be deprived of it (Hans, 1954). Bentham’s narrow hedonism, strict utilitarianism and personal acquaintance with contemporary systems of education led him, however, to approach education from a very different perspective. His primary concern was finding a way to operate a system of education that could create and maintain social conditions in which all would experience greater happiness. Although Bentham’s Chrestomathia is devoted to the education of the middle and higher classes, the real challenge, he thought, was educating the poor that were the majority of the population and, therefore, the principal object for promoting the greatest happiness of the greatest number (Taylor, 1982). Like J. S. Mill, Bentham recognized that education could open new avenues of pleasure and called it “active education” (Bentham, 1842). Nevertheless, having the poor in mind, he held that active education “never can be the education of many” and argued that education should focus on bringing people to experience as much happiness as possible within the limits of their present abilities (Bentham, 1842). For Bentham then, who did not hold a hierarchy of pleasures, the aim of education was simply to make life more pleasurable or less painful for as many people as possible.

Aware that educational resources were scarce in the society he lived in and convinced that education should be given to all, Bentham prioritized educational efficiency and sought to increase it (Itzkin, 1978). The rationale behind promoting efficiency in terms of contributing to happiness is dual. First, greater educational efficiency saves money and as a result with the same resources more people, especially the poor, could enjoy education, which is essential for happiness. Second, an efficient education can do more to enhance the happiness of those receiving it in the same amount of time (Miller, 1973). What Bentham envisioned was a system of education for the middle and higher classes that was designed to enhance the scientific, technological and economic aspects of society. In Chrestomathia, he placed emphasis on teaching the natural sciences, scientific applications, math, commerce, agriculture, drawing and other domains he considered to be socially useful (Bentham, 1816). Notably, his proposed curriculum did not include religion, arts, literature, sports and the classics (Itzkin, 1978). For the lower classes, Bentham suggested an education that would provide them with useful skills for earning a living and making them independent. The life of work, he believed, was a significant part of the happiness of the lower classes, and education should, therefore, prepare them for it. He also wanted education to teach the lower classes to accept the social order, be prudent and moral (Taylor, 1982).

In terms of the organization of education, Bentham adopted the Bell-Lancaster Monitorial system that was developed during his days (Halévy, 1955).[3] In this system, the teacher taught a group of able and advanced students and each of them, in turn, taught another group of less advanced students. This enabled to overcome the shortage of funds and teachers as one teacher could teach hundreds of students at a minimal cost (Mesquita, 2012). Possessing a more analytical mind than the developers of the Bell-Lancaster system, Bentham took upon himself to explain its principle and perfect them (Miller, 1973). He suggested, for example, that in order to reach maximum efficiency, the windows of the class should be placed high and the walls covered with learning material so that even if the pupils’ eyes and mind wandered off, they could do nothing else but study. Bentham’s (1816) Chrestomathia is a blueprint for establishing an education oriented towards promoting aggregated physical pleasure by prioritizing efficiency. Bentham’s education system, then, was to be conducive to the happiness of each individual, but more than that it was designed to indirectly increase aggregated happiness by making people into contributors to the social conditions that best support it according to their social classes.

What Bentham did was to provide an ethical basis for a quest to link education more tightly with material welfare and extend the education of the poor that started a few decades before he wrote (Gilead, 2011). By fusing an ethical doctrine with pressing educational concerns, Bentham was able to legitimize and re-enforce existing educational trends making utilitarianism their underlying ideology. Bentham’s reputation and authority, claims Hans (1954), was a major factor in the vast spread of monitorial schools in England, Europe and the World. Moreover, although Bentham Chrestomathia was not widely read, it influenced several reforms and educators that played a significant role in the development of English Education (Miller, 1973). It is even possible to draw a line from Bentham’s educational ideas to debates about school efficiency and administration in the early 20^th-century United States (Miller, 1973). It is no coincidence that many of those who supported administrative and educational reforms designed to increase efficiency employed the terms utility and utilitarian to support their stances (Labaree, 2010).[4] Nevertheless, it is important to stress that it is a mistake to view the movement to increase educational efficiency and utilitarianism as identical. Many of those advocating increased efficiency did not seek to advance happiness but rather other goals such as social control (Knoll, 2009). What distinguishes utilitarianism is that the desire to increase happiness or well-being is the ultimate aim, and efficiency is just a means to this aim. As such, since the late 18^th century, utilitarian tendencies have reappeared in different historical periods and influenced education most profoundly.

At present, it can be argued, the utilitarian view of education developed by Bentham finds its expression in the prevalent conviction that education should serve as a tool to increase human capital and support economic growth. That utilitarian ideas are currently engulfed in economic perceptions is far from surprising because, in general, since the 19^th century, utilitarianism and economics came to be closely associated. As Baujard (2013, p. 2) notes, “utilitarianism, as a family of philosophical theories, has been the most powerful and pervasive approach in the development of economics.” Even in times in which the influence of utilitarianism as an ethical theory was in decline, it kept shaping economic doctrines. Although many leading economists have tried to disassociate their disciplines from utilitarianism, when it comes to the policy level, core utilitarian assumptions and perceptions have kept their place in economics and especially welfare economics (D. Hausman, McPherson, & Satz, 2016). Moreover, contemporary utilitarians are clearly influenced by developments in economic thought and react to them (Mongin & d’Aspremont, 1998). Let us look a little further into the current link between education and economics and how it relates to utilitarianism.

To understand the link between utilitarianism and the quest to advance economic aims and increase human capital through education, there is a need to briefly unpack the relationship between economics and education and then the aim of economics. The logic that guides human capital theory is, at its basis, very simple. It is maintained that education can increase people’s productive capacities, i.e. human capital, by teaching them useful knowledge, developing talents, enhancing skills and cultivating desired behavioral tendencies. It has also been added that education can increase productivity by providing the foundations for technological and scientific breakthroughs (Marginson, 2019). The result of the increased productivity achieved through education is greater earnings for individuals and enhanced economic growth for society, which are central economic aims. Although economists rarely discuss it, they do not, however, regard higher earning or growth as intrinsically important (Oswald, 1997). The ultimate aim of economics is perceived as increasing well-being, which is equated with meeting individual preferences, and higher earning and growth are supposed to contribute to it both directly and indirectly (Hirsch, 2005). By increasing the means available to people, higher earnings and growth, directly contribute to well-being because people can more easily get what they prefer, whether it is a new mobile phone or time to meditate. Higher earning, and especially growth, can also facilitate the creation of social conditions that support increased well-being; for example, by enabling to create a better health system or communication infrastructures. Growth also has many other benefits, such as strengthening the state, but in the eyes of economists, its ultimate justification is derived from its contribution to individual well-being (Ng, 2003). Underlying the notion that education should increase human capital and growth there is, therefore a utilitarian rationale. Education is viewed as contributing to productivity and productivity to the happiness or well-being of the greatest number. The affinities to Bentham’s conception are clear. Moreover, the link between utilitarianism and the economic aims of education becomes even more evident in light of the fact that most contemporary utilitarians and economists share the view that the ultimate aim we should aspire for is maximizing aggregated individuals’ preference satisfaction (D. M. Hausman, 2011).

At present, it is hard to overstate the influence of economic ideas and consequently of utilitarian ways of thinking on worldwide educational policymaking. Developed by economists in the 1960s and popularized by policy reports, such as a Nation at Risk, in the 1980s and 1990s, the view that education should advance economic aims has come to dominate the policy discourse on education (Bell & Stevenson, 2006). It has even been suggested that what characterizes our age is that “educational policies are collapsed into economic and industrial policy” (Ball, 1999, p. 201). Many of the trends and measures currently shaping education, including the emphasis on testing, the focus on core subjects and teaching practical knowledge, the appeal to management models taken for the business world and the search for higher efficiency, can be directly linked to the impact of economics on education (Sahlberg, 2011). Interestingly, however, these measures mirror many of Bentham’s ideas and those of periods in which utilitarian approaches to education dominated. The utilitarian quest, then, to increase aggregated happiness or well-being by facilitating the creation of social and economic conditions that support it seems to be deeply ingrained within the structure of modern education. Although it is not always explicitly acknowledged, utilitarianism has served to ethically justify much of what has happened in educational policy over the last two centuries.

The influence of utilitarianism on education, however, has not always been welcomed. Since the 19^th century, countless scholars and educators, including J. S. Mill and Dewey, have severely criticized the embracement of a narrow utilitarian approach in education and its implication. Undoubtedly, the embracement of the utilitarian strand of education discussed in this section has had some devastating effects on education.[5] Nevertheless, it is crucial not to overlook it tremendous benefits. It has had a profound positive influence, among else, on making education accessible to all, the development of science and technology, the improvement if living conditions and even democratization.

Towards and New-Old Utilitarian Education

Due to their influence on economics, utilitarian ideas, we have seen, still play a significant role in shaping current educational policy. The same is also true for many other aspects of life. Since the 1940s, policymakers have viewed economics in general and economic growth in particular as the primary tool for increasing well-being or happiness in societies. Embracing this underlying utilitarian goal, policymaking has very much centered on economic growth and devised various measures to advance it, of which education is only one case among many (Philipsen, 2015). In recent decades, however, it becomes increasingly clear that economics in itself is insufficient to promote well-being or happiness. First, it has been recognized that economic growth often has many side effects that negatively impact happiness or well-being, such as pollution, widening inequalities and decreased job stability (Stiglitz, Sen, & Fitoussi, 2009). Second, there is growing empirical evidence that economic growth often does not go hand in hand with higher levels of happiness or satisfaction as reported by individuals (Layard, 2011). Many studies have found that despite significant economic growth in many countries, over time, the number of people who report being very happy does not increase substantially in them (Blanchflower & Oswald, 2004). As a result, there is a rising interest within academic and policymaking circles in ways to increase well-being and happiness that extend beyond economics. Powerful multinational organizations, including UNESCO and the OECD, as well as nation states now place a greater emphasis on measures that serve to promote happiness or well-being (OECD, 2013). There is a turn here towards traditional forms of utilitarianism since the mediating factor, which is economic growth, is set aside, and happiness and well-being are pursued directly (Frijters, Clark, Krekel, & Layard, 2020). Although this new approach is not yet dominant and the pursuit of economic aims still occupies center stage in policymaking, it is gradually gaining currency.

One area in which the impact of the new approach to policy that focuses on happiness and well-being becomes apparent is education. Philosophers of education have long discussed the idea that well-being should be the aim of education, but now they are joined by social scientists and policymakers (J. P. White, 2011). For example, two major research projects conducted by UNESCO (Duraiappah et al., 2022) and the OECD (2018) embrace the notion that the ultimate aim of education is to advance personal well-being. Moreover, the growing emphasis currently placed on Social Emotional Learning (SEN) and the spread of programs designed to promote happiness and well-being in schools are other indications of the shift taking place (Mahoney, Durlak, & Weissberg, 2018). Today, there seems to be a move towards conception of education that have some marked affinities with those of early utilitarians such as James Mill, J. S. Mill and Sidgwick. Although the utilitarian strand that focuses on enhancing happiness by using education to improve the social and economic conditions is still prevalent, it is now supplemented by a concern with the happiness of each and every individual. Utilitarianism is once again changing shape, but it is as relevant as always. The future and not only the past of education seem destined to be shaped by it. In education, it seems, utilitarianism is here to stay.    

Looking forward, one might ask what there is to learn from the history of utilitarianism for the future of education. First, we need to remember how easily worthy utilitarians ideas are distorted and guard that this will not happen again as we move towards a more individualistic forms of utilitarianism. Second, utilitarianism has always been responsive to actual conditions, and we must remain sensitive to these and guide our education accordingly. Today, environmental degradation, mental difficulties, extending inequalities, and authoritarian trends are direct threats to our happiness and well-being and education must deal with them and not just focus on advancing the economy. Finally, past thinkers such as J. S. Mill and Sidgwick can teach us something about how education can contribute to happiness that is currently mostly overlooked by policymakers. Mill and Sidgwick emphasized the significance of education for opening new routes to happiness by elevating people’s cultural and moral abilities. In contrast, the current quest to increase well-being and happiness through education centers, like did Bentham and James Mill, on securing well-being within the boundaries of people’s own perception of it (Dishon & Gilead, 2021; OECD, 2019; Rappleye, Komatsu, Uchida, Krys, & Markus, 2020). To reach education’s full potential, I want to argue, we must find a way to reintroduce J. S. Mill and Sidgwick’s view that one essential role of education is to open new and often more worthy avenues for happiness.

To conclude, although utilitarianism has often been a damaging force within the development of education it still holds great promises. If utilitarianism remains loyal to its ultimate aims and constantly adjusted to changing conditions, embracing it in education might hold the key for a better and happier future not just for the majority of us but for each and every one of us. 

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Abstract

 “We’re not teaching them a lesson, we’re showing them what life could be like … I never learn when I feel like I’m being taught a lesson.” – Dan Levy.

 “I never thought the show was laying out a message. It just is. It’s just an example of what life could be. And you’re laughing. What better way to open someone’s heart and soul?” – Catherine O’Hara. 

The purpose of this working paper is to engage with the value of humour and laughter as distinctive pedagogical forms for exploring LGBTQ lives in teacher education. Exploring LGBTQ lives has begun to emerge as a theme of concern for teacher educators (Airton & Koecher, 2019). The challenge for teacher educators in engaging in this work has often been rooted in pre-service teachers’ anxieties around the expectations of school management and parents, as well as because of teacher educators’ own lack of knowledge on diverse sexualities and genders (Clark, 2010). Others have foregrounded the complexities for teacher educators in entering this terrain, often because of how such work is positioned as ‘irrelevant’ by pre-service teachers (Anthony-Stevens & Langford, 2020; Ferfolja & Robinson, 2004; Rasmussen & Allen, 2015), and also because of some pre-service teachers’ resistance to being exposed to such conversations at all (Allen, 2015; Gray & Harris, 2015; Neary, 2020). Connected to this is the challenge of framing such conversations with students without inadvertently ‘othering’ LGBTQ people (Blair & Deckman, 2019), for instance as pathologized, ‘at-risk’ victims in need of protection. Indeed, the role such paternalism can play in sustaining heteronormativity has been critiqued extensively (Airton, 2013; Bryan, 2017; Bryan & Mayock, 2017; Driver, 2008; Formby, 2015; Gilbert et al., 2018; Marshall, 2010; Quinlivan, 2002; Savin-Williams, 2005; Talburt, 2010; Talburt and Rasmussen, 2010).

This last point speaks to broader concerns around the challenges of engaging in ‘difficult’ conversations on diversity and general social justice issues in educational settings. The ‘difficulty’ of this work is often understood in connection to the concept of ‘difficult knowledge’ (Britzman, 1998, 2000, 2013; Britzman and Pitt, 2004; Pitt and Britzman, 2003). This construct refers to pedagogical content (e.g. structural marginalisation and abuse) that is traumatic or difficult to bear as well as to educational experiences that are destabilising for students in some way (intellectually, psychologically, emotionally). In other words, knowledge is difficult not only because of the content of the knowledge itself, but also because of students’ engagement with, and relationship to, that content (Bryan, 2016; Simon, 2011; Zembylas, 2014;). In this context, research has sought to foreground the emotionality of engaging with social justice concerns in education, seeing emotion as something for educators to face productively rather than avoid. Indeed, many have written on the value of engaging with emotion for social justice efforts, not least because of the role emotion plays in building solidarities, recognising injustices, and mobilising action across differences (e.g. Boler, 1999; Britzman, 1998, 2000, 2013; Britzman and Pitt, 2004; Bryan, 2016, 2020; Kenway and Youdell, 2011; Pitt and Britzman, 2003; Zembylas, 2007, 2012, 2014, 2017). In this vein, Neary (2020) has emphasised the importance of attending to the emotionality of difficult knowledge in teacher education, situating a queer pedagogy of empathy as helpful in responding to resistances pre-service teachers can exhibit in engaging with LGBTQ lives.

Bringing together, and responding to, these different threads, the purpose of this paper is to reflect on how teacher educators can engage with LGBTQ lives in their classrooms in ways that: 1) respond to the potentially difficult emotionality of this work; and 2) move beyond framing LGBTQ lives solely within discourses of vulnerability and victimisation. In achieving these aims, I turn to the popular situational comedy (sitcom) Schitt’s Creek (SC), providing insights on what the sitcom can offer teacher educators, and how select clips from the series can be engaged with concretely in the context of the teacher education classroom. In brief, SC tells the story of the Roses, a rich family who lose their fortune when their business manager fails to pay their taxes. Finding themselves homeless, Johnny Rose (played by co-creator Eugene Levy), Moira Rose (Catherine O’Hara), and their two adult children, David (Dan Levy) and Alexis (Annie Murphy), move into two rooms in a motel in the titular Hicksville town that Johnny jokingly bought for David for a birthday gift one year (Horeck, 2021).

My turn to SC is motivated by the turn to the pandemic framing this conference’s call for papers: SC dropped its sixth and final series on Netflix during the early months of the coronavirus pandemic and was subsequently received by the mainstream media as being among the ‘best TV series to binge-watch in lockdown’ (Keishin Armstrong 2020). SC is said to have provided much needed solace during the stresses of 2020, with the sitcom almost mirroring the experience of families being locked in together (McNamara 2020). More centrally, my turn to SC is also motivated by a sensitivity to the possibilities afforded by humour and laughter as pedagogical forms for engaging with potentially difficult knowledge. Specifically, I point to the capacity of humour and laughter to perform counter-discursive modes of LGBTQ representation by diffusing potentially difficult affect and, through this, creating transformative, transgressive spaces for reflective and empathic listening, thinking, and action.  In this sense, I figure the humour of SC, and the laughter engendered by it, as important modalities for disrupting heteronormative depictions of LGBTQ lives in ways that displace audiences’ potential discomfort with such depictions. Indeed, the sitcom has been lauded for its ‘comedic modality and its use of a rosy-mood aesthetic to affectively “attune” spectators … to a queer worldview’ (Horeck, 2021).

I begin this working paper by providing a backdrop to the place of humour and laughter in educational scholarship. I point in particular to philosophy’s ambiguous relationship to humour and laughter (Morreall 1983, 1987, 2009, 2014), before moving to how philosophers and other scholars have recently started to reclaim the significance, value and purpose of these forms in various settings, including educational ones (Gordon and Mayo 2014). From here I trace connections between humour, laughter and the concerns of queer pedagogy, before moving to an analysis of three select clips from the sitcom SC that I identify as being of particular interest to teacher educators. I conclude with some thoughts on the wider implications of humour and laughter as forms for social justice teaching in teacher education within and beyond pandemic times, gesturing to areas for further study in this regard.

‘They’ve got potential’.

How many times have we heard or uttered those words? For teachers, it’s a phrase that often indicates a student isn’t yet achieving an expected standard; a level perhaps the teacher can see even if the student can’t. Sometimes it’s a way of informing a parent that their offspring could gain higher marks, if only they put more energy and effort into their work. But is that utterance merely a euphemistic way of telling someone that ‘they could do better’? And what of the verb choices? They have got potential. Are we to understand potential as some sort of defined, observable property- like brown hair or long fingers?

Potential is not just something that is talked about. It is simultaneously a focus of attainment (Theurer et al 2016), forms definitions that underpin global educational policies (OECD 2014) and is presented as something that needs “unlocking” from current education systems (Couch 2018). It is given serious consideration across all subjects and at all levels. A common thread linking all these ways of understanding potential is that it is something. It can be assessed, measured, or released from a student as if it has been trapped by external forces. The emphasis is frequently on ensuring individuals create certain ‘mindsets’ or participate in prescribed activities that will help to ‘free’ the potential from the student or assist them in ‘reaching’ their potential- as if it is a fixed point in space.

There seems to be something inherently problematic with these ways of understanding potential. Firstly, it gives the impression that it is something already specified: a destination to be reached or an entity to be unleashed into the world. Whether potential is something one achieves (like a gold star) or releases (like a captured animal), the underlying idea is that it already exists in some form, and it is somehow independent of the person whose potential it is. Consider the wording from the OECD’s PISA 2012 report on problem-solving skills of students in the UK:

Problem-solving competency is an individual’s capacity to engage in cognitive processing to understand and resolve problem situations where a method of solution is not immediately obvious. It includes the willingness to engage with such situations in order to achieve one’s potential as a constructive and reflective citizen. (OECD, 2013: 122)

Or of John Couch’s comments on using augmented reality (AR) in classrooms:

…I’m personally and firmly in the AR camp for now…Rewiring education is not about predicting the potential of students and technology in some hypothetical future; it’s about unlocking all of this potential today.

How can students “achieve” or “unlock” all of this magical potential if it hasn’t already been established? The ‘constructive and reflective citizen’ must exist in some form for otherwise how would those conducting the PISA study know which students were achieving it? The potential Couch wants technology to release from bored and disengaged students in the classroom presumably resides somewhere. Is there not a paradox with the very idea that potential- that which is possible or becoming- is something that is conceived of fully formed? Let us take the idea the of a student who is struggling to unlock or reach their potential in mathematics. What are we saying about that student? Do we think that there is a separate, more mathematically able version of that student hiding away somewhere? How might we find it? Head towards the parietal lobe, but if you hit the amygdala, you’ve gone too far? What about reaching their mathematical potential? Is that attached to a fixed point in space, or can it be moved to make it easier to grasp?

Of course, such ideas are ridiculous. So why is it that the language that surrounds potential is seemingly so inadequate?

Perhaps it helps to understand potential this way because it is a convenient fit for a system in service to that which is predictable and measurable. Student A has reached their mathematical potential when they move from a Level 5 to a Level 6. Or, to put it another way: if Student B completes x number of additional questions on tasks y and z, then they will unlock their potential of becoming a level 7 student. It helps to think of potential as something static, because then it can be monitored, assessed, and tabulated. Naturally this is important if your aim is to predict and prove the efficacy of your practice. And indeed, when it comes to certain jobs, subjects or skills, it is important to show that an individual has acquired a level of competency in that field. I want to know my dentist has reached their potential when it comes to wielding the drill in their hand.

But surely our concept of potential has so much more to offer.

It is telling that we can only ‘see’ potential in a student when they are already engaged in that activity- or one related to it. A student’s potential for physics is more likely to be recognised in the science laboratory; a student’s potential for athletics is more likely recognised on the sports field. This seems to reveal to us two things:

Firstly, potential seems less like an essential part of an individual and more like an activity involving the interpretation of an observer. I am reminded of a story my partner (a jazz musician and composer of over 40 years) told of one of his early encounters with a music teacher in his secondary school. There were few opportunities for him to perform, given that there was no orchestra or recital evenings and what music education there was, was entirely entrenched in the classical tradition. However, his father was a jazz pianist and so he did get numerous chances to hear live music and engaged with musicians regularly. His early influences included Oscar Peterson, Art Tatum and Bill Evans. When, in the school hall, he started playing some of the chords and improvisations inspired by these greats, there was no encouragement or recognition of his potential as a jazz pianist, rather he was tersely instructed to ‘stop making that noise’. The teacher had little time for jazz and my partner never played a piano in school again. It is not hard to imagine that, had my partner not had opportunities to play outside of school, that experience would have quashed any further desire to play and it’s unlikely he would have pursued a career in music. If all those around him shared a similar attitude towards jazz and felt his playing was merely ‘noise’, would he still have had that potential? If he stopped playing piano all together in that moment, would the potential still exist today? What if he decided to turn his attention to woodwork? Was the potential carpenter just biding his time until the potential pianist moved aside? It seems more likely that potential is more akin to a collaborative process than it is a characteristic of someone’s identity. That is not to say that there are not genetic traits that might enable individuals to become more adept at certain activities. Being tall might be helpful when it comes to playing basketball, but this is surely far too simplistic an understanding of potential; not every person over two metres tall is a potential basketball player.

Deleuze and the Image of Thought

According to common usage, it appears as if potential is something that needs to be recognised by someone. But in order to recognise something as something else, we must first have an idea or an image of the thing to be recognised. This is well articulated by Deleuze when he says:

“Recognition may be defined by the harmonious exercise of all the faculties upon a supposed same object” (Deleuze  2004 p.169)

When we talk about potential, what is the object being recognised? It doesn’t make much sense when we talk about recognising potential in a person because we’re generally not talking about potential as a concept. We’re not recognising potential as a thing-in-itself; rather we talk about potential as some sort of modifier: a potential pianist / potential teacher / potential writer etc. There are a couple of ways we might understand this:

1. We have an idealistic version of what a pianist/teacher/writer is like and the characteristics and behaviours of the student in front of us resemble that ideal; a Platonic version of those kinds of people. It certainly appears as if my partner’s music teacher fell into this category. He did not recognise jazz as music and so did not recognise my partner’s potential as a musician. For him, ‘real’ pianists played classical music and, crucially, music students played classical music in school.
2. We recognise the rudimentary skills / techniques the student is displaying and can imagine them in particular contexts. For instance, a student might show an ability to keep good time during a drama warm-up game and the teacher recognises their potential as a musician or a dancer, even though they are in a drama class.

Potential as an improvisatory activity

Instantly, there seems to be something contradictory about viewing potential as something akin to improvisation. Potential, as we commonly understand it, is what can be seen, though is yet to be fully realised, whereas improvisation is that which is unforeseen, something that arises without preparation or planning. It appears as if these two concepts belong at opposite ends of a spectrum. But I would argue that there are significant overlaps: both improvisation and potential arise as a result of certain relationships and contexts; both rely on a level of skill and expertise to be realised and both emerge from apposite activity.

The paper will continue to explore the nature of potential and improvisation and how our understandings of each might affect how we ‘see’ potential in our students. I intend to investigate the following question:

• To what extent is potential a dynamic of relationships and/or an aesthetic (perhaps improvisatory) practice?
• How might we understand potential in terms of Deleuze’s reflections on images of thought?

The arrival of the pandemic has radically altered the way in which we engage in all sorts of activities and has arguably been especially detrimental to artistic practice. If we are to understand potential as a form of aesthetic practice, how might the move from the physical to the digital realm disturb our students’ potential?

References:

COUCH, J D., and TOWN, J. (2018) Rewiring Education: How Technology Can Unlock Every Student's Potential Texas, Ben Bella.

DELEUZE, G (2004) Difference and Repetition London, Bloomsbury

OECD (2014), "United Kingdom", in PISA 2012 Results: Creative Problem Solving (Volume V): Students' Skills in Tackling Real-Life Problems, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264208070-18-en.

THEURER, C; BERNER, N E.; LIPOWSKY, F (2016) Assessing creative potential as student outcome: On the applicability of the TCT-DP in repeated measures, Thinking Skills and Creativity, Volume 20, 2016, Pages 74-82

In this speculative essay I explore Hannah Arendt’s concept of judgment and its educational implications in times of pandemic. Such a connection between Arendt’s reflections on judgment and education today was not yet offered by other works in the field. I argue that Arendt’s conceptualization of judgment may offer a vital source for a critique of contemporary reduction of education to the “uniform activity on a flat screen”, represented by the growing use of and the advocating for technological tools like “zoom” for teaching and learning.

                     To make the argument clear I present two interconnected topics. First, I elaborate on Arendt’s unfinished theory of judgment that was planned to occupy a central place in her last work (The Life of the Mind), which she never completed. Born mainly out of Kant’s discussion of aesthetics in his Critique of Judgment (Kritik der Urteilskraft), judgment for Arendt is a human capacity to tell “right from wrong, beautiful from ugly.” Due to its sources in Kant’s discussion, such a faculty for her relates to retrospective assessment made by someone who wishes to understand the past and to reconcile present existence with what has happened. A historical perspective marks in such a way a form of judgment, but any observation of a non-participating spectator can fall under such a category. Judgment for Arendt, however, is also and more importantly a faculty characterizing political actors. Especially in her “political writings”, Arendt argues for a faculty exercised by such actors in order to decide how to act in the public sphere. Here in particular judgments must take into account inter-subjectivity, or what Arendt calls being among human beings (inter hominem esse). To be “among” fellow human beings means for Arendt not only to take the existence of others into consideration, but also to be in contact with them “in speech and in action.” The concept of judgment receives a unique meaning: not only a faculty of retrospective assessment (telling us what is god, bad, beautify, worthy, right or wrong) but one that always involves the existence of other people, other viewpoints, different perspectives and so on. To judge means then to be among humans. In such a way judgment does not only signify a political category but more profoundly represents for Arendt “the political.”  

Second, I examine the possible educational implications of these reflections. In order to do so, I wish to introduce in my presentation, however briefly, Georgio Agamben’s recent take on education. An association between Arendt and Agamben is rather missing in the context of educational thought. To some extent, however, we are invited to make such an association, because Agamben himself voiced in his studies his debt to Arendt (for example in his early paper on violence, as well as in his celebrated Homo Sacer).

His concise, perhaps provocative, blog entry entitled “requiem for students” (posted May 2020) may serve as a case in point. In a series of short, somewhat dense, remarks Agamben suggests a connection between the being among humans and education. For him the inter-subjective interaction of different people gathering together marks the historical naissance of the “student as a form of life.” The life of the students (Das Leben der Studenten) is a theme that was to some extent introduced by the young Walter Benjamin. Benjamin provides a metaphysical account of “being” a student that advocates for what he terms “a community of learning” (eine Gemeinschaft von Erkennenden), untied by its “idea of knowledge” and standing in opposition to any “vocational training”, enslaved by the social circumstances. Agamben, I believe, picks up this theme by pointing to a “form” of life that provided throughout the centuries the basis for western society and politics. Accentuated by Agamben, therefore, is not only a “community” that is tied by its idea of knowledge, but also one that embodies the ties between the aesthetics of education and the sphere of politics.

We are not dealing here, however, with an argument about the importance of physical contact (as opposed to virtual one), but rather with the “signature” of an education in which western civilization is arguably rooted. I emphasize here the concept of “signature” because Agamben seems to hark back to his “theory of signatures” (as offered mainly in his 2008 Signatura Rerum). Taking this theory into consideration, Agamben seems to suggest a broad argument: For Agamben the technological, online education, that was introduced around the world due to the pandemic, and that continues to effect school culture and classroom climate today marks for him the “end” of such an educational “signature”, representing therefor what could be termed a “civilizational crisis.”  

Can we not argue then that the crisis that Agamben suggests is about the crisis of judgment? The point I wish to make relates to what seems to be Agamben’s educational play on Arendt’s concept of “the political.” I have mentioned above that for Arendt the notion of judgment is entangled with the “being among humans” (i.e. “the political”). Such a “being” is, arguably, what Agamben has in mind. What I wish to suggest is that Agamben’s critique is not focused on the impossibility to be actually together in one classroom, campus, or physical settings, although this is certainly important. More profoundly, he points to the incapability to assume the viewpoints of fellow human beings, that is the crux of judgment. The isolation, or perhaps better, the atomization of the student through the reduction of educational interacting to mere “zooming”, invites the fading away of such a capacity and, to follow Agamben through, of the social and political traditions that are based on its realization. What the “flat screen” therefore may level, is the human competence to take others into consideration, which characterizes education and conditions politics (i.e. the so called “being among humans.”).

I conclude the presentation by bringing the association between judgment, politics and education to bear on critical thinking today. One of the central points to note, I think, is that such an association suggests that what is missing from the reduction of education to technology (a central theme in critical theory) is not an education for “critical self-reflection” as Adorno for example would have it, but rather the ability to judge. The “fear of judging” that Arendt for example links to our “modern condition” characterizes such an education, and may reflect also on some of its additional features (e.g. the advocating for “professionalism” in education, the centrality of psychological language and vocabulary, the growing use of test scores and “objective” assessment tools and procedures), even if these different features may seem to have nothing in common. This point may be extended to include also the difference between an Arendtian-Agambenian understanding of “barbarism” and Adorno’s usage of the same term. While the latter associates “barbarism” with the menace of “reified consciousness” in the field of education, for Arendt and thus also for Agamben it refers to the inability, perhaps even the growing reluctance, to tell “right from wrong.”

Life, is growth and its sharing require us to cultivate our sensitivity. Neglecting it or subjecting it to intelligibility do not allow us to achieve the potential of our being. (Irigaray, 2019, p.33-34)
…the existential challenge – which is lifelong – is that of trying to stay in the “middle ground” in between world-destruction and self-destruction (Biesta, 2022, p.49).

Introduction
Under the pandemic children and youth have lived under regulations that limit their possibilities of social interaction. Social contact is seen to spread the virus and must therefore be limited. In a survey conducted among 106 448 students in lower and upper secondary school (in Norway, response rate 76 %) during spring of 2021, 49 % replied that the covid-19-pandemic had influenced their life negatively to some degree or a lot (22% reported that it also had had some positive effects). Among the negative effects that were reported, relations to peers, family relations and mental health (in No. Psykisk helse). An important finding in this survey was that girls, the oldest of the youth and those with a low socio-economic status experienced a higher degree of negative changes in relation to the Pandemic (Sandsaunet et al. 2021).
My point is not to discuss numbers, just to state the fact that people are suffering when schools are closed, and their teaching and learning happen via digital platforms. From a pedagogical point of view school is an important arena for peer socialization, when this arena is closed, youth will be affected, as well as their teachers. In other words, education in school is about more that learning subject knowledge, it is also an important social arena that shape who and what you are and become. The social interaction among peers, inside and outside of the classroom in school is an often-forgotten arena of individualization and socialization (Frønes, 2010). The relatedness of human beings, experienced and expressed in socialization as identification, as a process of identifying oneself and other, as me and you, as me in/for you and you in/for me, as different, that is as peers – can be taken for granted, that is – overlooked. Peers are in reciprocal relationships – always, and if this is overlooked in the educative processes important aspect of what education is for are missed, I will argue.
In this paper I point to the relationality of social interaction as part of an identification processes that peers (in education) experience in a subject-subject relation, face-to-face, body-to-body among themselves as children and youth, but also in relation to their teachers. The sensory aspects of these formation processes need further unpacking, and I intend to do so with the help of Luce Irigaray texts on sexual difference and desire (2019). These processes of identification and self-formation happening in school, whether it engenders equity and space for the other or results in exclusion and delimitation of an individual, is experienced in all aspects of the educational gesture (a conceptualization used by Biesta, 2022), I argue. The processes that form who I am (‘to be’) and become (the self) are always intertwined with that of other human beings. To grasp these relations of subject-to-subject-ness more radically I turn to Irigaray (2019). I believe a more complex elaboration of human relatedness, sensitivity and desire is necessary in order to arrive at an appreciation of human subjectivity founded in an acknowledgement of (sexual) difference. This I will return to in the last part of this paper.
So, in this paper I will start by addressing the notion put forward by Biesta (2022), about subjectification. He frames subjectification as part of three domains of purpose of education; qualification, socialization, and subjectification (p.43). He claims that subjectification must have an existential orientation – that is supporting students to exist as “subjects of their own lives rather than objects of cultivating” (p. 40). My problematizations are directed at the understanding of subjectification in Biesta’s text. Biesta seem leave out or overlook the social pathologies of subjectification, or self-realization, inherent to his notion of subjectification (Jf. Hammershøj, 2009).
I want to open a discussion on subjectivity that points to other aspects of what it means to be a human being among other human beings (not downplaying other living creatures, but here limiting it to humans). These are aspects that focus on the collective, or peers in lived life, in education. In this approach I make a link between socialization and individualization. Individualization is addressed as subjectification by Biesta. He insists on addressing it as subjectivation, and he then rules out Identity/identification as an aspect of this process (Biesta, 2022, p.52). Inherent to this discussion I want to open for a nuanced understanding of human subjectness, not as one but as two. I open this discussion on subject-subject-ness in the philosophical distinction between Ipse and Idem, or between an understanding of the subject (I) and the self. “To say self is not to say I”, Ricoeur claims (Ricoeur, 1994, p. 18). I will briefly elaborate on this distinction in the paper. Then onto this Ricoeurian understanding of oneself as another, I introduce Irigaray’s ‘dialectics of sensitivity’ (2019), which elaborates intersubjectivity from sexuate desire expressed through the life and living of difference of subjectivities.
To me this has profound impact on ways of thinking ‘subjectifying education’. Especially in relation to what Biesta claims referring to Benner, that education is a summoning to subjectivity, referred to in German as “Aufforderung zur Sälbsstätigkeit” (Biesta, 2022, p. 46). Being summoned or invited to subjectivity is an educational gesture. The crucial point for me is then what kind of subjectivity is this? Is education a summoning to an autonomous or a relational subject (a Self)? In Biesta’s texts I find traces of both. In elaborating
subjectivity and overlooking the difference between ‘subject’ and ‘self’, using these concepts interchangeably, I believe there is a danger of collapsing subjectivity into One. This I argue with Irigaray, loses some critical dimensions of humanness.
Furthermore, as a crucial aspect of the relatedness of human subjectivity I will elaborate on the sensory and embodied aspect of socialization and self-formation, happening in life, in education, – and so often overlooked. I believe we need the complexity of a model of human subjectivity of interrelatedness. By addressing human desire, Irigaray points to what is in us all, but differently distributed, and by nature expressed through a desire aroused between two who are different. Luce Irigaray asks if we need desire “as a new basis for an individual and collective culture” (2019, p.2) and she claims that desire can act as a “bridge between soma, soul and spirit” (p.4). But this will require humans to cultivate a culture of the experience of desire, that we currently lack (p. 26).
Subjectification is an existential matter?
I opened this paper with two different quotes. To me these express different existential outlooks on life. A ‘middle ground’ between two forms of destruction, to me reads like an outlook on life where the aspirations point to living as living on “the wedge of a knife” – a kind of living that will require a lot of self-control, a tremendous balancing act so as not to fall off the edge. This is a somewhat depressing or restricted form of living, I contend. Life as a way of cultivating sensitivity, on the other hand opens up domains of existing through forms of sensitivity that appraise otherness, difference – a life that may flourish in all its modalities. This points to forms of life that are more promising, in my interpretation. Subjectification as an existential matter (Biesta, 2022, p.45) raises questions about what kind of existence this depicts.
Subjectification as part of the threefold (domains) of purposes of education is a conceptualization Biesta revisits in the book “World-Centred Education. A view for the Present” (2022). Here he positions subjectification as “our freedom to act or to refrain from action” (p.45). He argues that this freedom is a concrete experienced freedom, as in deciding to “stay or to walk away, to go with the flow or to resist”. He goes on and explains that:
“Freedom viewed this way, …, is fundamentally an existential matter; it is about how we exist, how we lead our life – and there is no one else who can do that for us. Put differently, freedom is a first person-matter, just as, for example walking… It is about how I exist as a subject of my own life, not as object of what other people want from me” (p.45, italics in original).
Being ‘a subject of my own life’ sounds much like an individual who is responsible for its (own) self-realization. The possible pathologies of such a realization are discussed in the cultural diagnosis of the process of individuation by Hammershøj (2009). Today becoming individualized – that is subjectivized, is something (a matter) that begin and start in the same place – it is a “first-person matter” to use Biesta’s words. “That is, as a consequence of the shift in individualization, to be an individual today means not simply to have but rather to be a project of self-realization (Hammershøj, 2009. p. 513).
Bluntly put, one of the problems this raises (for the subject) it that there is no longer anyone to blame for your own failings, you can only blame yourself. Another way of putting it is that you risk becoming your own enemy. Subjectivation as self-realization, as existing on the edge, risk falling into self-destruction. The difference in Hammershøj’s diagnosis is that this self-destruction is generated by the process of subjectification itself, that is self-realization – when the subject becomes its own project. Biesta sees self- destruction as an existential withdrawal from the world, when being confronted with the world we “out of our frustration, … step back and withdraw ourselves from the situation” (Biesta 2022, p. 49)
Being summoned to subjectification
Existing as a subject of your own life and “refusing children and young people the comfort of not being a subject (Rancière), is what education as subjectification (or: subjectifying education;…) is about” (p.47). So, the freedom of the subject is limited by the world, the way Biesta frames it. The subject is not free to do whatever he wants, Biesta talks about a “qualified freedom” (p. 48). But the summoning of the subject through education– means someone from the outside, the teacher, summons you – to something in yourself – your subjectivity. Although the world has perimeters that will restrict your subjectivity – these are less prominent even if world-destruction could be the endpoint. In Education – subjectification is something you are not allowed to escape – you must be subjectivized. Here freedom ends in other words.
Below are some of the preliminary headlines/lines of argument I intend to continue elaborate this paper around:
• Individualization; Identification/Subjectivation: Questions of ‘who’ or ‘what’
• To say self is not to say I (on Idem and Ipse)
• Individualization and subjectification in the fundamental relatedness of humanness. I am not you, a space (and time) for me in you and you in me.
• Loosing ‘sensory’ contact with other(s) makes schooling meaningless.
• “Another absolute than knowledge” – Desire in education.
• Mutual desire: Sensory experiences, cultivating the forming of I to you in education
o To contract: Summoning to subjectivity in education as a depicting of a story founded in traditional values expressed in patriarchical culture about: autonomy, courage, cowardness, power and self-control

Referanser:
Biesta, G. (2022). World-centred Education. A view for the Present. Routledge. Taylor and Francis Group.
Biesta, G. (2017). The Rediscovery of Teaching. Routledge. Taylor and Francis Group.
Frønes, I. (2010). De Likeverdige. Om sosialisering og de jevnaldrenes betydning [Peers. Socializing and the significance of peers]. AdNotam Gyldendal. 3 utg.
Hammershøj, L.G. (2009). The Social Pathologies of Self-Realization: A diagnosis of the consequences of the shift in individualization. Educational Philosophy and Theory, Vol. 41, No. 5, doi: 10.1111/j.1469-5812.2007.00383.x
Irigaray, L. (2019). Sharing the Fire. Palgrave macmillan.
Sandsaunet V.U.; Bakken, A., & von Soest, T. (2021). Ungdoms opplevelser av konsekvenser av pandemien etter ett år med covid-19-restriksjoner. Tidsskriftet den Norske Legeforening doi: 10.4045/tidsskr.21.0335

The initial question of this paper revolves around a question posed by the INPE Call,  “What becomes of the public role of the school in times of pandemic when borders between the private and the public are redrawn?”

I am drawn to this question because during this “Pandemic” the very notion of there being “borders between the private and public” schooling seems to make little sense to me as all my classes during this time have “moved” from f2f to online and the interface between home-life, school-life and thinking about schooling is something of a 24/7 scenario. I’m never far from my work, e.g., emails from students come in all hours of the day. Working from-home means home is where the school is; conversely school is always at-home with me. At times, I yearn for that non-educational place/space, perhaps a spandrel to replenish in.

The Work-in-Progress in three sections:

1. Crisis, Schole, Profanation

As Pandemic-life passes, pedagogical boundaries become existentially impossible for me to keep. Indeed, in turn, I find it hard to pinpoint where to begin my investigation of schooling… so to work my way out of this rabbit-hole, I’ve turned to, “School as Architecture for Newcomers and Strangers: The Perfect School as Public School,”(2010) to initially frame this study. The motivation: Jan Masschelein and Maarten Simons (hereafter M/S) read Arendt as saying that the school is public space. Hence, to a certain extent, my home/office = school= public space at least when my class meets online. And so?

With this equation, I began to free-associate claims made by M/S, first: “The essence [of education] in Arendt’s thinking is not something that we find out, not something that we think up or invent, but what shows or reveals itself precisely in and through a crisis”(538). So, if “the school is public space”(543), and if the essence of education is revealed in crisis, then can we say that during a time of crisis, like the Pandemic, the “essence” of education is revealed publically via public schooling?

To address this, the meaning of public space needs clarification. “Public space in this regard is no one’s place or space and no one’s time, and hence a place for no one in particular…Indeed, the school here is literally a place of schole, that is the space of free time…What is assumed is an architecture where things are of ‘free use’ and thus disconnected from the usages of old generation in society but not yet appropriated by students as representations of a new generation. What is assumed is the idea of a kind of common place where nothing is shared but everything can be shared.”(543-544) So, schole, in its freeing architecture of space/time also frees identities, especially for the newcomer, by disconnecting the usages of ideas of the old generation such that the new generation can discover the world anew, without generational bias. OK.

To accomplish this task idea of profanation is prominent, “What we have in mind is the school as a place and time of profanation, a place/time where words are not a part of shared language, where things are not (one’s) property and to be used according to guidelines, where acts and movements are not habits, where thinking is not yet (a system) of thought, and where students are not conceived of as ‘not yet potentially able.’”(my emphasis, 544)  Profanation is the suspension of the everyday meanings attached to objects we use in the world, e.g., an ordinary pencil is suspended from its ordinary meaning- to write- and is reimagined by a child in play to be a rocket ship. In profanation the object has no “sacred” use, hence allowing the child to reimagine the object within the free space/time of schole. Here the free space/time and usage of objects (via profanation) makes the school public, as the pedagogic space is free and available for everyone’s use.

Hence, if the Pandemic is a crisis, then, as M/S claim during this crisis the essence of education is ontologically a revelatory moment. Here one might claim that the Pandemic-as-revelatory “frames” thinking about crisis itself, that is in a similar vein, the Pandemic, like Plato’s Sun in the “Allegory of the Cave,” is both source and cause of events in the world by being both generative and is also an object of knowledge. So, while we might be able to use profanation to free up the Pandemic to study its causes & effects, hence, unraveling issues, the question at hand is: how then does profanation free up the very act of framing that frames the very act of profanation as a pedagogical method employed in schole?  Profanation is not a neutral act (Agamben, 2007), so how is the teacher affected (framed within the Pandemic) in the very choices she makes regarding what is to be profanated, brought to the table for study? Indeed, if profanation is intended as a freeing of objects in space/time from past meanings, how does profanation work when the Pandemic is a new, unique, disorientating as an event for both the old and new, student and teachers alike, i.e., for everyone?

2. The Table, Profanation, and the Spandrel

I believe we can go further to specify the site of profanation: the Table (my capitalization). Central to the public space of schole is the table. M/S point out, “The teacher is an e-ducator, that is, someone who puts something on the table…and so transforming the world into ‘things for free use.’”(547) In the classroom the teacher puts things “on the table” for free uses by the children who are led out from, suspend, their everyday life to experience and play-with the world anew via things presented on the table.  Key here is the “table” as the site of world disclosing in schole. That is, “…the profane school offers a time and place where things are put on the table transforming them into things that are at everyone’s disposal for ‘free use.’”(544) The Table then, functions as the pedagogical device, as it brings the students and teacher into a place where they collectively study while individually each exploring in their own mode the object on the Table.

Hence the Table as a pedagogical device, as technology, directs bodies in a certain way and towards a certain direction, i.e., focusing on the objects placed upon the Table.  The Table gathers one’s attention.  The Table allows the child to wander in their thoughts, to ponder and contemplate, to inspect the objects - in short, to face the object presented. But most importantly, as the object grabs the child’s attention, the Table fades into the background, and as unobtrusive, the Table becomes the “where” in the child’s works, the site of study- the site of education where the world unfolds (Ahmed, 2006). Indeed, facing the table is education(al). However in facing the object(s), what is privileged in profanation? Privileged when the Pandemic is brought on the Table? And what is left/the remainder after the “separation” of the object from “old” social meanings to the “newly” emancipated, profanated object in use?

Lastly, what’s beneath the Table? I assert: a spandrel. The spandrel is an architecture term used by Stephen Jay Gould (1997), “to designate the class of forms and spaces that arise as necessary byproducts of another decision in design, and not as an adaptations for direct utility in themselves”(10750). Note the spandrel is a byproduct that was not part of the designer’s intent nor designed for any intentional use, in this case the underside of the Table. While education supposing happens on the Tabletop, what’s import of the spandrel space of the underside?  What is the aesthetic of the underside/spandrel in revelatory moments of education in crisis?

3. Crisis (revisited), Exhaustion, and (the exhaustion of) Profanation

One of the rationales for this working paper is to highlighting the tension between profanation and the exhaustion of concepts (see Hudak, 2021) to tease out the very notion of crisis, first ontologically speaking and second concretely as pertains to the architecture/aesthetics of the Table. To investigate ontologically I turned to the essay, “Exhaustion and Creation”(2015), by Brazilian philosopher Peter Pal Pelbart who differentiates between being exhausted, i.e., being tired and exhaustion. “Tiredness is part of the dialectic of work and productivity: one rests and returns to activity...Exhaustion, on the other hand... is he who, having exhausted his purpose, is himself exhausted, such that this dissolution of the subject corresponds to the abolition of the world. Where tiredness perceives its activity as temporarily compromised and is prepared to resume it, exhaustion, on the other hand, is…more radically…  an operation of disconnection …Exhaustion undoes that which ‘binds’ us to the world, that ‘imprisons’ us in it and others, that ‘captures’ us with its words and images, that ‘comforts’ us with an allusion of entirety in which we have ceased to believe, even as we have remained attached to them” (my emphasis, 130). As such, exhaustion doesn’t simply rarefy, deplete ontological concepts, such as education, it undoes them as these very concepts become decisively divorced from their conceptual grounding, their mundane application in the world.

If crisis (per Pelbart) exhausts the world, i.e., “undoes that which ‘binds’ us to the world, that ‘imprisons’ us in it and others,” then how is profanation distinct from exhaustion-in-crisis?  Is profanation redundant, or perhaps stated stronger, a pedagogical illusion as crisis-via-Pandemic is already exhausting, unbinding concepts/things on the Table and elsewhere?

Indeed, Agamben (2007) warns in late-capitalism, “We could say that capitalism, in pushing to the extreme…generalizes in every domain the structure of separation… Where sacrifice once marked the passage from profane to the sacred and from the sacred to the profane, there is now a single, multiform, ceaseless process of separation that assails every thing, every place, every human activity in order to divide it from itself…An absolute profanation without remainder now…[Where], for everything that is done, produced, or experienced- even the human body, even sexuality, even language…[is] now divided from themselves and placed in a separate sphere that no longer defines any substantial division…This is the sphere of consumption.”(81) This long, but essential quote poses problems in schole. Because for Agamben the flip side of consumption-i.e., endless separation- is the “spectacle…the extreme phase of capitalism in which we are now living, in which everything is exhibited in separation from itself…This means that it has become impossible to profane.”(82) When brought to the Table, is the Pandemic spectacle? Has profanation (via Pandemic) become exhausted?

                          The irony here is as Pelbart stresses, “The conclusion is clear: We create by exhausting the possible.”(130) The rub then is that crisis-as-creation is situated within the very event of exhaustion, thereby exhausting the very philosophic and educational concepts to be employed by ontology to express its Self. So, if exhaustion harbors a moment of creation, then how does the Table operate to bind, connect, and create from the ashes, so to speak? And not to neglect its undersides, what role, if any, does this spandrel space play in educational creation? Indeed, perhaps to be creative in times-of-the-Pandemic one needs to occupy the non-educational, the spandrel!

References:

-Giorgio Agamben (2007), “In Praise of Profanation,” in Profanations, Zone Books: Brooklyn, NY

-Sarah Ahmed (2006), Queer Phenomenology, Durham, NC: Duke University Press       

-Stephen Jay Gould (1997), “The Exaptive Excellence of Spandrels as a Term and Prototype,” in Proceedings National Academy of Science, vol. 94.

-Glenn M. Hudak (2021), “The Exhaustion of Education and Its Educators: A Phenomenological Inquiry into Ontology, Anti-Black Racism & the “Perversity” of Philosophic Creation,” in Philosophy of Education, vol. 77, no. 1. 

-Jan Masschelein & Maarten Simons (2010), “Schools as Architecture for Newcomers and Strangers,” in Teachers College Record, vol. 112, no. 2, February.

-Peter Pal Pelbart (2015), “Exhaustion and Creation,” in Cartography of Exhaustion, Minneapolis, Mn: Univocal Press.

This paper presentation is a philosophical investigation of the example's function as a didactic practice in relation to teaching diversity, and more specific in relation to teaching religious diversity within Religious Education (RE), and its implications for student’s subjectivity. 

In Korsgaard’s article on teaching about the world through exemplarity, he argues that the love of the subject matter is crucial in order to teach children and introduce them to the world. Drawing on Wagenschein’s notion of the example, Korsgaard write that “The teacher must have a passion and a love not only for teaching itself, but also for what they are teaching.” (Korsgaard, 2020, p. 247) Teachers beginning with something simple to introduce or inspire, through examples, can lead to an entryway into the subject matter for the students. Examples can have a function of starting and introducing. Korsgaard highlights that the teacher does not only bring something in to the world (in the article in terms of loving the world (cf. Arendt, 2006), but it is also crucial that the teacher brings passion for the knowledge of the subject matter. (Korsgaard, 2020, p. 244) In this paper presentation I will develop this further by arguing that the use of examples is a complex act (cf. Shapiro & Meskin, 2014), but it is also crucial when teaching religious diversity, and it has implications for students’ subjectivity.

Departing from own teaching within teacher education and the trilateral conversations with students I have had, it becomes clear that how to create a diversity of images of religious traditions (through different examples of stories, film, images) is at the center for many students. This is understandable, since religious diversity is one of the core teaching contents in religion which should be dealt with within compulsory schools in Sweden (Läroplan (Lgr11) för grundskolan samt för förskoleklassen och fritidshemmet, n.d.) In the presentation, I analyze what some of these examples, and the students’ use of these examples, can do and how it can be understood in relation to teaching religious diversity, and in relation to students’ subjectivity. 

The purpose of this paper presentation is therefore partly to develop the example's function in relation to the subject matter of religious knowledge, and thereby answer the question: What do the examples show and create? Partly, the purpose of the presentation is to develop the question of the function of the example in relation to students’ subjectivity, and thus answer the question: What can the example imply in relation to students’ subjectivity? 

To answer these questions, I unfold the presentation by mainly drawing on Giorgio Agamben's philosophy, as well as a discussion on subjectivity and subject positions with the help of Oliver’s Witnessing (Oliver, 2001). In recent years, educational philosophers have taken an interest in Agambian philosophy. For example, Vlieghe argues that an Agambian way of thinking is most helpful for understanding the educational value of certain activities that typically take place in school contexts (Vlieghe, 2013). Lewis in turn argues for and develops the understanding and concept of potentiality in education (Lewis, 2013). In my own work (removed for peer-review) I have taken an interest in Agamben’s work on the phenomenon of witnessing and testimony, as well as potentiality and subjectivity. However, in this paper presentation I draw mainly on Agamben’s understanding of the example in his book The signature of all things: on method (Agamben, 2009). I argue, with the help of Agamben, that the example stands for itself, but that it also, in its specificity and singularity, moves towards what is visible next to it. Agamben describes how ’we all’ use examples, within philosophy, in art, literature as well as within teaching. (Agamben 2009, see also, Shapiro, H., & Meskin, J. 2014). The example makes it possible for the teacher to concretize, clarify and give the students an idea – a knowability – of different religious practices, but this knowability also implies something specific. Giving an example is a complex act, since “what the example shows is its belonging to a class, but for this very reason the example steps out of its class in the moment it exhibits and delimits it” (Agamben 2009, p. 18). The example and its knowledge have a movement between two singularities – and not as a movement between a part and the whole, i.e., not between the particular and the general. Meskin and Shapiro call this movement, or relation, an analogical relation, and writes: the “analogical relation is never reified, but remains open to a multiplicity of engagements with singular objects, phenomenon and ideas” (Shapiro & Meskin, 2014, p. 422). The example therefore exposes dynamic relations among singularities, but it never reifies what it tries to explain. Rather the example becomes, or remains, open in the world. 

In other words, examples create something, Agamben writes, which not only involves methodology but also ontology, since the example is to be viewed as a new ontological being. Agamben writes: “The intelligibility in question in the paradigm has an ontological character. It refers not to a cognitive relation between subject and object but to being.” (Agamben, 2009, s. 32) This ontological understanding of the paradigm (paradigm is used synonymously with the example), I argue, also has relevance for the understanding of the subject matter in religious education as well as for students’ subjectivity; both in terms of the student’s political subject position as well as in terms of their ethical becoming (Oliver, 2001).

In the paper, I am interested in this becoming and this new ontological being, and how the example, which remains open in the world, can be understood. I argue that the function of the example is ultimately a question for subjectivity, as examples in (religious) education have implications for students' subjectivity; where there is a possibility that the students can experience, as Oliver writes, a “sense of agency and response-ability that are constituted in the infinite encounter with otherness, which is fundamentally ethical.” (Oliver, 2008, p. 2) In the encounter with examples, students can, so to speak, bring with them facts, understandings and value perspectives, and they can thus be transformed on that basis. With my emphasis on examples as parallel singularities, my argument also clearly points away from the world-religious paradigm dominating teaching practice in religious education, in the direction of the study of lived religion (cf. H. Britton, 2019) as parallel singularities.

Overall, the presentation is a theoretical contribution where I argue that the use of examples in teaching has the potential to function as a vital didactic strategy in religious education about religious diversity.

Literature:

Agamben, G. (2009). The signature of all things: On method. Zone Books.

Arendt, H. (2006). Between past and future: Eight exercises in political thought. Penguin Books.

H. Britton, T. (2019). Att möta det levda Möjligheter och hinder för förståelse av levd religion i en studiebesöksorienterad religionskunskapsundervisning.

urn.kb.se/resolve

Korsgaard, M. T. (2020). Growing Roots and Becoming Interested: Teaching about the World through Exemplarity. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 54

(1), 235–249. doi.org/10.1111/1467-9752.12387

Läroplan (Lgr11) för grundskolan samt för förskoleklassen och fritidshemmet

. (n.d.). [Text]. Retrieved 21 October 2021, from www.skolverket.se/undervisning/grundskolan/laroplan-och-kursplaner-for-grundskolan/laroplan-lgr11-for-grundskolan-samt-for-forskoleklassen-och-fritidshemmet

Lewis, T. E. (2013). On Study: Giorgio Agamben and educational potentiality. Routledge.

Oliver, K. (2001). Witnessing: Beyond Recognition. University of Minnesota Press.

Shapiro, H., & Meskin, J. (2014). “To Give an Example Is a Complex Act”: Educational Intelligibility and Agamben’s Paradigm. Philosophy of Education, 0(0), 159–168.

Vlieghe, J. (2013). Experiencing (Im)potentiality: Bollnow and Agamben on the Educational Meaning of School Practices. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 32

(2), 189–203. doi.org/10.1007/s11217-012-9319-2

Author 2017a

Author 2017b

Author 2020

With recent developments in virtue ethics and democratic citizenship education, gratitude has been considered a democratic virtue beneficial to individuals and societies and thus worth cultivating in democratic education (Jackson, 2020; Jonas, 2011). For example, White (1999) argues that gratitude is a central virtue in democratic flourishing as it helps foster universal and reciprocal amity between citizens. Proponents of gratitude thus argue that cultivating and expressing gratitude toward those who provide free benefits to us is important for self-cultivation and social cohesion, while our gratitude can be targeted toward beneficent individuals as well as organisations, including the government or society as a whole (Jackson, 2020).

However, to what extent gratitude is morally desirable in contexts marked by social inequity, non-democracy, and injustice is questionable (Jackson, 2016). Some observe that, when expected in problematic social conditions, gratitude can become a burden and create unnecessary negative feelings (e.g., a sense of guilt, shame, and embarrassment) (Carr, 2015; Morgan, Gulliford, & Carr, 2015). Some thus argue that “We own a moral debt of gratitude only to those who confer benefits on us deliberately and for the right reason: out of concern for our own good” (Primoratz, 2008, p. 218). Put differently, it is not normally recognised as a moral obligation, nor as necessarily supererogatory, to show gratitude to others who benefit us for their purposes or who give benefits in exchange for something else.

Given this understanding, gratitude to an authoritarian government is not desirable or productive toward personal and social flourishing and can be an inappropriate expectation and excessive expression of virtue, because an authoritarian government does not give benefits to its citizens as free gifts or out of concern for citizens’ self-expressed interests and needs. Instead, they provide benefits rather as returns for citizens’ law-abiding behaviours that accord with the government’s own interests, which do not reflect those of the citizens, such as keeping the country functioning according to the status quo and maintaining the government’s rule.

Moreover, gratitude may conflict with other moral principles in such cases, of justice and equity (Jackson, 2017). When gratitude is promoted in a way that impedes the pursuit of democracy, justice, or equity, gratitude can therefore be excessive and unproductive. In relation, people in power can define gratitude as a noble virtue regardless of social circumstances and thus encourage disadvantaged groups to perform it even in questionable situations (Jackson, 2016). In this case, demands for gratitude can operate as tools for tolerating and reinforcing injustice and inequity. Such risks and challenges of promoting gratitude in education are no doubt intensified under the coronavirus pandemic which has often exacerbated inequities and injustice within and across societies worldwide.

Gratitude has been explored in many democratic countries (e.g., Great Britain, Europe, and the United States). However, its meaning and promotion in the People’s Republic of China, a country marked by a non-democratic political system, remains an underexplored area. In addition to its political organisation, China is also significantly influenced by the Confucian tradition that highlights relatedness, hierarchy, and integration of family and nation-state. In this tradition, gratitude is considered a virtue and moral duty even in situations marked by inequity and injustice. What are considered as risks of gratitude in western societies, as indicated previously (e.g., indebtedness), are seen in Confucianism as morally good. Indeed, according to Confucianism, a sense of deep mutual indebtedness is beneficial to foster connections, bind people together, and establish social harmony and unification (Jackson, 2020). Meanwhile, as Confucianism puts a greater emphasis on xiushen (cultivating one’s moral character) than on changing external environments (e.g., political and social environments), gratitude is considered an intrinsic virtue that everyone should consistently perform regardless of the particular moral or ethical nature of the context. Moreover, the Confucian tradition suggests that a family is the smallest nation-state, and a nation-state is the largest family. Following this logic, virtues in a family should also be applied to a nation-state. For example, members of a family and a nation-state are obligated to take care for each other and show gratitude to other members when they do so. This integration of family and nation-state connects with the Confucian emphasis on hierarchy in promoting gratitude. Lee (2022) calls this “paternalistic gratitude”, which means people’s obligation to show gratitude to the government is analogous to children’s grateful duty to their parents.

In China, the government has promoted gratitude as a virtue through many channels (including state media and school curricula) over the past few decades. Common discourses include (a) the gratitude of marginalised and minority people to the dominant and majority people for helping them integrate into the society, (b) the gratitude of Chinese people to the Chinese Communist Party and the government for developing a stable and prosperous society, and (c) the gratitude of Chinese people to political leaders for being good parents of the Chinese family (Li & Xiong, 2019; Zhang & Zhan, 2021). Since the Covid-19 pandemic, three new discourses in promoting gratitude have also become prominent. The first emphasises the gratitude of foreign countries (including developed and developing countries) to China for being a benevolent global leader in helping them fight the coronavirus (Kowalski, 2021). The second discourse focuses on the gratitude of international organisations (e.g., the WTO) to China for serving as a role model in dealing with the virus and being a responsible country (EPRCRSA, 2020). The third discourse highlights the gratitude of Chinese people to the Party and the government for taking care of them and putting their lives first. However, how these discourses are promoted in education remains unclear.

This paper critically examines how the Chinese government understands gratitude and promotes it in education to serve political purposes under the Covid-19 pandemic. In particular, it explores educational discourse in state media and textbooks, exploring different discourses of gratitude and their political implications. Our findings show that the Chinese government promotes gratitude as non-controversial and uses different discourses of gratitude to maintain the status quo: that is, to emphasise the superiority and advantages of dominant groups and the non-democratic political system. Given that all government discourse frames a lack of gratitude as unethical and as vice, we argue that its political usage in this context is harmful to the development of democracy while it also intensifies institutional and societal injustice and inequity. As an alternative, we argue for a social justice approach to promote and teach about gratitude, which considers more of the moral and ethical complexities of gratitude, and concedes how, at times, a “lack” of gratitude can be an appropriate response in situations marked by anti-democracy, injustice, and inequity.

Although this paper focuses on the People’s Republic of China, it also has noteworthy international implications. In addition to considering the case of China, it also engages with the global theoretical discussion on the value and challenges of teaching for and about gratitude, using China as one example in the international context. Moreover, it provides a Chinese perspective on how the politics of the Covid-19 pandemic can affect democratic education and inequality not only in China but also elsewhere around the world. As we argue, many challenges to democratic education and educational equality identified in this paper exist in other contexts. Thus, our recommendations provide a reference for facing related problems in other contexts. More generally, we observe that the features of gratitude and educating about gratitude which we identify as problematic in relation to education for democracy and justice in China may be less obvious in other contexts, but are nonetheless worth further considering, as they may be implicit educational concerns across other diverse societies. Thus, by highlighting some of the key characteristics of the case of gratitude in China, we provide an alternative perspective to understanding the commonalities and complexities of cultivating gratitude across democratic and non-democratic societies.

References

Carr, D. (2015). Is gratitude a moral virtue? Philosophical Studies, 172(6), 1475-1484.

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Abstract

Since 1939, Norway has had a tradition of nationally adopted curricula. The curricula have functioned as clear guidelines in primary education, and have traditionally been accompanied by a core curriculum outlining the fundamental values of Norwegian education and its most important aims. This core curriculum thus sets the framework for what is actually put into practice in the school. Therefore, a scrutiny of core concepts of the core curriculum is pertinent to the understanding of what shapes and drives the development of primary education in Norway today.  

The results of the first PISA-test in which Norway participated (2000) revealed that the Norwegian students scored lower than expected. This has later become known as the “PISA-shock”, which may be said to have contributed to legitimizing a new direction of the Norwegian school system. Traditionally, Norwegian curricula have been content-related with a school-based approach to the subjects. However, with the introduction of the curriculum reform Knowledge Promotion in 2006 (LK06), this was replaced by a competence-based assessment system that emphasized what the students should master rather than what they should work with (Sivesind, 2013). The change, from a content-oriented to a competence-oriented curriculum, led to a shift in focus from process and development to performance. This was further consolidated when the latest core curriculum, launched in 2017, gave the concept ‘competence’ a clearer anchoring in cognitive learning theory by introducing concepts such as ‘deeper learning’, ‘self-regulation’ and ‘metacognition’. The reform also introduced an interdisciplinary topic, Life Skills and Public Health, where ‘life skills’ is described as a competence.

Not only do these new concepts contribute to a new educational discourse, more in line with the 21^st century skills movement. We argue that they seem to replace key aspects of danning. The above mentioned concepts belong to a psychological conceptual framework for learning, far removed from the pedagogical ideas that comprise danning. We argue that this possible replacement of danning not only lead to another view on education, but that it might bear unwanted consequences. Our claim is that a psychological language for learning, combined with a strong emphasis on the students’ achievement of competences, leads to a perception of education – from both politicians and the public – where education’s primary task is to deliver predefined, measurable results. It introduces the idea of accountability rather than responsibility (Solbrekke & Østrem, 2011) which influences the society’s ideas about the purpose of education and its institutions. As a contrast to this outcome-oriented discourse, danning can function as a necessary critical yardstick and bring renewed significance to the inherent processual thinking of the concept. A key difference between danning and the above mentioned concepts is that while danning is a verbal noun similarly denoting an aim and a process, the other concepts only denote an aim, or more precisely something the students shall acquire. Thus, the new concepts become linked to performance, whereas danning inevitably relates to process and development.

Our analysis is based on a hermeneutic reading of the core curriculum from 2017, and by a comparative analysis of this core curriculum with the core curriculum from 1997. We explore possible changes in the perception of danning and in its role as an educational concept in Norwegian education. We here find that the understanding of danning changes from a result-oriented, social and democratic concept in 1997, to a definition of danning in 2017 as an individualistic process toward certain personal characteristics, without a defined content, and without its former social component. This, we argue, indicates a fragmentation of the concept of danning.

The concept of danning has traditionally been central to Norwegian education. However, what danning is, has always been difficult to define, as the concept’s meaning has changed over time. We can trace one root of the concept back to the Greek paideia, another to the German Bildung.
                     The Norwegian standard dictionary, Bokmålsordboka, gives four definitions of danning. 1) Danning means becoming, the act of constituting or creating something. Danning is further defined as 2) the result of this act of constitution or creation. 3) Danning denotes the acquisition of knowledge and experience through upbringing, education and socialization. Lastly, danning is defined as 4) the result of the process in definition n. 3, which is characterized as insight in essential subjects and a wordly or sophisticated conduct[1]. As the definitions make clear, danning is a verbal noun; it denotes a process and an end. Danning has also been understood as an ideal, and has thus absorbed the cultural ideals of the time and place in which it is used. This is reflected in the fourth definition from the dictionary: insight into essential subjects. What has been deemed essential, has been historically and culturally given. Still, the modern concept of danning has also contained a critical aspect, and it is historically linked to the establishment of Norwegian democracy, because all citizens needed a fundamental education to be able to participate in democracy. The concept of danning thus has a significant history in Norwegian philosophy of education and in Norwegian educational history. It emerges from the German concept of Bildung, but has come to hold a specific Norwegian content of meaning. Whereas Bildung denoted an individual’s inner development toward a perfected self, turned away from the outer, public world, the concept of danning has been directly linked to the Norwegian democracy.

As the concept of danning derives, but has deviated, from the meaning of the concept of Bildung, it may be of interest to an international, pedagogical discussion, as it brings a political and a Nordic dimension to the Bildung-tradition.

When Bildung was appropriated in the Norwegian context, it became the word “dannelse” (this Danish version of the word was the standard in 19^th century Norway. With later language reforms, the form danning became more common). This concept would soon denote an elitist knowledge of canon and bourgeois manners. The concept became more democratic when the prefix “allmenn-” (common) or “folke-” (people’s) was added. This version of the concept – allmenndannelse – appears in the objectives clauses for public education in 1860 and 1889.

Allmenndannelse came to denote the knowledge and skills all members of society should possess. This happened at the time when Norway was establishing itself as an independent, democratic nation state. The allmenndannelse of the people was considered instrumental to the project.

The prefixes shaped and changed the meaning of danning and the perception of who it was accessible to and what its purpose was. The meaning of the concept has been subject to change over the centuries, but the word itself continues to be included in Norwegian educational documents, discussions etc. This means that conversations about danning may become hindered from fruitful results because the participants attach different meanings to the same concept. This is of significance, as the concept of danning has been part of Norwegian educational legislation, and still is today: the concept appears in the current objectives clause for Norwegian education, implemented in 2008. Thus, a study is warranted about the contexts in which danning appears, and about how the concept has been used and understood in the core curricula.

Our paper relates to the INPE conference topic “the role of tradition/s in education”, as it will give an outline of the definition and use of the concept of danning in Norway and Norwegian educational history. Further, we discuss how concepts from a psychological discourse of learning come to replace danning as central educational concepts in the newest Norwegian core curriculum. The paper thus discusses the following questions: To what extent have the new concepts – ‘deeper learning’, ‘self-regulation’, ‘metacognition’ and ‘life skills’ – replaced aspects of danning in the Norwegian national curriculum? What implications may this have for our understanding of education?

The ongoing global pandemic has provided an unexpected test to many of our established educational practices and ideals, such as that of critical thinking. During the turmoil of the past few years, we have all been forced to personally take epistemic stances regarding open and highly complicated matters that cannot simply be put aside until later when all the definite facts are in. The best we can hope to do under such uncertainty, is to form our tentative beliefs based on the most reliable information currently available to us in our epistemic community. Sadly, for many of our fellow citizens the weight of this uncertainty has been too much, and they have gone down the rabbit hole of conspirational thinking. So, it seems that practicing critical thought is now as timely as ever in making sense of the world that is changing rapidly around us, as we somehow need to build a bridge between our “old habits, customs, institutions, beliefs, and new conditions”, to use John Dewey’s (1935, 37) depiction of the office of intelligence. However, the educational ideal of critical thinking, despite being something that we should all subscribe to in our societies, is nevertheless far from being unproblematic philosophically.

Our paper examines the two closely related notions of critical and reflective thinking. Critical thinking, as per the received view within the scholarship on this topic, refers to the subject’s abilities and dispositions to practice evidence-based belief-formation, decision-making and judgment. As such, it is usually one of the most central educational ideals of modern liberal democracies, on the one hand providing individuals with the intellectual tools for autonomous self-determination in their lives and strengthening the deliberative practices in societies on the other (Scheffler 1973; Siegel, 1988). The roots of the present philosophical understanding of this phenomenon are often traced back to the pragmatist John Dewey and his work How we think (Dewey 1910; see also Hitchcock, 2018). In this book the labels ‘reflective thinking’ and ‘critical thinking’ are used almost interchangeably. It is therefore quite tempting to celebrate Dewey as the founding father of the contemporary critical thinking movement. However, a closer historical review reveals that in a hundred years the later educational theorizing on critical thinking has travelled quite far from Dewey’s original conception of reflective thinking, perhaps losing some of his best insights in the process.

Thus, the main question explored in our paper is: How does Dewey’s account of reflective thinking actually relate to the present-day educational ideal of critical thinking? We begin by introducing the modern mainstream account of critical thinking, which has been primarily developed during the past six decades by educational theorists associated with the school of analytic philosophy of education. Certain key critiques aimed at this educational ideal are also covered briefly here, such as the concern of overemphasizing rationality and the threat of pure instrumental thinking. A more recent challenge is also discussed, which questions in the light of our current empirical evidence in cognitive science, to what extent this philosophical ideal is truly attainable to actual human beings like us with our imperfect psychology. After presenting critical thinking as it is currently understood, we contrast it with the earlier Deweyan alternative. For the sake of clarity, we use the label of reflective thinking for this notion – which is also historically appropriate, as it is the label Dewey himself came to ultimately view as better suited to describe this phenomenon (Rodgers, 2002).     

The main claim of our text is that although Dewey’s reflective thinking indeed resembles the current idea of critical thinking in many of its central features, reflective thinking also differs from critical thinking in some significant ways. Therefore, a side-by-side comparison of these notions will result in deeper understanding of both, opening new avenues for future theorizing. In particular, Dewey’s moral philosophy that springs from his pragmatist epistemology (or “anti-epistemology”, as described by Biesta & Burbules, 2003, 9), one that regards questions of ethics as inseparable from a larger whole of everyday experience, may prove useful in overcoming some of the philosophical challenges associated with critical thinking. Namely, it seems that critical thinking subsumes moral thinking and its education within a linguistic and argumentative framework of logical reasoning. This emphasis can be regarded as a child of its time, a product of the linguistic turn in analytic philosophy of education in the mid-twentieth century. As David Hitchcock (2018) notes in parentheses in his overview of critical thinking, none of Dewey’s illustrations of this phenomenon include situations where the critical thinker aims to review arguments presented by another person – all of Dewey’s examples illustrate how we should try to form beliefs in our own thinking. Most likely, this was a deliberate choice from Dewey, one that sought to underline the fundamental premise in his thinking, that to act right and intelligently always requires knowing the full contexts of the action under consideration.

Central moral choices in everyday life do seldom appear as collections of linguistically articulated premises and conclusions, nor as an assessment of such, as this does not sufficiently capture the big picture of how it is that we actually think. An ideal reflective thinker, as presented by Dewey, reflects her experience and the information she faces in more senses than one, in broad and humanly way, not in ways of cold rationality, nor primarily by means of language. A journey to the historical roots of critical thinking may thus help in outlining new ways to answer the growingly topical questions that current societies face: How to better educate critical – and reflective – thinkers. It may also contribute to meaningfully holding on to the ideal of critical thinking, despite the problematic flaws attached to it.

References

Biesta, G. J. J., & Burbules, N. C. (2003). Pragmatism and educational research. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Dewey, J. (1910). How we think. In J. A. Boydston (Ed.), The middle works of John Dewey (Vol. 6, pp. 177–356). Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.

Dewey, J. (1935). Liberalism and social action. In J. A. Boydston (Ed.), The later works of John Dewey (Vol. 11, pp. 1–66). Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.

Hitchcock, D. (2018). Critical Thinking. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2020 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (Ed.) https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2020/entries/critical-thinking/

Rodgers, C. (2002). Defining reflection: Another look at John Dewey and reflective thinking. Teachers College Record, 104(4), 842–866.

Scheffler, I. (1973). Reason and Teaching. New York: Bobbs-Merrill.

Siegel, H. (1988). Educating Reason: Rationality, Critical Thinking, and Education. New York: Routledge.

Stefano Harney and Fred Moten are cultural theorists with a particular interest in the phenomenon and experience of blackness. From a philosophical perspective, their work is informed by a Deleuzian orientation; from a political-theoretical perspective, the influence of the black radical tradition and the Italian-born tradition of Autonomia, which reflects an anti-institutional and activist commitment to Marxism. Harney and Moten’s joint work, The Undercommons (2013), propelled both of them to considerable cultural and academic prominence. One context within which their work has not been received with general enthusiasm is in mainstream academic philosophy, including the philosophy of education. We think that precisely for these purposes, The Undercommons offers an interesting and unique contribution in the form of the concept of study, which could be defined as a voluntary, improvisational, and open-ended way of learning, thinking, and feeling with others that is not fully determined or captured by the educational institution. In this sense, those who study are ‘in but not of’ the educational institution. As study foregrounds the relational, affective and sensory aspects of learning, it has become especially significant in the context of reflecting on the hollowing-out of education we have witnessed over the course of the COVID19-pandemic. To some it may seem that moving education to an online environment, such that it takes place through services such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Hangouts, and the many available alternatives, is an efficient mode of transferring knowledge which makes education more widely available and less resource-intensive. If anything, we should be enthusiastic about the lessons learned. On the other hand, many have been critical of such all-too-easy assimilations of education to efficient delivery and transference of knowledge. 

We argue that limiting the options to being enthusiastic about or being critical of education during the pandemic miss the point. The lessons to be drawn are about ‘education as usual’ as much as they are about education during the pandemic. This insight is prefigured by Harney and Moten’s concept of study, which is more than a concept as it proposes a practice, a mode of being-together, a way of situating itself within, beyond and underneath official educational institutions. This distinction between ‘education as usual’ and study is important to us as educators, and we feel that it is important to the philosophy of education as well. Even to such an extent that without the perspective on education suggested and effectuated by the concept of study, we risk missing what was really at stake in education during the pandemic. As we emphasize the distinction between ‘education as usual’ and study, we will repeatedly make the point that some of what makes education valuable takes place despite the self-understanding of the educational institution rather than because of and through it. This is in turn relevant for mainstream philosophies of education, which to some extent take ‘education as usual’ for granted and focus on institutional issues, such as how the authority of the educator should be grounded or how the educational institution is to be situated with respect to societal issues and political stances. The perspective of study as concept and practice opens up, for the purpose of practical education and for philosophical analysis, a space underneath and in-between institutional education, which study foregrounds and performs at the same time.

In order to make this case, we first offer a general approach to the concept of study as Harney and Moten define it, both in theory and in practice (for instance in the School of Study, a project co-founded by Harney). In order to bring this concept into contact with mainstream philosophy of education, we consider the shifts in emphasis and approach within the field suggested by the concept of study, which complicates several of its standard assumptions: in particular concerning the privilege of educational institutions such as schools as loci of education, the authority and role of teachers vis-à-vis students, the idea of a predetermined, external ‘goal’ or ‘function’ of education, the ‘specter’ of critical education, and the problem of the autonomy of education. This then puts us in the position of approaching ‘education as usual’ as well as education during the pandemic from the perspective of study. We formulate some of the lessons brought into view by ‘pandemic education’ concerning the nature of education in general, which the concept and practice of study allows us to draw.

This commits us to a certain way of proceeding. We start from the observation that in education during the pandemic we come to experience what is valuable about ‘education as usual’ and also what eludes the grasp of thinking in terms of institutions and their outputs, whether these are conceived as ‘learning outcomes’ or in more critical terms. We then reflect on the concept of study and the role it plays in Harney and Moten’s work, as well as its problematic tenure as a concept (which for us is part of its point and appeal). This allows us to move towards the lukewarm reception of study in mainstream philosophy of education and to reflect on what the concept and practice of study reveals about the nature of the questions philosophers of education typically ask. Part of our effort in seeking out the connection between study and philosophy of education is to reinvigorate said questions and to provide them with a new point of orientation, as well as to add further questions, notably about where education (now understood in terms of study) happens, to whom, and what its value might be. Here we build on two recent interventions in the philosophy of education, which we try to bring into contact with the concept and practice of study in order to further their aims, albeit in a different register which radicalizes the proposals currently on the table. These are Forms of Education (2019) by Emile Bojesen and the Manifesto for a Post-Critical Pedagogy (2017) by Piotr Zamojski, Joris Vlieghe, and Naomi Hodgson.

What we take up in Bojesen’s important intervention is his allergy to what he defines as the humanist legacy in education, of which his book offers a deconstruction. Central to Bojesen’s account is the introduction of a notion of educational experience in place of the centrality of educational institutions, which creates the conceptual space to distinguish formal education from education in Bojesen’s definition: the perpetual formation and deformation of unstable subjects. We attempt to pick up the ball and run with it by declaring ourselves co-infected with Bojesen’s institutional allergy to a point. At the same time, we offer an alternative for the definitional primacy of the subject which features not only in his definition of education, but also in the Blanchot-inspired notion of ‘conversation’ as plural speech which Bojesen uses to offer a model for educational theory and practice. Here we are still dealing with subjects dealing in individual experience, who subsequently come together and are formed or deformed in and through education. Study offers another perspective: that of a practical multiplicity, not only in theory but in practice. We think of this as an important further intervention in setting the basic parameters of education, again in theory as well as in practice.

The Manifesto is again an intervention with respect to a debate, this time not only when it comes to the philosophy of education but also with respect to some of the main challenges facing educational practice. In particular, the nature and necessity of critical education come into view, mostly as something to be overcome. Being critical of critical education as an institutional matter, in the mode of the Manifesto, identifies education with the educational institution in the name of “education for education’s sake”. From the perspective of Harney & Moten, we object that the institutional parameters attached to this notion are self-defeating. With them and the authors of the Manifesto, we share a worry about the dominance of the critical mode within educational institutions. The Manifesto proposes finding a new composition of forces within the institution that will enable us to rise to the challenge of education for its own sake. But this implies that the education which is to be done for its own sake is always already tied to the educational institution. Part of what troubles us about the mode of critique is precisely its effect of individualization, which obfuscates the positionality of the critic in a posture of external detachment which at the same time tacitly ‘respects’ and thereby recognizes the institution, namely enough to criticize it and seek to reform it. Harney and Moten allow us to ask what it is that the institution is not delivering and can never deliver by virtue of its being an institution: that part of education which is never ‘delivered’, because it is about that practice and experience of education that is not recognized by the institution. This is the part of education that happens despite the self-understanding of educational institutions, namely study.

Emphasizing study thus allows us to take recent important developments in the philosophy of education in a new direction, while bringing their individualizing and institutionalizing aspects sharply into view. Precisely that which happens beyond the purview of the individual subject and the educational institution is what cannot be safeguarded in education during a pandemic. At the same time, it is what is always going on in ‘education as usual’, but in ways that go beyond official modes of instruction. This double-take – that study is part of institutional education without being recognized by it – is what education during the pandemic brings into view. It is thus in and through study that we can fully learn the lessons of what goes missing during pandemic education.

Introduction

Over thousands of years, different Chinese philosophers have discussed many aspects of Ming命. According to the study of the formation of this concept, it suggests Ming命 originates from the beginning of the Western Zhou dynasty (1046BC – 771BC) as some believed (Wu, 2009). Generally, Ming命, often translated into life, fate, command, was initially understood as orders and arrangements from heaven. The amount of literature and research on this topic is substantial, and these viewpoints and concepts are constantly being reviewed today, as they have been for many years (Fu, 2006; Liu & Zhang, 2019; Tang, 1999). Nevertheless, little research has been conducted to connect this concept to pedagogy and the pedagogical implications associated with its ever-changing meanings.

Besides, in the last three years, the covid pandemic stormed through the globe and left uncountable emotional wreckage and unanswered questions. Lives were lost, and lifestyles evolved, making the remaining reflection even more vital. This paper was prompt under such circumstances, and it aims to explore some issues concerning the meaning of words, language, and the philosophical thinking for language while analyzing the pedagogical elements which interact with these notions. It attempts to rethink the meaning and the pedagogical implication of Ming命 through a historical scope, under the inspiration of the phenomenological experience of the covid pandemic. Additionally, this paper also hopes to highlight the limitation and contextualization of language in a philosophical sense. With the spike of confirmed cases and asymptomatic infections of Covid-19, each government organization in different countries around the world has devised a variety of corresponding measures. At the same time, the rising mortality rate during the pandemics reminds us of the necessity of reconsidering our response to the entire epidemic and rethinking the meaning of life. Hence, four layers of meaning of Ming命 were chosen for this paper, and each is inspired by the current ongoing pandemic.

In accordance, four texts throughout Chinese history are selected to indicate the development of this concept’s meaning and its pedagogical implications in motion through time. Ming命 as the command of heaven will first be discussed through ‘Wei Tian Zhi Ming 周颂·维天之命’ of ‘the Book of Songs 诗经’. Kongzi’s (551BC – 479BC, often called Confucius in anglophone countries) view of Ming命 as the coexistence between humans and heaven will be explored later in ‘the Yanyuan of the Analects 论语·颜渊’. Further, a famous classical essay, ‘Chen Qing Biao陈情表’, will be used to analyse the meaning of Ming命 as human life and survival. Finally, the modern usage of Ming命 in Xi Jinping’s report ‘Never Forget the Original Intention and Remember the Mission不忘初心、牢记使命’ will be explored.  

While dissecting the connection between this concept and pedagogy, and the respective pedagogical implications derived from this notion’s changing meaning, this paper will utilise the framework of the pedagogical triangle (Kenklies, 2019; Lewin, 2018; Friesen & Osguthorpe, 2018). The framework suggests in the pedagogical process, there are three key factors: the educator, the educand, and something in relation with the student, which forms a solid ‘pedagogical triangle’ (Friesen & Osguthorpe, 2018)

Ming and its transition and change in the Chinese context

Ming命 as the Command of Heaven

During the pandemic, watching the number of cases piling up, one of the concerns is the factors that determine those who get infected. These days the science and statistics behind these concerns were utilized through socialization, and the general public was educated accordingly. However, there was a time in Chinese history when the broad belief, if not the only belief regarding life, is that it is governed by the command of heaven. In ‘Wei Tian Zhi Ming 周颂·维天之命’ of ‘the Book of Songs 诗经’, Ming命means that it is heaven’s command to choose King Wen to rule the country, and King Wen’s destiny is linked to that of the Zhou Dynasty (Zhu, 2006). With the blessing of heaven to King Wen, the Zhou Dynasty and its people will continue to live in perpetual peace and safety. Here, we can infer the definition of Ming命in this context, as the command of heaven; how a person will live his/her life is in the hands of heaven. There is nothing a person can do to alter the command of heaven; this command dictates whether or not a person will be affluent, glorious, and long-lived, and their efforts will make little difference. 

The author of this text, as the educator, attempted to educate people to respect and obey King Wen, who is seen as the descendant of heaven. The people, served as educand in this process, improving their relation with heaven and its descendent King Wen. Ming命as the command of heaven was intentionally delivered through this pedagogical process.  With the respect and fear of the heavenly command, other forms of education are unnecessary. The only form of education needed were the ones from heaven above or the king, the descendant of heaven. It suggests that when the belief in an absolute mandate from heaven is strong, the call for education is neglected because such belief denies the necessity for its existence.

Ming命 as the Coexistence between Humans and Heaven 

A commonly used method to tackle the Covid pandemic is the lockdown, which provides a large amount of time for individuals to live in solitude, hence, making self-improvement available. Historically, in the Chinese context, the idea of self-cultivation first appears as a coexisting state between humans and heaven. In ‘the Yanyuan of the Analects 论语·颜渊’, we can see that the role of Ming命as a predetermined destination designed by the highest power is not dismissed by Kongzi and his disciples (Kongzi, 2018). Nevertheless, more importantly, they emphasised the subjective initiative of individuals during one’s life journey. In Kongzi's discussion of Ming命, heaven remains the highest power; however, to distinguish itself from the earlier definition of Ming命 as the command of heaven, Ming命 in this context means that individual's future is in their own hands, under the guidance and supervision of heaven (Zhang, 2009).

Kongzi and his disciples, acted as educators, endeavoring especially to cultivate people’s moral character. The people, functioned as educand, improving their relation between their own images and that of the sage. Ming命, as the coexistence between humans and heaven,  offers more room for individuals to make changes in their lives, and gradually improve their minds and personalities during this process with openness and acceptance of the command of heaven.

​​​​​​​Ming命 as Human Life and Survival

The thinking revolving around covid, one which we found crucial, especially when witnessing the spiking death rate, is in relation to life, survival, and respect for life. In ‘Chen Qing Biao陈情表’, Ming命 means explicitly human life (Li, translated by Luo, 2005, p.10). Unlike the different meanings above, the use of Ming命 here does not suggest heavenly command or the coexistence between humans and heaven. It merely means the life of humans, as in its length, liveliness and existence. Ming命 here no longer connects to a higher power but simply a natural state of being and stresses what the grandmother’s living and being means to Li Mi.

In this text, Li Mi, as the author of the article as well as the educator, sought to educate the emperor to respect human life. The emperor, as the educand of this process, improved his relation to the standard of filial piety. Ming命 as human life and survival, was intentionally utilised to imply a form of life that has value on its own, particularly consistent with filial piety and respect for life. In such a context, education is meaningful at different levels. First, it is consistent with the need for life education to care, explore, and recognise the meaning of life, respect and cherish the value of life (Huang, 2013). Second, life has value in itself, and such education could improve people’s relation to such value, not just for themselves but also for the lives of others who share that value. Education becomes two dimensional at this point, a) improves one’s relation to the content in itself; b) improves one’s relation to the content regarding others.

​​​​​​​Ming命 as the Mission

Different countries have adopted different policies in response to the Covid. Governmental agencies were expected to carry out the mission to battle the pandemic. However, this is merely one of the many tasks. In Xi Jinping’s report ‘Never Forget the Original Intention and Remember the Mission不忘初心、牢记使命’, Ming命, translated as ‘mission’ in the text, refers to a significant duty assigned to a person or group of people with a strong sense of calling (Xi, 2017). As Xi (2017) explains in the report, the original intention is to serve people and seek happiness for them under the leadership of the Communist Party of China, which is also the mission of all the Chinese populaces. Such resolution could be identified when combating the covid pandemic, and it also has a profound effect by entrusting individuals to pursue happiness for themselves, which has dramatically boosted the people’s enthusiasm.

Xi, who acted as the educator, attempted to educate people about life with duty in the text. As the educand in this process, the people improved their relations with other people in this world. Ming命, as the mission, was intentionally entrusted to the people with the task of serving people. Carrying out the mission means keeping reminding oneself of the task, reviewing and improving themselves while doing it, because seeking happiness for a country and its people requires constant reevaluation and continuous effort.

Conclusion

In this paper, we are expected to demonstrate the shifting meaning of Ming命 embedded in songs, texts, petitions, and speeches, hoping to provide a different perspective when viewing the pandemic. The texts in this paper indicate that shifting is not merely time and textual-based but also ideological and contextual-based, similar to its educational thinking. Therefore, one must be conscious of the context they are referring to. Further, it should be aware that the same notion could be interpreted differently through time. More broadly speaking even, the same attention should be paid to the application of language in general due to its limitation and circumstantiality in a philosophical sense. Specifically, when Ming命 is named, and its meanings are discussed by words, part of its true nature is no longer available. Such awareness should be taken into consideration, as the other ideologies, i.e., educational thinking, behind those interpretations could lead to a diversity of directions. Moreover, the meaning of a notion and its interpretation could be counter-related to people’s educational and philosophical thinking, as the paper has demonstrated.

Reference

Kongzi. (2018). The Analects. Jiangsu Phoenix Science and Technology Press.

Friesen, N., & Osguthorpe, R. (2018). Tact and the pedagogical triangle: The authenticity of teachers in relation. Teaching and Teacher Education, 70(255), e264.

Kenklies, K. (2019). The struggle to love: pedagogical eros and the gift of transformation. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 53(3), 547-559.

Huang, Y. (2013). Study on Kongzi’s Ideas of Life Education. Doctoral Thesis of Zhengzhou University for the Degree of Doctor.

Lewin, D. (2018). Toward a theory of pedagogical reduction: selection, simplification, and generalisation in an age of critical education. Educational Theory, 68(4-5), 495-512.

Liu, Q. & Zhang, D. (2019). Study on the Evolution of the Investiture Etiquette in the Early and Middle Western Zhou Dynasty. Journal of Shangqiu Vocational and Technical college, 18(2).

Lupke, C. (Ed.). (2005). The magnitude of ming: command, allotment, and fate in Chinese culture. University of Hawaii Press.

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Xi, J. (2017). Complete the building of a moderately prosperous society in an all-around way and win the great victory of socialism with Chinese characteristics in the new era: Report at the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. People’s Press.

Zhang, W. (2009). Responsibilities and Dreams of Life-oriented Education. East China Normal University Press.

Zhu, X. (2006). Notes to ‘The Book of Songs’, World Publishing House, 1937 Edition. Journal of Zheng Western Zhou University. 39(3).

1. Introduction

Elementary education in the classroom is crucial for young children because of its significant contribution to the economic field and social stability maintenance and its role in individuals’ self-development and self-formation. To analyse and discover the role of education for the younger generation, the textbook Three Word Classic (Zhao, 2011) was chosen to study as the representative elementary reading material in ancient China. Three Word Classic is widely regarded as one of the classic reading books for elementary stage students in China over the last 600 years, owing to the language skills used (including idioms, allegorical sayings, and rhythmic beauty), rich history and cultural knowledge, and moral education under the feudal system (Zhao, 2011). Through the background introduction and pedagogical analysis, especially the pedagogical principles and teaching methods imparted in this book, we are expected to understand the Sishu (traditional private school setting in China) classroom culture and climate implied behind this book. Although this classroom setting was popular in ancient China, this book remains popular in classrooms as well as home settings. Furthermore, it is worth noting that it can still be partially adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, online instruction with the comma-dot method (Li, 2014).

In this paper, several key questions will be examined. First, how does the author proceed with his pedagogical activities with the book in the classroom, and how is this book used in the classroom? Second, how does the author select and organise different experiences and concepts, and what is the book about? Third, what does the older generation want to offer future generations? To answer these questions, the book entitled Three Word Classic will be interpreted using the following sequence: Firstly, the background in terms of when and how this book was used will be introduced. Thereafter what has been selected by the author will be explained in detail. Finally, a brief discussion and reflection on the particular educational mechanism in this book will be presented.

1. Three Word Classic and its contribution to classroom culture and climate
   1. How is this book used in the classroom?

Three Word Classic, as a literacy textbook for children, is characterised by short and neat sentences, clear four tones, and easy-to-read syllables (Zhao, 2011). Children can read them easily and quickly. This design makes full use of the characteristics of Chinese tones, which is monosyllabic and featuring with four-syllable tones, giving full play to the parts of solid memory in childhood (Zhao, 2011). This book is primarily used in Sishu as it is intended for young children learning to read at the elementary stage. As one of the most representative forms of private schools, Sishu is the traditional child educational institution in ancient China, generally small in scale, with around 20 students or fewer (Li, 2014). The fundamental goal is, through reading and reciting practice, to cultivate children's ability to recognise words and learn to write, develop good habits in daily life, absorb basic moral and ethical norms and master some shared sense of essential Chinese culture and common sense for everyday life. It pays great attention to the upbringing and education of young children and emphasises that young children should develop good moral qualities and living habits.

In Sishu, the teacher controls the teaching pace, and the students follow the teacher’s lead. During the course, the teacher sits beside the table, and the student places the book on the teacher's table and stands aside. Next, the teacher instructs the student to read from his or her book. The teacher uses a reddish brush to draw a point at the end of a short sentence, reads it once, and the students follow along with it; when they have finished a complete sentence, the teacher will draw a circle, which is usually described as comma-dot method (Li, 2014). After completing the whole assignment, the student will be asked to repeat it. The teacher specifies how many sentences to read every day. After the teacher leads the reading and the students follow the reading, they will repeat it if necessary. Thereafter, the student returns to his or her seat to repeatedly read aloud for approximately an hour or two, before placing the book in front of the teacher and turning his or her back to recite. Students must repeat all the books specified by the teacher.

Employing Sishu's pedagogical method, it is possible to ensure that students will be taught according to their ability, although it differs from student to student. For example, different levels of students can read different types of books simultaneously, and for students reading the same book simultaneously, teachers can also set different amounts of content at various paces according to their respective capacities of memory and comprehension. This method of teaching and reading according to the actual state of students' individual intelligence and progress is highly scientific (Li, 2004). This does not limit bright students’ reading speed and ensures that less intelligent students can master their learning content gradually and firmly.

1. 1. What is the book about?

Three Word Classic is primarily a persuasive book on the importance of education. In 29 out of a total of 123 chapters, the author explains why people should receive an education. For example, in Chapter 1, the author opens with a discussion of human nature and the significance of education. As the required textbook in the school, Three Word Classic is perceived as the preparational reading material to promote the Confucian school of thought. Moreover, in Chapters 2, 5,6 and 7, the author continues to stress the necessity of education: without proper education, children's personalities may grow in an uncontrolled direction; It is each individual's responsibility to learn while they are still young; If they are not educated when young, they will be unable to accomplish anything when they grow up.

It is not uncommon for authors to start their argument with the impact of education in the discussion of human nature. Even though Xunzi(316 to 235BC) and Mengzi (372 to 289BC) are both representatives of Confucianism, they hold different views on the debate surrounding this topic. Xunzi suggested human nature is evil because people have all kinds of self-interests and desires. He asserted that education aims to keep evil within a reasonable range (Xunzi & Knoblock, 1988). Conversely, Mengzi claimed that people are born good-natured, although he acknowledged that this might be lost due to external influences (Behuniak, 2004). From his perspective, education helps individuals live and act with benevolence. Thus, we can see, in Chapter 1, the author of Three Word Classic follows Mengzi’s thought, claiming that human nature is good; when men are born with excellent and similar nature and different when they are older they might change due to a different upbringing environment and educational background. As such, by supporting Mengzi's belief, the author suggested that education can be beneficial to all human beings, and they are changeable through education.

The author expands on what he wants to introduce to learners in other chapters. For example, in Chapters 12 to 13, 15 to 25, 27 to 36, 43 to 45, the author describes the world by listing the names of various concept categories. These categories include but are not limited to mathematics, geography, natural science, astronomy, economy, plants, and animals. In Chapters 14 and 37 to 40 of, the author highlights three relationships that he believes are the most important: the relationship between ministers, father-son, and husband-wife. In Chapters 8 to 12, and 26, the author reveals his idea of education about virtue. It can be observed that this book's rich content contains complex and abstract ideas that require advanced comprehensive abilities. Children at an early age in most cases cannot understand when they first read this book. For example, virtue education here may not be understandable for young children; the method used in the book only tries to make them remember and imitate. Therefore, during this process, children are not required to comprehend the meaning of the reading material immediately but rather have an epiphany later in life. Consequently, it is reasonable to assert that the educational effect may not always appear directly during the pedagogical process; it may present at an uncertain point or never present its outcome.

This delayed educational effect explains why teachers primarily utilise repeated reading and recitation in Sishu in ancient China, which aims to help children familiarize themselves with the texts and the deeper meaning behind them. Although it might be challenging for children at an early age to fully comprehend these ideas or have some noticeable impact on their minds at the stage, in the long-term, the various educational effects attached to these ideas will emerge. That is to say, once children are familiar with the contents of Three Word Classic and the rich contents are printed in their minds, as they grow up and with the enrichment of knowledge, the ideological connotations contained in this book will influence them subconsciously.

1. 1. What has been offered?

In general, the teacher instructs students to read and recite Three Word Classic through various approaches, including comma-dot reading and in-person demonstrations, in order to offer them two levels of understanding. The first level is concrete knowledge such as that pertaining to animals and colours that can be perceived immediately delivered through the educational process; whilst the second level is abstract understanding such as the meaning of things and the way of doing things that can be remembered while studying but may only come into effect later under particular circumstances. These two levels of understanding form the world that the older generation wants to offer to the younger generation, which will affect the latter’s whole life. As such, educators are essentially laying the foundations for students to welcome their epiphany later in their life. This may indicate that students could still receive sufficient guidance when studying certain subjects with limited classroom settings, online or other forms of distanced learning settings, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Crucially, the entire educational process does not only take place only in the classroom.

Reference

Behuniak, J. (2004). Mencius on becoming human. SUNY Press.

Li, H. (2014). An Introduction to the Development of Private Schools in the Song Dynasty. Central Compilation and Translation Press.

Li, L. (2004). A Study on the Compiling Process and Author Attribution of "Three Work Classic". Social Science, (5), 156-159.

Xunzi, & Knoblock, J. (1988). Xunzi: A translation and study of the complete works (Vol. 1). Stanford University Press.

Zhao, Y. (2011, September 16). English version of Three Word Classic.

Retrieved from blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_698085bf0102dsx7.htm

Everyday aesthetics reclaims the existence of a true aesthetic dimension that precedes the artistic and may determine the way we relate with key aspects of life (Saito 2017; Melcchione 2013). It does so by considering the colours, smells, textures, flavours and sounds that compose daily experience, as well as the different sensory routines, gestures and physical postures that people adopt in habitual interactions, such as those that take place in educational institutions.

This work in progress manuscript argues that the pandemic has interrupted the transparency of sensory perception in school, revealing serious pedagogical implications. ‘Superficial qualities of everyday perception’ (Leddy 2012) such as clean/dirty, close by/distant, empty/packed, ordered/disordered, among others, have become decisive in school life. This interruption may allow philosophers of education to reconsider the way schools model relations between daily perceptual experiences, how these experiences are comprehended, and how they condition teachers and students’ actions; organizing and recreating certain school practices; emphasizing and neglecting peculiar stimuli, objects, rituals or sensory practices (Marini 2021; Mandoki 2017).

Specifically, this paper will revisit taken-for-granted perceptual experiences of classrooms concerning their phenomenological design, the ages of those who work in them, and the relationships with nature that they promote or hinder:

1. Phenomenological design of classrooms

Before the pandemic breakout, most classrooms followed the typical pattern of a static, rectangular, front oriented, homogeneous space where children were supposed to be seated throughout the entire lesson, while adults may occasionally walk about. During the pandemic, it became clear that classroom design -including size and shape, natural light, ventilation, air quality, adequate temperature, number and height of furniture, among others- had to take into consideration the lifestyles of those who spend their time in it, for instance, what is the appropriate space between people, what are their ways of speaking and moving about, etc. Building on Tuan (2014), this paper will question: what it would take for a classroom to shift, from the comprehension of a space that physically locates students and teachers, into the experience of a place that allows students and teachers to dwell in it?

1. The age of those in class

While a classroom has traditionally referred to a common space, within school grounds, shared by a cohort of children of the same ages, the pandemic has demonstrated that children react in diverse ways to interruptions or alterations in their daily work. From this perspective, it seems contradictory to expect that going back to same age groups will accommodate different learning demands. What is at stake is the opportunity to challenge the presumption that teaching and learning develops homogeneously, at a regular pace, and through discrete stages. Building on Kakkori (2013), this paper will question: what is the point in continuing to organise classes on a year of birth basis, instead of regrouping students according to their interests or developmental needs?

1. Classrooms relationships with nature

Before 2020, discussing relationships between classrooms and nature would have seemed an oxymoron: there were usually no nature in regular classes, while the chances of having a class in nature were rare for most students throughout the world. However, the Covid-19 pandemic represented an opportunity in the way educational systems aimed at connecting with nature worldwide. While some argue that human–nature interactions mainly depend on outdoor direct experiences (Soga & Gaston 2016), from an everyday aesthetics perspective (Saito 2010), the way in which classrooms teach to appreciate -or ignore- the immediate existence of other life forms is crucial in changing our overall comprehension of human-nature interdependence.

References

Kakkori L (2013) Education and the Concept of Time, Educational Philosophy and Theory, 45:5, 571-583, DOI: 10.1111/j.1469-5812.2011.00838.x.

Leddy T (2012) The Extraordinary in the Ordinary: The Aesthetics of Everyday Life. Broadview Press, California, USA.

Marini G (2021) An introduction to Everyday Aesthetics in Education. Studies Philos Educ

 40, 39-50 doi.org/10.1007/s11217-020-09740-x

Mandoki K (2017) Everyday Aesthetics: Prosaics the Play of Culture and Social Identities. Routledge, London, UK.

Melchionne K (2013) The definition of everyday aesthetics. ContemporaryAesthetics11. https://www.contempaesthetics.org/newvolume/pages/article.php?articleID=663

Saito Y (2010) Everyday aesthetics. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.

Saito Y (2017) Aesthetics of the familiar: Everyday life and world-making. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.

Soga M & Gaston K (2016) Extinction of experience: the loss of human–nature interactions. Front Ecol Environ 2016; 14(2): 94–101, doi:10.1002/fee.1225

Tuan YF (2014) Space and Place: the perspective of experience. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, USA.

In this contribution, I attempt to draw attention to online education aspects and practices that remain overlooked in philosophical considerations. While significant scrutiny has been directed at more formally designed educational solutions such as MOOCs (Marin, 2021) or computer simulations (Friesen, 2011), scarce has been the treatment of more informal, spontaneous arguably educational activities mediated by online technologies. I argue that by examining and reflecting on the latter, it is possible to reveal the truly educational potentiality of online education, rather than merely pointing to information, knowledge, or competence transfer.

The following argument draws on Vlieghe and Zamojski (2019). First, it shares the perspective of a thing-centered pedagogy. In this perspective, it is crucial to focus on the subject matter, i.e. making the gesture of pointing to a thing as thought-provoking and collectively exploring the way the world is gathered in this thing. I intend to focus on these practices in order to highlight what makes a situation educational. Second, this work also shares with Vlieghe and Zamojski the phenomenological and ontological orientation (see also Friesen, 2011). This investigation attempts to describe specific practices mediated by online technologies that the reader can potentially recognize in their proper educational sense. Thus, in this inquiry, I aim at making a preliminary distinction of some essential dimensions that make online education genuinely educational (i.e. that open up the potentiality of educational transformation mediated by digital technologies).

The first step is to connect the current relevant ways of interpreting online education with the discourse on the instrumentalization of education. The increasing need for online educational solutions fomented discussion about how to use digital platforms to replicate or improve the efficiency of classroom information transmission (see Information Resources Management Association, 2021). Furthermore, I want to argue that a crystallization of the image of online education is recognizable, an identification with practices such as teleconferencing, digital classrooms, and platforms such as Zoom, Google Classroom, Microsoft Teams, Blackboard, and Moodle. This image of education mediated by digital technologies as information transfer to be optimized through scientific research and technological development reproduces the instrumentalized interpretation of education. According to this understanding, education is a kind of economic transaction, in which one part transmits specific chunks of information, knowledge, skills, and competencies, while the other part acquires them to improve their socioeconomic situation and future solve some societal problems (Biesta, 2014).

The second step is to explore what makes a practice or situation educational. For that, I describe three scenarios widely recognizable as educational: (1) a teacher presenting on a blackboard the workings of DNA in a high-school classroom; (2) a parent pointing out to a child the importance of not littering; (3) a bachelor’s student in a library studying different books to write a research assignment on computer architecture. With a thing-centered perspective, I want to show a significant aspect of what gives a situation an educational sense. This aspect is the transformation of how we relate to the world through engaging and exploring a subject matter and a subset of associations that make such a thing meaningful.

The third step is to understand the role of technology in education by understanding how (technological) artifacts might mediate the designation and exploration of a subject matter. The starting point will be Heidegger’s (Heidegger, 1977; Heidegger, 2010) analysis of technology, its reception in later studies in philosophy of technology, such as Ihde (1990) and Borgmann (1987), and contemporary discourse on technological mediation (Rosenberger & Verbeek, 2015). The situations (1)-(3) mentioned above will be revisited to point out concrete examples of artifacts playing a role in making these situations educational.

Based on these analyses of education and technology, the fourth step is to identify paradigmatic cases of revealing and exploring a subject matter mediated by online technologies towards a transformation of the relation to the world. First, I attempt to convert situations (1)-(3) into digital settings. It will appear uncanny to simply transfer similar practices to a setting with significantly different technologies. Stopping at this point, the investigation would conclude that online education is impossible or deficient, which is common in philosophical studies on this topic (e.g., Dreyfus, 2008; Friesen, 2011; Marin, 2021; Vlieghe, 2019).

Two more situations are described: (4) studying baking bread through internet videos and forums; and (5) the granny cloud project (http://thegrannycloud.org/). In short, (4) will sketch a scenario in which a student interested in bread-making access videos of different authors showing crucial aspects of the baking process, ranging from ingredients to motor coordination. The studying process is complemented by participation in forums, in which people from different backgrounds point to other aspects that the beginner baker must pay attention to and closely examine to improve it. It will appear that the single subject matter of baking unites a range of aspects of the world, such as microbiology (yeast), chemistry (fermentation), care for the environment (flour growth), physical fitness (arms exercise), dexterity (kneading and shaping) and care for a living being (sourdough). Moreover, it is the contact with a multiplicity of voices made possible by online technologies that significantly facilitates such kind of unfolding of the subject matter as a thing, and not simply as a set of information chunks (Vlieghe & Zamojski, 2019, p. 54).

Situation (5) will present an interpretation of the activities of the granny cloud project in a thing-centered perspective. In this project, volunteers (partially ‘grannies') use teleconferencing technology to help some of the world's poorest children study a subject matter. Volunteers guide the students through prompting questions such as “why are the poles melting?” or “why is glass transparent?” and carry on by comments and queries. Such practices arguably show different matters as meaningful and thought-provoking to students and opportunities for discovering a foreign language and distant places. Again, this practice is unthinkable without online technologies as mediators

The description of situations such as (4)-(5) and its interpretation through a thing-centered pedagogy perspective induces thinking of new educational realities. This investigation might help to recognize online educational experiences and invent new ways of educating with the mediation of online technologies. Furthermore, identifying such situations and reflecting on them allows articulating some essential dimensions of online education.

The online educational practices here delineated, however, are not universal. Reflecting on different online practices might show significant aspects of education, its relation to technology, and its mediation by online technologies. Further studies following this pathway can show different online educational realities. Moreover, new activities of online education will arguably emerge by living enmeshed with the affordances of online technology. There is a clear need for research recognizing outlining the potential of such practices.

References

Borgmann, A. (1987). Technology and the character of contemporary life: a philosophical inquiry (Paperback edition). The University of Chicago Press.

Biesta, G. (2014). The beautiful risk of education. Boulder/London: Paradigm Publishers.

Friesen, N. (2011). The place of the classroom and the space of the screen. Peter Lang (New York & Bern)

Heidegger, M., & Lovitt, W. (1977). The question concerning technology and other essays. Harper & Row.

Heidegger, M., Stambaugh, J., & Schmidt, D. J. (2010). Being and time. State University of New York Press.

Ihde, D. (1990). Technology and the lifeworld: from garden to earth. Indiana University Press.

Information Resources Management Association (Ed.). (2021). Research anthology on developing effective online learning courses. IGI Global.

Marin, L. (2021). On the Possibility of a Digital University: Thinking and Mediatic Displacement at the University. Springer International Publishing AG.

Rosenberger, R., & Verbeek, P.-P. (2015). Postphenomenological investigations: essays on human-technology relations. Lexington Books.

Vlieghe, J. (2019). Education and world disclosure in the age of the screen. Education in the Age of the Screen, 23-35. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429451478-3

Vlieghe, J., & Zamojski, P. (2019). Towards an Ontology of Teaching Thing-centred Pedagogy, Affirmation and Love for the World. Springer International Publishing. doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16003-6

In recent years there has been increased interest in ‘dialogic education’ among mainstream policy makers, teachers and educationists (Mercer et al, 2019). The European Union has invested in projects promoting intercultural understanding and cultural literacy through dialogic approaches to education. For example, The Dialogue, Argumentation for Cultural Literacy Learning in Schools (2020) project hosted by The University of Cambridge has coordinated a Europe-wide collaboration of scholars and teachers in order to promote the dialogue and argumentation skills supposed necessary for tolerant, empathetic and inclusive behaviours. A core aspect of the dialogic education movement has centred on encouraging better practices of classroom talk, enhancing students’ abilities to discuss, listen, speak and debate. There is a growing evidence-base supporting these approaches, suggesting that better motivation and engagement are found among children whose views are sought and valued through dialogue, as found, for example, in a study of science lessons in primary schools (Mercer et al, 2009).

The success of dialogic approaches has led to philosophical explorations of the concepts of dialogue, drawing upon the ideas of thinkers such as Martin Buber (1937) to contemplate the deeper possibilities of dialogue as the search for human meaning in the age of the internet (Wegerif & Major, 2019). Yet despite this emerging philosophical conception of dialogic education in the mainstream, there has been little contemporary engagement between it and more longstanding theological concepts of dialogue as they manifest in religious traditions, and as they may pertain to religious education specifically.

When we look to ancient religious traditions we find dialogue is nothing new. It has been a longstanding educational and theological concept and practice. For example, in the Catholic tradition, Saint Augustine (c.389/1995), following Plato, recognised dialogue as a practice which enabled the pursuit of the transcendental values of goodness, truth and beauty. Today, such an ideal of dialogue continues to be a key concept in the pronouncements of the Catholic Church on education (2014) and its declarations on relationships to other religions and worldviews (1965). According to the Catholic Church, at its most profound level, dialogue is a deeply Christian theological practice – a human life lived with and through dialogue with Christ, the living God.

The Catholic Church’s commitment to dialogue in education rests, of course, upon but one conception of dialogue, and one which will hold little sway or relevance to those with no religious commitment. The post-secular context – broadly defined as a recognition of the enduring significance of religion within a plural milieux – however, also raises the issue of whether a strictly secular or instrumental view of dialogue is adequate for a diverse society. In other words, how do we account for dialogue across incommensurate ontologies, particularly between parties whose practices of ‘dialogue’ include aims, processes and interlocutors that are not recognised by all parties? One solution to this is offered by Christian theologians in the liberal Protestant tradition such as George Pattison (1998), who sees dialogue as having little potential in offering any advances in certainty about God, or ontology in general. Nevertheless, dialogue is not futile but offers, in the context of human doubt and fragility, our only possibility of thinking about God. Pattison’s understanding is quite different to that offered by Buber (1937) who sees dialogue as originating and ending with a divine interlocutor who is mysteriously present in it. It also is in tension with more conservative interpretations of dialogue as the means of discovering absolute truths.

While Buber’s and Pattison’s ideas are at odds it remains a remarkable quality of dialogue that it is a process that can take place even when there is otherwise disagreement, even a disagreement about the nature and purpose of dialogue itself. Yet that does not mean without qualification that dialogue necessarily offers genuine solutions to difference in the post-secular moment. Although philosophers, such as Levinas hold dialogue as ethical practice, it could also be offered as a means to convert others or act as a ‘talking shop’ – to give voice to alternative positions in order to pass them off without sincerely engaging with them. These issues present a considerable challenge to the practice of dialogic education.

This paper addresses these questions, with a particular focus on religious education as a discrete curriculum subject. What kind of dialogic education is appropriate in the post-secular context when pupils, parents and teachers have wide-ranging and diverse worldviews and the secular, religious, ancient and modern, rub up against each other? Under what framework should educators engage with competing worldviews and attitudes? What conditions to dialogue should be set and by whose authority? Should, for example, dialogue be a practice where proselytisation is avoided, encouraged, or accepted? How can minority voices be heard and taken seriously, particularly when they may clash with the ideals of dialogue? These are philosophical questions. They also have a considerable practical dimension because without answering them, the practice of dialogue in schools becomes problematic. It becomes difficult to enact and engage confidently if it has no agreed aim or rationale yet is also insincere or even unnecessary if its parameters are set to lead to intended outcomes.

This paper engages with these under-considered educational problems by using the resources of philosophy. It engages with various secular and religious philosophies of dialogue to consider how they may inform a post-secular pedagogy that accommodates the concerns of diverse secular and religious stakeholders. This is important because given the secular nature of much educational research about dialogue, the varying relevance and relationship of concepts of ‘dialogue’ to diverse worldviews is not as commonly understood nor addressed. I consider the argument that dialogue is possible and necessary not least because of the shared problems facing humankind in our time, but also because only a concept of genuine dialogue leaves open the possibility of education as a process that adapts to suit the needs of its participating dialoguers across generations. In dialogue, therefore, it could be argued there is the opportunity for pursuance of understanding and cooperation which otherwise may be lost. There is also the opportunity of transformation beyond what there was before dialogue, making new forms of dialogue possible.

References

Augustine (c.389/1995) The teacher [De Magistro]. Trans. P. King. Indianapolis: Hackett.

Buber, M. (1937) I and thou. Trans. R. G. Smith. Edinburgh: T & T Clark.

CEDiR (2021) CEDiR Research Group Website [online] https://www.educ.cam.ac.uk/research/groups/cedir/about/

Congregation for Catholic Education (2014) Educating today and tomorrow: a renewing passion [online] https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/ccatheduc/documents/rc_con_ccatheduc_doc_20140407_educare-oggi-e-domani_en.html (accessed 27/04/2021).

Dialogue, Argumentation for Cultural Literacy Learning in Schools (2020) DIALLS project website [online] https://dialls2020.eu/ (accessed 27/04/2021).

EdTalk (2021) Evidence and Dialogue Teachers’ Toolkit [online] http://edtoolkit.educ.cam.ac.uk/ (accessed 28/4/2021).

Pattison, G. (1998). The end of theology-And the task of thinking about God. London: SCM.

Mercer, N., Wegerif, R., & Major, L. (Eds.). (2019). The Routledge international handbook of research on dialogic education. London: Routledge.

Mercer, N., Dawes, L. & Kleine Staarman, J. (2009). Dialogic teaching in the primary science classroom, Language and Education, 23:4, 353-369

Sacred Ecumenical Council (1965) Declaration on Christian Education: Gravissimum Educationis [online] http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decl_19651028_gravissimum-educationis_en.html (accessed 27/04/2021).

Wegerif, R., Major, L. Buber, educational technology, and the expansion of dialogic space

. AI & Society 34, 109–119 (2019). doi.org/10.1007/s00146-018-0828-6

The work in progress that I hope to discuss with you at the INPE conference, is a starting point for a new book with the preliminary title “Towards an Ecological Critique: On the Cultivation of
Sense(s)”. I worked on this theme in my PhD on Martha Nussbaum and her reading of Ancient Philosophy.1 However, the aesthetics of the senses as a crucial part of education needs to be
elaborated further in a separate book. This forthcoming book will have more of an essayistic style, treating the topic of cultivation and sensuousness in relation to historical educational ideas
as well as contemporary thinkers within philosophy and political theory. 
Departing from the etymology of the term oikos-logos, ecology is understood here as a knowledge of our common home. Critique draws on the Greek kritika that means discernment.
Overall, the study wants to approach a classic educational theme from a contemporary question: How can critique be understood as a capability for sensuous discernment in the encounter with
our common home?
The introduction of the study will display a contemporary attention to sense and sensuousness in philosophy that has bearing for educational research. In this layered theoretical field, a critical
and ethical-political discussion on critique, can be seen as the recurrent topic that the attention to sensuousness aims to approach. The first part of the book will be a reading of how a classical
narrative of the cultivation of sense and senses are displayed in western history of ideas. The second part treats ideas on the cultivation of senses in the work of Ellen Key, Maria Montessori, and Rudolf Steiner − three pedagogical thinkers who still have an impact on educational ideas in Europe and beyond.2 Although all of them emphasized the cultivation of the senses as
indispensable for education, these ideas are less recognized, especially in higher education. The last part of the study sets Key’s, Montessori’s, and Steiner’s ideas in dialogue with contemporary
scholars as my overarching aim is to explore and develop a concept on ecological critique as a tool to re-think the senses in education.
As I write this abstract, the thinkers that keeps me company are, among others, Jean-Luc Nancy, Adriana Cavarero, Catherine Malabou, Walter Mignolo and David Abram. However,
this is yet an early stage in the project, and at the conference, I will focus on the concept ecological critique in relation to a history of the cultivation of sense and senses. The following
remark in this abstract is a brief introduction to the intellectual history on cultivation that I take as my starting point.
The concept of cultivation falls within the Greek paideia and the educational tradition that developed in the ancient city-state during the 400s BC. One of the primary purposes of education
here was to form tomorrow's political leaders. What was to be cultivated in the free men who made up just under ten percent of Athens' population was above all their character, ethos, which
included a basis for both thought, feeling and action. In other words, cultivation was about a complex approach or an art that aimed to form and shape people in accordance with prevailing
governance.
As Aristotle points out in Politics, every state requires an adapted education, so the civic qualities that are cultivated have different ideals depending on the relationship between the people and the rulers. The concept of cultivation is also closely connected with the concept of actualization, which is based on Aristotle's thoughts on cultivation towards a second nature. For
Aristotle, the city is likened with the heart, the arche, which at the same time constitutes the beginning and goal of the political life.4 Here, the common life, is in a constant becoming based
on the new life that flows through the heart / city as a unifying organ for cognition and sensuous perception.
The notion of how a potential can be actualized and realized through proper cultivation reappears in the ideas of the humanistic educational tradition. However, the sensuous sensibilities have suffered a recurrent subordinated position. What is prominent in the stoic tradition that has attracted much attention in recent years is how this shaping is expected to proceed from the individual as a cultivation of the self, what Pierre Hadot and Michel Foucault have also described as "spiritual exercise" and "care of the self ”. The cultivating therapeutic philosophy of stoicism was offered as medicine (pharmakon) in times of anxiety and uncertainty.6 But cultivation and later formation are also presented as a harmonious development of man, what, for example, the Renaissance humanist Pico della Mirandolla described as the ability to create and reshape oneself. The formation, cultivation, shaping, or actualization if one so wishes, can mean a repetition of, but also a liberation from, the already given.
Instead of considering cultivation as a possible project for which education should create space, I want to highlight cultivation as a human condition - cultivation is not only up to individual lifechoices, but must be understood in relation to how people are inevitably shaped by the cultures and practices in which they are embedded.7 Unlike an Anglo-Saxon liberal idea which, in the tradition of John Locke, considers the individual to precede society, the Aristotelian tradition of thought assumes that man first emerges through the interactive encounters of political and social life.
Based on the idea that education plays an important role for our own understanding and experience of the world, what we see, and what voices and sensory experiences we can perceive, are historically and contextually conditioned. The cultivation of the senses was also what the young Karl Marx described as an ongoing process in the history of education and the formation of ethical-political subjects.
Hence, each institutionalized practice carries with it aesthetic constellations which contribute to the formation of people as political subjects. Since these constellations often constitute given frames
of reference, a re-organization or shift of what can emerge and become, opens opportunities to reevaluate what can be said and imagined. Contrary to many earlier educational expectations on
homogeneity and adaptation, a contemporary relationship between the inner and the outer - between being as the language we can understand and the sounds that are not recognizable in given forms - requires a cultivation of the sensitivity of thinking, a striving for active listening, a receptivity and plasticity at what cannot be understood.9 Examples of non-sensible becoming sensible and sensuous are #metoo and BLM. At the same time, what is prominent for the experience of pandemic might be the withdrawal of sensibles and sensuousness. What appears is the presence of a sensuous nonsense.

With experiences of the pandemic, we are reminded of the absence in presence: What we cannot see, as well as what we see, has given us an opportunity to see our own vision's prejudices and
expectations. Familiar orientation-points from which we can think, and act have - with both a pandemic and a new war situation - been put in play. Hence, searching for new points of references
− new sensibles and sensuous knowledge − are also at stake in the urgent call for educational change toward an ecological sensibility. By ecological I mean a cultivation that takes us beyond linguistic boundaries between nature and culture. Oikos logos − in the understanding of knowledge about nature as our common home, has far too long been regulated by a phallogocentric aesthetic. Against this, feminist and decolonial practices and thinking have sought other ways of speaking and thinking about the common.11 A risk for critical theories, that aims to change the prevailing, is an appropriation of the monolithic speech that they seek to overthrow. This dead end, as Walter Benjamin so well described, is exposed in the very present moment of war with Putin's most brutalist architecture of a multipolar world. What can break with this logic may not be asceticism, celibacy, or sanctions − the threat of weapons. Without suggesting a way out, I will search for other sensibles to sense the world. 

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Bornemark, Jonna och Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback (red.), Phenomenology of Eros (Huddinge: Södertörns högskola, 2012).
Bornemark, Jonna, Horisonten finns alltid kvar. Om det bortglömda omdömet (Stockholm: Volante, 2020).
Burman, Anders (red.), Hans-Georg Gadamer och hermeneutikens aktualitet (Stockholm: Axl Books, 2014).
Burman, Anders, Kultiverandet av det mänskliga. Essäer om liberal education, bildning och tänkande (Göteborg: Daidalos 2018).
Butler, Judith, Bodies that Matter (London: Routledge, 2015).
Cavarero, Adriana, For More than One Voice: Toward a Philosophy of Vocal Expression (California: Stanford University Press, 2005).
Cavarero, Adriana, Inclinations: A Critique of Rectitude (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2016).
Copjek, Joan, Read my desire - Lacan Against the Historicists (Verso Books, 2015).
Cooke, Stuart & Denney, Peter (red.), Transcultural Ecocriticism: Global, Romantic and Decolonial perspectives (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021).
Felski, Rita, The Limits of Critique (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015).
Ferry, Leonard & Kingston, Rebecca (red.), Bringing the Passions Back in: The Emotions in Political Philosophy (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2008).
Foucault, Michel, The history of sexuality Vol. 3 The care of the self (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1990).
Grinell, Klas, Eudaimonia: om det goda livet i klimatomställningens tid (Stockholm: Fri tanke, 2021).
Gustavsson, Bernt, Bildningens dynamik. Framväxt, dimensioner, mening (Göteborg: Bokförlaget Korpen, 2017).
Hadot, Pierre, What is ancient philosophy? (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap, 2004);
Howes, David, Sensual Relations: Engaging the Senses in Culture and Social Theory (Ann Arbor:
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Myrebøe, Synne, ”Frihet, jämlikhet, bildning. Aspekter av det utopiska i waldorfpedagogikens politiska idéhistoria” i (red. Lövheim, Daniel, Landahl, Joakim och Burman, Anders), Moderna pedagogiska utopier (Huddinge: Södertörn studies, 2021).
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Nussbaum, Martha, Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
Nussbaum, Martha, Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2013).
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Steiner, Rudolf, Modern art of education (Great Barrington, Mass: Anthroposophic Press 2004).

In recent years necessity has indeed been the mother of innovation. From the expansion in online shopping to the explosion in online communication, there was a turn - an appeal - to the online space for solutions to the everyday problems which arose in trying to live life while isolated or restricted. We challenge the dominant discourse of the online platform, which suggests the dismantling of community, and instead illustrate the rich possibilities of the online space in fostering attentive and appreciative communities, particularly for postgraduate students. 

As doctoral students, when we could not access our university communities as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic we turned to the online space. The interruption of the physical space appeared to be something that could be mitigated. We requested the library to purchase ebooks, and when coming together ‘in-person’ was impossible we attended conferences over a variety of platforms. We had meetings with our supervisors over the phone and ordered print-outs of our theses to be delivered to our homes for proof-reading. These are examples of our efforts to do in new ways what we would have ordinarily done. But our lives were not, fundamentally, ordinary to us. The casual, incidental, serendipitous, and oftentimes inspiring of everyday interaction had been stripped away. It became obvious that the presence of the Other and community which had always been possible, was something which we missed. We wondered whether we could find new possibilities so that we could come together while apart. 

In this, to use the tired phrase, ‘new normal’, amidst the attempts to keep calm and carry on, extra-ordinary phenomena emerged. This paper explores the ways in which doctoral students found possibilities to be there for each other. It is interested in how students found ways to live in relation and meaningfully attend to the Other in the online space. Inspired by the writing of such thinkers as Simone Weil, Iris Murdoch, Nel Noddings, and Timothy Ingold, we think about attention as both holding spaces open for the possible and as an appreciative response. Engaging with the philosophy of Nicholas Burbules we consider slowness a virtue, where “’slow’ means careful, deliberate and perspicacious” (Burbules, 2020, p. 1443). In particular, we are drawn to his insights on the Slow Movement; a response to the increase in the pace of life generally, and an effort to focus more on the gradual pleasures to be found in simplifying and focusing on the deliberate processes of life. We suggest that, beyond meeting needs and stopping gaps, the online space has fostered community in unique and important ways.

As PhD students, we missed the particular interactions that come from encounters with others along the research journey so we were keen to find ways to connect and share our experience, as well as creating a sense of accountability which would encourage us to continue to move forward during periods of isolation and uncertainty. This paper turns its attention to three examples of such phenomena, three moments where doctoral students moved beyond what they must do to consider what they might do and fostered community. The first is the Philosophy of Education Reading Network, founded by the authors in August 2020. Secondly we turn to the monthly online writing retreats founded by Dr Katarzyna Fleming, a doctoral student at the time, which were regularly attended by one of the authors. The final consideration is a group brought together by shared research interests which became a community of friendship. For now we focus only on the Reading Network, its development and its qualities of attention.

The authors - who had never met in a physical space - used this new found pace of life to connect and consider what was missing. Ironically, the restrictions imposed on social contact opened up opportunities for new and alternative encounters. Having never met in person, we found a common ground in which it transpired that the work of certain philosophers central to the research of one were of peripheral interest to the other, and vice versa. Perhaps it was no accident that the text which sparked the community has attention as a central theme. Elizabeth shared her struggle of trying to read Iris Murdoch’s The Sovereignty of Good by herself, of wishing she had someone who knew more to discuss it with. We can think about this as a challenge of attunement, as Elizabeth tried to develop both her perception of Murdoch’s philosophy and her response to this complex and nuanced work. That ‘someone’, it transpired, could be Vicky as Murdoch’s work was central to her thesis and she had much insight to share. The incessant busyness had made it difficult, in a number of ways, to carve out time for ourselves which was not directed towards a specific purpose, like finishing a chapter or a conference presentation. And yet, this was the scholarship we loved and valued.  We wondered if we could find a way to go about reading together, apart, and whether anyone else might be interested too.

The power of Twitter for its social out-reach in research and scholarly circles is well-known. It seemed a useful platform to send out an invitation to anyone interested in reading The Sovereignty of Good and coming together to discuss it, via Zoom. As an online social networking site, Twitter is designed for individuals to direct their attention toward something of interest; one might be interested in what is ‘trending’. Of course, this can be utilised to particular communities' advantage in directing individuals’, groups’, and networks’ attention to something in particular. We used this to our advantage by setting up an account which immediately suggested what our common interest might be (@PhilofEd). We publicised our plan for our first encounter using key terms, and twenty one strangers attended that first meeting! Many expressed concern that settling in to the long haul of engaging online and researching alone had prompted them to be open to new ways to be together. It seemed that students and researchers like ourselves had figured out the routines and the necessary shifts and pivots to keep on keeping on, and had come to a point where they realised what they missed: conversation, company, new ideas, and fresh perspectives. There was a palpable sense of engagement, relation, and shared endeavour. 

In this sense the Reading Network was both a space and a commitment to that space. This brought to mind attention as a mode of being and the preparation for that mode. We attend in order to pay attention. In attending there is a sense of presence, anticipation, and potential. Nel Noddings describes attention as a way of arriving and of being in relation (Noddings, 2013). Noddings also writes of the receptive person, the educator in her work, looking again, engaging a reflective mode which directs them back to themselves and their prior experiences. As such attention becomes attunement and openness, to the world and to the self.

The Reading Network is underpinned by a commitment to attention and thought for what and whom is Other. It embodies a commitment to our education and to each other. We try to better understand the text through attending to it through the thinking of others and try to develop a reflective practice towards a better understanding of ourselves through thinking about reading in relation. One way to think about this is to draw on an ethic of care, a relational model of moral perfection, as it “requires each of us to recognise our own frailty and to bring out the best in one another” (Noddings 2007, p. 125). Thus reading as a community could be considered as relational research, calling on those involved to attend in the sense of listening and of response.

When the pandemic forced many of us into isolation, we had no idea how long we would find ourselves adapting to the ‘new normal’ for, or what the future looked like. We now find ourselves more than two years later in the position of relational researchers, reflecting on the experience of those tough restrictions, particularly socially. For many, reading is an escape and keeps the mind active, yet during the pandemic the most severe Covid-19 restrictions saw the closure of independent book shops, classifying them as ‘non-essential’. Perhaps many of us would feel that books and the communities we have read with were essential during this time, as they still appear to be to this day. 

The Reading Network has become an eagerly anticipated event each month. Strangers became friends and we look forward to hearing their thoughts on the text. To our pleasant surprise the atmosphere is consistently one of appreciation and care.  Building on Iris Murdoch’s bringing Simone Weil’s attention into relation, Noddings interprets attention as “what characterizes our consciousness when we ask another (explicitly or implicitly) ‘What are you going through?’” (Noddings, 2005, p. 15). We were all going through different versions of an unprecedented crisis, and while the details of our lives may have peeked through, it was the relation around the text that lifted us out of daily challenges and into relation. Noddings terms this relational attention “engrossment… an open, nonselective receptivity to the cared-for… essential in moral life… [and] at the centre of love for our neighbours” (Ibid). 

Engrossment is a feeling but not an entirely emotional feeling. It is rational, in that it is carefully thought out, and non-rational, in that it is unreasoned, free from judgement or justification. The rational side of engrossment is “a thinking mode that moves the self towards the object”, a mode of conscious objectivity where “the one under her gaze is under her support and not her judgement” (Noddings, 2013, pp. 33, 89). And in this sense, it has been a turn away from the Self, towards the Other. The non-rational “receptive-intuitive mode” opens the carer up to receive the object of their care without intrusion or interrogation, in a mode akin to Weil’s “looking” or Stanley Cavell’s ‘acknowledgment’, as we place ourselves quietly in the presence of the other.

We now find ourselves fortunate enough to have just shared our eighteenth text as a group (Martha Nussbaum’s Love’s Knowledge). The democratic nature of the group is something we are passionate about, and we are keen to explore the wide range of interests which the group has to offer. Each month we ask the Reading Network’s community to make suggestions for texts we should cover, and we invite someone who is familiar with the text to open the session, giving a brief overview and then posing some questions and provocations for the group to discuss, thus holding the space open for ideas and voices to emerge. In this vein, we are invited to be attentive to the Other and what they have to bring to the space. 

We believe in the integrity of an open space, inviting in and drawing out the contributions of the learned and the novice. Attending carefully to the community returns the reader to an engagement with oneself. Noddings holds that to be capable of attending well to those around them, the educator must spend time in awareness of their own feelings, to receive themselves, and look again at what they have received from the world and the Other (Noddings, 2013). From the outset we asked that the session be opened by posing questions, and recently we have ended on a question too. In doing so, one takes something away from such an encounter. The meetings are also a space to come and be a part of something without the pressure of taking part actively. The experience, we hope, is one which is both enjoyable and scholarly. It was this current crisis that brought us together and gave us some impetus to create and attend communities of appreciation, which bring individuals together across the globe. Far from opposing or dismantling community, the online presence, we hold, holds unique and significant potential for students across the globe to come together, apart.

Reference list

Burbules, N. C. (2020) Slowness as a Virtue, Journal of Philosophy of Education, 54 (5), 1443-1452, https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9752.12495

Noddings, N. (2005). The Challenge to Care in Schools (Second Edition). Teachers College Press.

Noddings, N. (2007). Philosophy of Education (Second Edition). Westview Press.

Noddings, N. (2013). Caring: A relational approach to ethics and moral education (Second Edition, Updated). University of California Press.

This paper offers a fresh perspective on the aesthetics of academic writing through a consideration of form and the reader’s experience. We are particularly interested in scholarly readers, especially those who are at the beginning of their careers. The experience of reading standardised pieces in sterile forms provides little room for the exercise of the ethical imagination. The neatly presented journal article or book chapter gives a sense of completion, finality and knowingness which can seem distant, in in the case of the student or novice researcher, utterly daunting. The more they read, the less they know, or so it seems. Everyone seems so confident when their thinking is presented in neat packages of six thousand words (Smith, 2016). “This is how I should sound”, thinks the student, and on they go in pursuit of succinct surety.

We argue that a sense of not knowing, being uncertain, is an essential facet of the researcher at any stage of their career, and that it is particularly important to support and sustain this disposition during postgraduate study. Furthermore, we suggest that presenting academic writing in ‘other’ ways, forms which incorporate artwork for example, actively supports the student to this end.  Drawing on Dancing in the Dark: A Survivor’s Guide to the University (Pirrie et al., 2021) we will make a case for reimagining scholarly writing as a site of innovation and creativity to the benefit of readers and writers alike (Pirrie, 2022).

The impetus for this paper comes from our recent experience of springing a book chapter from the bounds of an edited collection and bringing it to publication as a book in its own right. In fact, it comes from what happened next. Readers of the little book (as it is a volume to be held in the hand, but more on that later) called it ‘courageous’ and ‘timeless’, ‘a balm’ and a ‘companion’. It was appreciated for not promising “a strategic vision or framework” but rather inviting the reader “to sit inside not knowing… not to run from the unanswered questions… to tolerate uncertainty”, and encouraging the possibility that “fearless, curious people, working together to make progress” might emerge among the readers.[1] “Well”, thought the authors, “what is it about this little book that might bringing all these things about?” The text was not significantly different from its original book chapter self; the words and the message were broadly the same. Could it be the lightness and brightness of the form that made the difference?

The first thing readers notice is the size of the little book. Dancing in the Dark: A Survivor’s Guide to the University is a handbook only in the literal sense of the word. That is to say that it is a book designed to be held in the palm of the hand, “that place of boundless promise” as we state in the introduction. Importantly (but never self-importantly), it is an ‘anti-handbook’ in the sense that it does not offer stepwise instruction towards academic success. It is a little book, a light book in the sense that its dimensions are 148 x 105mm and it defies gravitas. It is bright in the sense of its buoyant blue dancefloor cover where greens, yellows, blacks and reds twirl, and the ten panels of artwork within. Beyond illustrations of the text, these are art works, in the sense that the art works as hard as the text. The artist, Geoffrey Baines, when coming on board expressed a wish to explore our thoughts. This encapsulates his approach to the project as well as the contribution of his artwork. Geoffrey took the text and explored it, in the same way as it is intended that the panels punctuate the text and engage the reader in an exploration of their thinking.

This invitation to attend to one’s thinking without pinning it down speaks to Simone Weil’s attentive light (Weil, 2002). It resists a sense of knowingness that would turn research, as effort to understand the other better, into an illuminative pursuit. Weil instead asks that readers attend to difficult questions, allow their emergence from lived reality and resist the urge to interrogate or dismiss the complex and the human. The hope is that the encounters with art work to engage the reader in just this slow and considerate way.

Weil’s entreaty to look but not search resonates with a mode of reading which runs counter to the data-gathering mode of research. In so attending the reader moves away from the notion that questions have or need to have answers, that shadows call for light. Uncertainty can be appreciated as a defining characteristic of the educational terrain, rather than something to be minimised or eliminated. The student’s educational journey is rich in uncertainty, replete with what they think they know, or remember, or feel. We suggest that the imperative here is to support them in becoming capable of uncertainty as a facet of being a responsible researcher, and to appreciate the role it plays in lived educational realities.

An essential element of research is questioning the ‘interpretive glance’ to identify our own assumptions and positionality. There is an uncertainty inherent in the identity of the researcher. The experience of encountering academic writing in a novel form such as this imagines reading for research as appreciative of those encounters which slow and even stall forward momentum, privileging making meaningful sense over making measurable progress. The value placed on the slow, messy and human of educative experience “depends crucially on the extent to which we believe that education is not just about the reproduction… of what already exists, but is genuinely interested in the ways in which new beginnings and new beginners can come into the world” (Biesta, 2013, p. 4). Any postgraduate student or their mentor will tell you how important it is to plan. But what is crucial is a counter-balancing element of surprise.

Approaching uncertainty as a capability encourages a shift in the student’s approach to reading, away from seeking answers and finality, towards asking better questions and understanding. In Nel Noddings’ words, “to think – to identify problems, define them, solve them, generalize from them – requires freedom from narrow constraints” (Noddings, 2005, p. 6). Reading without a predefined goal in mind foregrounds research as not-knowing, and this can be overwhelming to the student. So much of the world of the university is new and systems of higher education have a responsibility to acknowledge insecurities, work with doubt, and try to ensure that the experience is usefully unsettling. Becoming capable of uncertainty develops as an appreciation, in both senses of the word, of all we do not know and desire better to understand. The closing words of Dancing in the Dark can be read as a challenge to all those interested and engaged in higher education to support students in emerging as curious people who are excited to work together, resisting finality and instead seeking progress.

Traditional academic practice, we suggest, attends to the dancers rather than the dance. Academics are often more interested in the mastery of steps rather than the flickering play of possibility; in being seen rather than in seeing. These tendencies are reinforced by academic publishing practices that privilege robust theoretical frameworks and the display of knowledge rather than the development of understanding. What seems to be a stake is propositional or informational content, often masked as a virtuoso performance in ventriloquism. There seems to be rather less scope for perspective, tone, nuance – terms that invoke the visual arts. In short, there is little room for the free-play of curiosity and the foregrounding of the ethical relations between co-authors. One of the key motifs in Dancing in the Dark. A Survivor’s Guide to the University is a painting by Matisse entitled Dance 1[2].It is significant that Matisse painted the dance rather than the dancers, playing with notions of surface and depth. The hands of the front two dancers are parted, leaving the line of colour unbroken yet appearing to invite others in. The central paradox is that continuity is maintained through the break in the circle.

A dance is an invitation to dialogue, in a spirit of mutual trust and attention. A book that can be tucked into a pocket and withdrawn on a whim when encouragement is needed usefully unsettles the identity of the reference text. It lives in relation, designed to be received as a gift or gifted to another. In academic life, there is, by our account, “too great an insistence on certainty, on shining light and chasing shadows. Too great an insistence that circles and inquiry be closed” (Pirrie et al., 2021, p. 47). Texts such as Dancing in the Dark: A Survivor’s Guide to the University extend a gentle invitation to attend to shadows, appreciate the unknown and – last but not least – to hold the circle open.

Reference list:

Biesta, G. (2013). The Beautiful Risk of Education. Paradigm Publishers.

Noddings, N. (2005). The Challenge to Care in Schools (Second Edition). Teachers College Press.

Pirrie, A. (2022) Abstract academic expressionism: an alternative aesthetics of scholarly practice, in B. Herzogenrath (ed) New Perspectives on Academic Writing. London: Bloomsbury (forthcoming).

Pirrie, A., Fang, N., and O’Brien, E. (2021) Dancing in the Dark: A Survivor’s Guide to the University. Edinburgh: Tilosophy Press.

Smith, R. (2016a). Reading between the lines. In A. Fulford & N. Hodgson (Eds.), Philosophy and Theory in Educational Research: Writing in the Margins (pp. 129–138). Routledge.

Weil, S. (2002). Gravity and Grace (Second). Routledge.

The pandemic has challenged our ideas of the public in numerous ways. Suddenly, in some places, schools and work were moved to take place in the home, removed from ‘the public.’ Different versions of ‘lockdowns’ took place all over the world and some people, perhaps for the first time, experienced a sense of confinement. While some people were removed from the public, others were forced to continue to be in the public, whether as grocery stores workers, bus drivers, healthcare workers, even teachers in some countries, and more. The position of being or not being in the public, and the choice (or not) attached to it, perhaps became somewhat more visible during the pandemic and this division was often along lines of class, which also speaks to lines of race, gender, and more. And now, as the pandemic is in a different stage, the immune compromised and other people with chronic illness are forced to make tough calls about participating in the public where lots of people have moved on from their concerns over Covid. The pandemic has forced a reconsideration of what participation in the public means. This reconsideration is not necessarily a philosophical understanding of the public, but a more common-sense understanding. It is from this understanding of the public that I relate to discussions of publics within educational philosophy to discuss educational possibilities.

In this paper, I will make a connection between common-sense notions of the public and discussions within educational philosophy around publics.  Moving forward, I use the term ‘the public’ to signify an understanding of public that loosely is common- sensical, as in related to collective participation in various activities outside of the home. In some way, this common-sense understanding can be related to Arendt’s (1958) consideration of the public as related to “the human artifact, the fabrication of human hands, as well as to affairs which go on among those who inhabit the man-made world together” (p. 52).  I use the term ‘publics’ in this paper to signify my engagement with different ideas around publics within educational philosophy. I do not offer any strict definitions of ‘the public’ or ‘publics’, rather I just describe them in this way to indicate that I am engaging with the ongoing educational philosophy discussion of publics by making a connection to a common- sense understanding of the public. I suggest that this specific connection offers insights into thinking about educational possibilities. Therefore, the difference between the public and publics is not the focus of my exploration. Instead, my interest is in how certain participation in the public informs possibilities for publics and thus, educational possibilities.

Specifically, this paper will explore educational possibilities from the framing that, at least in part, the public is backgrounded by the reality that we live in a word with police and prisons, which in a way, also molds what kind of publics (and thus education) is possible. First, I will draw on discussions of publics from educational philosophy to make a connection to the public. Second, I will discuss some ways of thinking about the public in a world with police in prisons to make a connection between ‘the public’ and ‘publics.’ In part, I make this connection by drawing on Todd’s (2018) notion of education as a cultural and aesthetic practice.  Then, I will use an example given by Todd (2018), which considers a project with youth and police, to problematize the notion of becoming a public in the example. Ultimately, I argue for a reimagined idea of the public in order to expand educational possibilities.

There are several different ways educational scholarship has recently taken up ideas of publics. Bergdahl and Langmann (2021) discuss the need to “create pedagogical publics within the public sphere, that is pedagogical spaces within and outside of formal education that draw generations together around common issues of concern” (p. 6) and they consider pedagogical publics as a theoretical lens. Biesta (2012) discusses public pedagogy as “an enactment of a concern for ‘publicness’ or ‘publicity,’ that is a concern for the public quality of human togetherness and thus for the possibility of actors and events to become public” (p. 693). Masschelein and Simmons (2013) describe the ‘public character’ of the school is found in the school “as the place where anything can happen because two generations are brought into contact in relation to ‘something’” (p. 93). Todd (2018) suggests that publics are claimed through action and narration, “which makes publics themselves eminently educational in nature” (p. 972).  Within different discussions regarding publics, the coming together around an issue of concern is crucial and therefore, perhaps it is fair to claim that a sense of participation is necessary for the creation of a public, and thus for education. It is here where a consideration of the common- sense public is interesting.

Discussing the public in a world with police and prisons forces the recognition of at least two things: one, that the public is largely propped up by the systematic exclusion of others (in spaces like prisons) and two, that while we are all implicated in this systematic exclusion, only certain positions in society are given the power to address the problems this systematic exclusion is supposed to prevent or amend (police, courts, guards, etc.) (this thinking is inspired by prison abolitionists, cf. Davis, 2003; Kaba, 2021; Rodriguez, 2019 ). Abolitionist scholar Liat Ben-Moshe notes that the prison as an institution “shapes social relations in society, not just for those affected, but for everyone” (Ben-Moshe, 2020, p. 117). Said differently, the prison as an institution shapes the public not only via the exclusion of some, but in the way that it also shapes the conditions in which those allowed in the public are forced to accept. For example, participation in the public is largely conditioned on the acceptance of a criminal justice version of justice. Additionally, solving problems via police and prisons results in a certain kind of “ruling over the public” that only some are allowed to do. This largely forces the public into a position of either being managed, protected, or violated through police and prisons, and forces the public into compliance with certain approaches to problems over other approaches. I suggest that this view of the public is relevant for educational discussions of publics because, at least in part, the public backgrounds what kind of publics are possible. I now turn back to what this means for educational possibilities.

Todd (2018) positions education as a cultural and aesthetic practice, which she argues creates another understanding of its ‘public’ character, that is “the public dimension of education is not simply made by decree; rather the public emerges in the very practices that ‘claim’ it as such” (p. 978).    Part of framing education as a cultural and aesthetic practice means recognizing the significance of space for educational possibilities. While perhaps becoming public does not necessarily mean relocating from the home to the street (Biesta, 2012), location, and thus space, does play a part in this discussion because space “makes possible a certain kind of conversation, even as it does not entirely denude the conventional recognition of power” (Todd, 2018, p. 978). Therefore, the form of ‘human togetherness’ (Biesta, 2012) is, in some ways quite literally, shaped by location and space. Education as a cultural and aesthetic practice makes a discussion of the public worthwhile, as I will now briefly discuss.

While I do not have space here to discuss this example in detail, I draw on the same socially engaged art project Todd (2018) uses to “reflect on the performative aspects of publicity and the role education plays therein” (p. 975). Somewhat coincidently, the particular example from this project focused on youth’s experiences with police in Dublin. Members of the police (though not police that are familiar with the youth), youth, and witnesses gathered at an unfamiliar location, where the police read narratives written by the youth. These narratives discussed the youth’s experiences with the police (see Todd for a better explanation of this event). Todd suggests that the practices of the youth leading up to the event could been seen as educational, whether or not the event was and that it is not so much that “the youth call themselves into being as a public, but that their voices are the nexus around which becoming a public revolves” (p. 978).   I would like to complicate the notion of becoming a public in this example. I suggest that because they live in a world where police have a certain power over the public, that the youth were limited in their ability to claim a public. They were limited in their ability to claim a public because whether or not their voices were heard, the police still maintain a specific power over the youth in the public. Once they leave the space, the youth (and the witnesses for that matter) are back in the public where the threat of exclusion and the handling of certain problems take on a specific form. I suggest that the way people are forced to participate in the public in a world with police and prisons ultimately limits coming into being a public, which ultimately restricts educational possibilities. Publics, thus educational possibilities, are limited because “action and narration” are constrained by the rules of participation in the public. The rules of participation in the public of a world with prisons and police not only inform who is allowed to be in public and how they are allowed to be in public, but they also inform what kinds of issues get to become issues of concern.  Therefore, taking discussions of the public seriously is deeply a part of the work of opening up “questions about what kinds of publics our educational systems serve and how these systems might better facilitate practices of freedom through which new publics emerge” (Todd, 2018, p. 979).  Further consideration is needed around both how participation in the public limits different publics and how new publics could emerge despite these limitations. Ultimately, I suggest that a reimagining of the public is needed in order to expand educational possibilities.

References

Arendt, H. (1958). The human condition. University of Chicago press.

Bergdahl, L., & Langmann, E. (2021). Pedagogical publics: Creating sustainable educational environments in times of climate change. European Educational Research Journal, 14749041211005618.

Biesta, G. (2012). Becoming public: Public pedagogy, citizenship and the public sphere. Social & Cultural Geography, 13(7), 683-697.

Davis, A. Y. (2003). Are prisons obsolete? Seven Stories Press.

Kaba, M. (2021). We Do this' til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice. Haymarket Books.

Masschelein, J., & Simons, M. (2013). In Defense of the School: A Public Issue, trans. Jack McMartin (Leuven, Belgium: Education, Culture & Society, 2013).

Rodríguez, D. (2019). Abolition as praxis of human being: A foreword. Harv. L. Rev., 132, 1575.

There is an increasing amount of data showing the diverse uses of technology in a variety of classroom settings, with very different levels of technological infrastructure (for recent overviews, see e.g. Blikstad-Balas & Klette 2020; Sahlström et al 2019; Rajiah 2018). Throughout the last decades, video-analyses and focus-group interviews that collect self-assessments have been used to capture the use of technology in a wide variety of interactions between students, or between students and teachers. Blikstad-Balas & Klette (2020) have analyzed 178 Norwegian classrooms and detected that in spite of an advanced infrastructure the teachers’ use of digital technology is limited. Among students using smartphones in plenary teaching, Sahlström et al (2019) have shown that the smartphones are occasionally used for content-related information searching, but are mostly an extension of social interaction with non-related topics and questions. The presence of several screens in class, on the students’ tables and in their peers’ hands are distracting and interrupt the student’s own attention and the attention of those surrounding the smartphone-users.

These studies offer valuable overviews of the multilayered diversity in how digital technology enters today’s classrooms. However, the empirical methods employed prove lacking when the question is what this diversity actually means with respect to the basic intentions of our educational endeavors: enabling learning. As Blikstad-Balas & Klette (2020) summarize, “These findings show that the implementation of digital technology and the development of digital competence in schools require far more than an ambitious curriculum and a basic digital infrastructure.” They therefore point to the “urgent need for professional development at the local level to increase the instructional repertoire and the didactical motivation of teachers in relation to digital technology.”

This presentation starts precisely at this local level by arguing for the need to develop a nuanced didactical language to understand the increasing use of different technologies in educational settings. The multi-layered and simultaneous uses of the individual visual screens in class show the risk of losing overview over what happens in classrooms, both by those who are participating in teaching and learning and by those who empirically analyse the actions. Here, it is important to not only empirically report what happens in classrooms, but to engage in more philosophical questions about our educational purposes. What is the intention of education and the different uses of digital methods for student’s learning? How do we capture and keep the other’s attention when the increasing and easy available digital tools so easily become a distraction? Analysing how questions about the purpose of teaching and about distractions in learning have been answered in the history of didactics, provides opportunity to reassess and recollect what is valued as important and how this is enabled in today’s digital enhanced educational settings. 

To bring the didactical significance of posing these questions into view, I lean on recent philosophical attempts to analyse the concept of attention to show its centrality for learning. “Attention” is used by philosophers to describe the embodied, spatial presence of a person as an essential part of our mutual relations (Fredriksson & Panizza 2020; D’Angelo 2018). In the presentation, I will focus on philosophical and educational discussions that the term “attention” has lately received in the Nordic countries. Anders Kruse Ljungdalh published 2018 “Opmærksamhedsbegrebets historie” (The history of the notion of attention, own translation) in which he explains how the discussion about attention in education has changed over time. While educational theory has a long tradition of discussing the teacher’s task as one of ensuring the attention of the students (e.g. Platon, Herbart, Dewey), the emergence and increasing dominance of empirical and psychological research during the last 100 years has changed the focus. The notion of attention has progressively come to be understood as an internal, behavioural quality on the student’s side while the teacher’s task seems rather to be that of evoking the student’s motivation to learn. Johannes Rytzler’s dissertation on “Teaching as Attention Formation” (2017) discusses this question more closely, stressing the relational character of both teaching and attention. According to Rytzler, teaching should not be understood as a one-sided stimulation of the student’s interest that leads the student to voluntarily engage in the subject matter. Rather, it is important to conceptualise teaching as the conscious act of drawing the student’s attention towards a particular question. He writes, “the phrase [Pay attention!, B.S], or any other gesture calling for attention, can be seen as an invitation to students to engage in transforming relations. The actual “paying attention” would then be to pursue those relations and to activate and explore the transformative potential of the teaching event. In that respect, teaching can be regarded as a practice of attention formation.” (Rytzler 2017: 13-14)

The philosopher Göran Torrkulla adds yet another insight to the notion of attention in his essay “Om uppmärksamhetens former” (2014) (On forms of attention, own translation), pointing to different, but closely intertwined meanings of the word “attention”. On the one hand, attention is used to describe someone focusing on something, like an object or a thought; on the other hand, attention indicates an ethical attitude in which someone expresses that something is important. As Torrkulla suggests, neither our minds nor our sense organs can be reduced to "mere" tools that serve us with different functions like perceiving sensations from the outside and processing them in our inner selves. Rather, we are constantly in a multiple of ways in touch with what happens in and around us. Our whole body is focused on and involved in specific aspects of the context and community we are engaged in. Our senses should thus be understood rather as “complex human abilities that are culturally shaped and that enable us to get to know and be in touch with both ourselves and our world (one through the other)” (Torrkulla 2014: 99). That is why attention raises ethical questions about ourselves and our relations to others. “The vivid attention”, as Torrkulla writes, is constituted by “an openness that is striving to combine contemplation about oneself with the contemplation in the face of others and the subject matter. It is at the same time a vibrant, dynamic and a disciplined openness” (Torrkulla 2014: 78). 

Following these researchers and philosophers, I want to introduce the term “locus of attention” to refer to the point where the activities of teaching and learning meet. The locus of attention is, firstly, a spatial, physical point in the educational setting, often in front of a classroom, in a particular page in a book, or in a spot far away somewhere outside. This spatial and physical spot can either be pointed out by the teacher or the student. It is a particular point to which the looks of the other(s) are drawn, and to where the gazes of the teacher and student(s) meet. Secondly, the locus of attention is a relational meeting-point between teacher and student(s). Someone asks another to share a particular perception with him/her. When someone is pointing out something, he/she means that there is something of interest to him/her. When we look to the spot that is being pointed out to us, the very movement of the eyes, the head and the whole body suggest that we not only acknowledge the subject matter as significant. The movements also imply that we acknowledge the other person as someone of importance in this educational encounter. As Rytzler suggests, the didactical relations between the three parts that are known as the “didactical triangle”, i) teacher, ii) student and iii) subject matter, are characterised by “attentive qualities, such as caring, waiting, listening or curiosity” (Rytzler 2017: 161). Following the tradition of continental didactics, I want to emphasise the deep reciprocal relations between teacher, students and subject matter, and spells out central ethical questions that are relevant in didactical reflections.

The question of how the lecture's subject matter is didactically and visually presented to the students' eyes should not be understood as a merely technical question about teaching methods. It is also an expression of the teacher's own approach and ethical attitude to knowledge and the subject in question. What precisely is displayed on a blackboard or through the classroom's video projector is both something that the students should physically focus their attentive eyes on and something that they should learn to ethically relate to (for an historical overview on this ethical claim Ljungdalh 2018).

Against the background of these two features, I analyse two didactical methods; i) The oral lecture (or plenary teaching) and ii) collaborative mind-mapping exercises. I compare how the “locus of attention” is actualised when these methods are used with or without digital support.

These methods are used dominantly in classrooms (Blikstad-Balas & Klette 2020) and are well-documented empirically (e.g. Cho & Lee 2013; Dewitt & Koh 2020; Baker, Goodboy, Bowman & Wright 2018; Nadeem 2019; Ludvigsen, Krumsvik & Breivik 2020). However, they are not well-analysed in relation to how they enable a shared focus towards the subject matter in order to enable teaching and learning as both embodied and relational efforts. 

The guiding questions of my discussion are: How does the “locus of attention” emerge in the spatial, physical classroom, both as a) the embodied attitudes of the teacher and students towards teaching and learning and their mutual relations, and b) as the ethical attitudes of the teacher and students towards the importance of the subject matter? This enables me to address a lack in our basic didactical conceptions. It is no longer enough to didactically ask what, why and how should teachers teach and students learn. We need a supplemented spatial “where?” to meet the challenges of technology allowing us to be in more places than one at the same time. Additionally, we need a recollection of education as a relational, ethical encounter; an encounter that has to take place somewhere.

Literature:

Blikstad-Balas, M.; Klette, K. (2020). Still a long way to go. Narrow and transmissive use of technology in the classroom. Nordic Journal of Digital Literacy, 15, pp. 55 – 68. https://doi.org/10.18261/issn.1891-943x-2020-01-05

Baker, J. P., Goodboy, A. K., Bowman, N. D. & Wright, A. A. (2018). Does teaching with PowerPoint increase students' learning? A meta-analysis. Computers & Education, 126, pp. 376-387. https://doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2018.08.003 

Cho, Y. H. & Lee, S. E. (2013). The role of co-explanation and self-explanation in learning from design examples of PowerPoint presentation slides. Computers & Education, 69, p. 400. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2013.07.040

D’Angelo, Diego. “A Phenomenology of Creative Attention.” Phänomenologische Forschungen 2 (2018): 99–117. https://doi.org/10.28937/1000108204

Dewitt, D. & Koh, E. H. Y. (2020). Promoting knowledge management processes through an interactive virtual wall in a postgraduate business finance course. Journal of Education for Business, 95(4), pp. 255-262. https://doi:10.1080/08832323.2019.1635977 

Fredrisson, A & Panizza, S (2020): Ethical Attention and the Self in Iris Murdoch and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, DOI: 10.1080/00071773.2020.1836978

Ljungdahl, A. K. (2018). Opmærksomhedsbegrebets historie. Aarhus: Aarhus universitetsforlag.

Ludvigsen, K., Krumsvik, R. & Breivik, J. (2020). Behind the scenes: Unpacking peer discussions and critical reflections in lectures. British Journal of Educational Technology.

Nadeem, N. (2019). Students' Perceptions About the Impact of Using Padlet on Class Engagement: An Exploratory Case Study. International Journal of Computer-Assisted Language Learning and Teaching (IJCALLT), 9(4), pp. 72-89. https://doi:10.4018/IJCALLT.2019100105 

Rajiah, K. (2018). Technology Enhanced Collaborative learaning in Small Group Teaching sessions using padlet Application-A Pilot Study. Research Journal of Pharmacy and Technology, 11(9), p. 4143. doi:10.5958/0974-360X.2018.00761.8

Rytzler, J. (2017). Teaching as Attention Formation. A Relational Approach to Teaching and Attention. Mälardalen Studies in Educational Science. No. 29. Stockholm: E-Print AB

Sahlström, F., Tanner, M. & Valasmo, V. (2019). Connected youth, connected classrooms. Smartphone use and student and teacher participation during plenary teaching. Learning, Culture and Social Interaction, 21, pp. 311-331. https://doi:10.1016/j.lcsi.2019.03.008  

Torrkulla, G. (2014). Om uppmärksamhetens former. In: Carabeidis, B.; Larson, K.; Torrkulla, G. (eds.) Stiglöshet. 3 essäer. Stockholm, Bokförlaget Lejd

Dis/ability’s present absence in philosophy of education
The paper engages with the role which discussions of dis/ability have played within philosophy of education, or better with dis/ability’s present absence in the major discussions
within philosophy of education (cf. e.g. Reindal 2021). I argue that an attentive turn to dis/ability deeply challenges generally held philosophical beliefs and I will explore with the
help of different examples and drawing on Alice Crary’s recent writings how such a turn of attention opens up questions central rather than peripheral to the ethics and the politics
philosophy of education.
Collective autofiction and dissident embodiment as pedagogical forms As part of the philosophical analysis, I want to introduce and explore two examples which of
what in line with the current conference theme can be seen as illustrations of two different pedagogical forms. One example I want to work with are two publications edited and
authored by a group of Swedish LGBTQIA youth with disabilities (Jag är berättaren 2018; 2019) which I will use as example for the pedagogical form of collective autofiction. The
other example I would like to draw on is the work of performance artist Lorenza Böttner which was highlighted in documenta 14 and described as “transform[ing] a painting practice
into a performance art that took to the streets and made public space a stage for a politicized bodily difference” (www.documenta 14.de). I suggest that the way in which
Lorenza makes use of her armless transgender body in her performance pieces illustrates how dissident embodiment itself can become a pedagogical form. It also connects in relevant
ways with a poem from the above-mentioned volumes of autofiction: 

Jag vill att du förstår
vad jag säger
Jag gör vad jag vill
Det är min kropp
som rör sig väldigt mycket
(Lo H, Min stolthet, 2019, p. 67)

This quote can be translated into English as follows: I want you to understand/ what I am saying/ I do what I want/ This is my body/ that moves a lot. (transl. CS) These lines are a
verse and a part of a poem by Lo H, a contributor to the collective volume Min stolthet (2019, engl: My Pride). It is the second of two collaborative works which were edited and
authored by a group of Swedish LGBTQIA youth with disabilities. Both books were the result of weekly meetings in which the youth practice writing and storytelling together, or with the
help of senior writers. The texts produced blend poetry and prose, paintings and sketches, fiction, autofiction and documentary portrayals of their experiences, desires and images of
their lived reality and the social and political changes they seek. The collective work with literary processes is both a meeting place for the sharing of experience as well as a place and
time to reclaim and to make visible their own identities as sexed and as sexual beings – in resistance to the fact that these aspects are often being disregarded in public perception
and in portrayals of persons with disability.
Many of the youth involved in the writing project describe how important the meetings were, how for some of them it meant long weekly drives to these meetings, but how much it
meant to be able to meet and have an exchange with other youths in similar situations. That for some, it was the first time ever, they met others in similar situations. The importance and
power of actual physical gatherings have become palpable for many of us under the pandemic. The youth in the writing project could describe this sense of isolation even in nonpandemic
times. What has become a mainstream experience in the cause of the pandemic, for some groups, the lack of possibility of everyday gathering in a community where I can
understand and share my unique experience as part of a collective experience is a common experience even in non-pandemic times. It brings the collective production of autofiction,
such as the initiative for the meetings and workshops which let to these two book publications, into focus as specifically fruitful pedagogical forms. The collective creative
process is described by the youth as finding strength and joy in expressing-together and in learning about and better understanding oneself through the collective expression together
with others.
The body that Lo H´s poem is written about “moves very much”: as a body diagnosed with cerebral palsy, it moves beyond the norms of the able-bodied, as a person who selfidentifies
as bisexual, this body also moves beyond the norms of a heteronormative society.
Lo´s poem demands to pay attention to and lean in to what is said by this specific body, the insistence on this body being able to do what it wants and in the way that this body finds
enjoyable. The artist Lorenza Böttner said in an interview that “In some way I am an exhibitionist and I like it. I benefit from it. But I was not always an exhibitionist, it came as a
result of my handicap. Because…, people stare at me whether I am dressed conservatively or very flamboyantly. But it is fun for me.” (HFF 2008) The way in which she practices dissident
embodiment in her performance pieces can be read as making good on what Lo H’s poem asks for. In one of her performance pieces, Böttner plays with how society attempts to dress
and hide her body in a way that hinders its movement and contrasts this with letting the same body paint and dance in clothes that fit, support and let it show in a way that allows us
to see and listen to this body that also “moves a lot.” Dissident embodiment here becomes a form of pedagogy which becomes an experience of learning about the roles, expectations
and possibilities of different bodies both for the artist themselves as well as for the audience.

The ethics of bringing a life into focus
In the second part of the paper I move from the examples to a critical look at the exchange between the prominent bioethicist Peter Singer (2019) and the moral philosopher and
disability activist Eva Feder Kittay (2019) in order to highlight some interesting aspects that are relevant for how we in philosophy of education look at the role of the body and
dis/ability. In Singer´s argumentation, we can find how a rigid and narrow understanding of rationality can lead to a disturbing opposition to the needs and sensitivities of those
communities affected who the scholars involved are writing about, developing and defending their arguments while “simply refusing to listen” (Crary 2016, p. 12). We can find
a similarly problematic structure in some trans-sceptical disability scholars’ arguments (see for a critical discussion Slater and Liddiard, 2018). The importance and value of literature
and the arts for philosophy and philosophy of education, and of such projects as Min stolthet or the work of Lorenza Böttner specifically, lies not only in the incredible artistic capacity,
literary quality or acute analysis of the situation of a given minority. It lies also in the way in which these works reveal the shortcomings of what Crary (2016; 2018; 2019) calls the
“abstraction requirement” in moral reasoning. Crary’s analysis helps to understand better as well as to criticize how the very nature of certain forms of moral reasoning within philosophy
can themselves become problematically unethical and immoral; how prominent moral philosophers can find it acceptable to judge about whole communities in the name of
morality without cultivating sensitivities for actually listening to, understanding and supporting their needs. As Crary argues, artistic and literary works and practices can
transform us and our criteria within philosophy of education by showing us a life and what matters in this life. In conclusion, I defend that the discourses around disability give
additional reason to critically revisit the status and understanding of rationality in relation to moral theory as well as the relation between rationality and fiction. In this way they deeply
challenge generally held philosophical beliefs and open up questions central rather than peripheral to ethics.

References
Crary, A. (2016): Inside Ethics. On the Demands of Moral Thought, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Crary, A. (2018): "Cognitive Disability and Moral Status", in: Cureton, A./ Wasserman, D. T. (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Disability, Oxford Handbooks Online,
pp. 1-18.
Crary, A. (2019): "Animals, Cognitive Disability and Getting the World in Focus in Ethics and Social Thought. A Reply to Eva Feder Kittay and Peter Singer", in: Zeitschrift für
Ethik und Moralphilosophie, 2/1, pp. 139-146.
Jag är berättaren (2018): Min Verklighet. RFSL Stockholm.
Jag är berättaren (2019): Min Stolthet. RFSL Stockholm.
Kittay, E. F. (2019): "Comments on Alice Crary’s The Horrific History of Comparisons between Cognitive Disability and Animality (and How to Move Past It) and Peter Singer’s
Response to Crary", in: Zeitschrift für Ethik und Moralphilosophie, 2/1, pp. 127-133.
Reindal, S.M. (2021): “Considering Diversity in (Special) Education: Disability, Being Someone and Existential Education”, in: Stud Philos Educ 40, pp. 365–380.
Singer, P. (2019): "A Response to Alice Crary’s 'Horrific History'", in: Zeitschrift für Ethik und Moralphilosophie, 2/1, pp. 135-137.
Slater, J. and Liddiard, K. (2018), “Why Disability Scholars Must Challenge
Transmisogyny and Transphobia”, in: Canadian Journal of Disability Studies, 7/2, pp. 83-93.

www.documenta14.de/en/south/25298_lives_and_works_of_lorenza_boettner

Today, in the traditional homelands of Western modernity, there is a widespread experience of a global crisis. Main material challenges are mostly presented as economic and ecological, but within many societies there is also an increased perception of social, political and cultural malaise. To conceptualize adequately the perceived misery, some critics have argued to revive the classical critique of modern society in terms of alienation,[1] and this is the point of departure for the present argument. To express critique of discontent, alienation has proved to have a strong intuitive appeal, and it is therefore worth looking more into its normative and explanatory potentials.

Hence, one the one hand, alienation may be said to have become ever more acute due to the material challenges of neo-liberal capitalist estrangement, reification and commodification, and it can indeed be difficult to see one’s way out of the mess. On the other hand, taking seriously the education of coming generations, we must insist on conceiving alienation as possible to overcome, at least conceptually and in principle. Passing on reality to those to come, if conceptualizing critique in terms of alienation, we must provide a concept that is possible to negate, and thus sublate, by some kind of human activity, be that through revolution, political reform or, for instance, through democratic citizenship education. In other words: As educators we must insist on the possibility of empowering and raising collective consciousness that enables us to govern ourselves in a rational and reasonable way, be that in the family or in the workplace, in the village councils or in the parliament or the general assembly of the United Nations. This is what education in a democracy is for.

My overall philosophical ambition is thus to facilitate conceptually education, and especially citizenship education, for democracy, the assumption being that in the real world this ambition is challenged by alienation. Nevertheless, the assumption is also that alienation can be conceived of as something that can be coped with, and that continued education forms a necessary condition for realizing and sustaining a genuine social democracy. Being partly inspired by Habermas, I will thus argue that democratic citizenship education must combine insights from both socialism, liberalism and republicanism,[2] but that the successful education to a social democracy must transcend these well-established social and political agenda, ultimately endorsing a very broad conception of the political that stimulates added emphasis on cultural and aesthetic issues.[3]

Recuperating the idea of alienation in an educational perspective, however, one must relate to the fact that alienation has been a crucial element in different kinds of critical reflections on the human predicament of modernity and that consequently, there has been strong disagreement about what the term ‘alienation’ is supposed to signify. Typically, when discussing alienation in the 20^th century, the focus was either the existential absurdity of human existence per se, or its inauthenticity due to modern technology, or the way human life was experienced in a capitalist modernity haunted by the experience of exploitation and injustice. Hence, in discussions of alienation, in particular two different philosophical leanings can be identified as potentially in conflict, namely, on the one side, various kinds of existentialism and phenomenology, and, on the other side, various kinds of Marxism. The differences between these two approaches were visible decades ago,[4] and they are still recognized today.[5]

Even though there are phenomenological discussion of alienation,[6] the most influential contemporary impetus to the discussion appears to come from Critical Theory.[7] Being myself mostly inclined to refer to the latter rather than the former, I have nevertheless criticized two major critical theorists within this field, Rahel Jaeggi and Hartmut Rosa.[8] As I see it, with their experiential and individualistic approach, they have allowed themselves to be influenced decisively by existentialism and phenomenology rather than Marxism, and that is the wrong way to take for Critical Theory.

Having in addition already discussed the origins of alienation, in particular as they appear in Hegel’s Phenomenology,[9] in this work I want to add substance to a conception of alienation that stimulates a constructive critique of the aforementioned malaise of contemporary Modernity. Rather than the experience of alienation generated by the division of labor and modern technology, I will emphasize the crucial role of private property rights and economics. Contrary to the current fashion in social and political philosophy, I will also focus on history, anthropology and in particular the critique of political economy, bringing to the fore aspects of the original speculative and metaphysical analysis of alienation that have not been sufficiently taken into consideration in contemporary discussions.

Still, I would like to insist on the possibility to resist and change the present relations of production as a result of relatively peaceful formation of consciousness, thus forming the majority of us to become socially responsible human beings and active democratic citizens rather than merely competitive producers and insatiable consumers. By nature, human being transgresses merely competing, producing and consuming, and therefore, human beings do not have to succumb completely to alienation or reification. As a philosopher of education, I insist in particular on the possibility of countering the detrimental socialization of the present relations of production by education, including in education the more or less intentional consciousness formation that takes place outside educational institutions, e.g. through the beneficial influence of families and friends, unions, political parties and NGOs, as well as through play, arts and leisure in general. Even under the present circumstances, i.e. highly developed industrial capitalist and militarist modernity, we can stimulate the human being of each other rather than merely reduce our life to instrumentalizing, obeying or killing other human beings, while producing and consuming non-human things.

*

This being the overall project, and alienation being a major challenge, maybe the major challenge, as an introduction, I discuss some contemporary definitions of alienation stemming from different languages and point to some problems related to the multilingual roots of the present subject matter. Again, this is not merely conceptual history or descriptive analysis; it is the first indication of the normative and critical potential for political action of employing the concept of alienation (A.).

To secure this potential it is important conceptualize alienation as typical for a specific historical formation of society, namely contemporary capitalist and militarist Modernity, and thus possible to overcome through political action. In contrast to estrangement and exteriorization, alienation has a legal as well as a pathological aspect, both of which fuel social critique and political action. Juxtaposing alienation with estrangement and exteriorization threatens to make political and educational initiatives towards a better world appear as futile (B.)

In order to pursue this practical project, I endorse the classical philosophical approach of Hegel and Marx, i.e. both subject philosophy and philosophy of consciousness. Having elsewhere distanced myself from the post-metaphysical agendas of contemporary Critical Theory that universalizes the experience of alienation in modernity, my argument thus aims develop a concept of alienation to stimulate both the understanding and the practical transcendence of alienation, stressing a classical metaphysical realism inspired by Marcuse’s ground-breaking interpretations of Hegel and Marx from the 1930s and 40s (C.).[10]

In continuation, I return to the late 20^th century Marxist controversy concerning alienation, showing why alienation became such a crucial issue for the so-called realized socialism of the Soviet-bloc. This may seem like an old-fashioned and outdated way to discuss alienation that was well put away decades ago. Remember that during the Cold War, east of the so-called Iron Carpet one had to be Marxist to be able to participate in such discussions, or rather, almost any public discussion. However, as mentioned, I believe that the discussion of those days did have some salient features that are worth retaining in the confrontation with the present globalized capitalism, not least the idea of both recognizing alienation as real and considering it possible – and pertinent – to overcome (D.).

This lays the conceptual basis for criticizing the alienation of a highly developed industrial society, stressing how capitalism violates human substance, but also – again – indicating how this detrimental challenge may be overcome. It is thus worth digging further into Marx’s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 to explain the details of, how the dialectical concept of alienation,[11] and in particular the idea of alienated work, is intertwined with the critique of political economy. An important step in this direction is to reconstruct the Manuscripts in a way that clarifies the crucial role the concept of alienation plays for the critique of political economy (E.).

This being done, it can be made clear in details how alienation relates to property rights and waged labor. In the said Manuscripts, Marx explicitly recognizes the inspiration from the Phenomenology, making Hegel’s concept of alienation a crucial element in the historical constitution of political economy and capitalism as such. Hence, for Marx criticizing alienation also implies criticizing political economy and capitalism (F.).

Economy, however, is not the only root to alienating misery. In politics, sovereign rights that traditionally are considered inalienable are sometimes nevertheless experienced as alienated. Political power on the one side may imply impotence on the other, be that in military interventions or real-life politics. The failed relation to real-life parliamentary politics in a contemporary Western society is the point of departure for the French philosopher Andre Gorz in his analysis of alienation.[12] Gorz thus characterizes alienation as the experience of having invested one’s own personal freedom in something that subsequently reveals itself to follow the logic of something, or rather someone, else. Hence, political reality was supposed to become realized as an expression, or a part, of oneself according to one’s own ideals, but is subsequently experienced as following strange, alien or even hostile rules of a system defined by other people (G.).

To conclude, I argue for a metaphysical realist understanding of alienation in terms of the unfulfilled freedom and autonomy of capitalist and militarist modernity. Hence, employing the rich Hegelian philosophical anthropology, metaphysical concepts become available to understand the possibility of raising self-consciousness through the various consciousness-raising processes of experience, in particular education. Instead of reductions of human nature to be definable in terms of production and appropriation encountered in some Marxist literature, and the resulting understanding of alienation in terms of labor, technology and economy, I will thus suggest a broader idea of alienation that can grasp the discontent experienced in human relationships in general and in politics in particular. With such a concept of alienation, it is possible to argue for public education, and in particular citizenship education, as both meaningful and attractive, thus making it possible for educators, pupils and citizens at large to recognize the human potentials of societal reality and maybe even conceive of some kind of reconciliation.

My PhD-project is a phenomenological study exploring the phenomenon of moral disquiet in professional human practices. This includes exploring moral disquiet as an existential phenomenon; its meaning, how it is given to us pre-reflectively/how it appears and unfolds in practice, and the educational, pedagogical, and political predicaments that might arise from it. The below anecdote is Kathrine´s, one of the students participating in the study. It has its origin in one of her periods of practical training in a nursing home and highlight the lived experience of moral disquiet.

Helga needs help to eat. This afternoon, I am the one helping her with the meal. I am serving her a thin soup with some vegetable pieces and meat. The back of her bed is lifted, so that it shall be easier for her to eat. The atmosphere is good. We are smiling to each other, now and then chuckling. Suddenly, Helga starts gesticulating, wavering her hands and points into the living room. I am trying to get what she wants, but it is hard. After a while I suggest getting one of the staff to help us. In a minute, I am back in her apartment with my supervisor. I am telling her our story, but she rather lowers the back of the bed, wrapping the duvet around Helga and puts the meal aside. “She is tired”, my supervisor says; “She needs to rest”. As we walk out the door, I turn towards Helga. I will never forget the look on her face.

What is the point of bringing this event forth? What happens here worth a reflective exploration? Van Manen (2002) suggests that an event worthy of exploration is not phenomenologically interesting first and foremost because of its content, factuality, and opinions, but in respect of what it creates of understanding of the meaning structures in the situation, while maintaining respect and dignity for the persons involved. The description presents us to a situation; two and suddenly three persons in an apartment, a bed, a meal, and a door. This is what of factuality one can register from the anecdote, the countable and more measurable parts; this room, at that time with a student and an elderly woman. If van Manen is right in that a description of a real event in a person’s life is less interesting in respect of its content, factuality, and opinions, how then shall we understand this description? What is at stake here? Why does the student both remember so well and choose to tell this episode? We might start with the mood or the atmosphere, and how the two persons find themselves and each other. This is at once harder to grasp and more complex, but it is clearly also what the student recalls and more intuitively describes. We can imagine the harmonic, friendly atmosphere present in the moment, and between the two of them care and intimacy is taking place. One carefully gives food to the other, as they are laughing and obviously enjoying each other`s presence. Suddenly the elderly woman starts to tell something by gesticulating, pointing into the living room. It is something of importance there. As the elderly woman has little verbal language and as Kathrine eagers to understand, she runs for assistance.

Drawing on Bauman (1993) analysis of the modernity and Romano´s (2014) analysis of the philosophy of event and time, moral(ity) is understood not as something you have or are, but rather as something that breaks through and appear in the moment of the “now”. Facing moral disquiet can thus be seen as a moment where you become aware of or encounter your own existence, including the freedom to choose whether, or not, to act upon what the world is offering (Biesta, 2022).

By describing what moral disquiet can be as lived experience in relation to otherness in everyday-life and professional human practices, I intend to come closer to the core of the phenomenon, and to the pedagogical dilemmas, limitations and possibilities of education and professional human practices. The overall study is theoretically orientated in phenomenological-philosophical and pedagogical literature and in artistic sources of insight. The study thus seeks its sources in the existential, continental pedagogical tradition, and in hermeneutic phenomenology as practiced in the so-called Utrecht school, further developed methodologically by Max van Manen (2014).

The phenomenology of practice

The phenomenology of practice, van Manen´s (2014) methodological approach, is “…a method of abstemious reflection on the basic structures of the lived experience of human existence” (p. 26), whereby method refers to a way of being in the world, a special attitude driven by a pathos of “…being swept up in a spell of wonder about phenomena as they appear, show, present, or give themselves to us” (p. 26). It does not aim for empirical categorization or generalization, but rather to explore and understand, something more and something else of, a phenomenon and human experiences as lived through pre-reflectively. Unlike many other qualitative methods and designs, hermeneutic phenomenology does not have its origin in theory, but in lives as we live them. Therefore, it is also called the science of examples (van Manen, 2014), as the exploration has its origin in lived lives and as examples in forms of lived experiences is both the starting point and the end of the phenomenological exploration.

To gather lived experience descriptions, phenomenology borrows empirical methods from the social science. Within this study, the empirical material is based on 13 individual interviews and three focus group interviews with third and last year-students in kindergarten teacher-, social work- and nursing education, and were oriented around personal and lived experiences that had taken place during their periods of practical training in an institution - as kindergarten, nursing homes, adaptive homes, and hospitals. The phenomenological interviews were conducted during the spring 2021 and took place in group- or classrooms at different universities in Norway, outdoor or on the digital communication platform Zoom. The students were all informed both written and oral, and signed a conformation form before attending. The study is reported to NSD (Norwegian Centre for Research Data).

The study includes three sub-studies. In sub-study one I explore the phenomenon of moral disquiet as an existential phenomenon, which means both exploring the phenomenon in itself, its meaning and how it appears in professional human practices. In the second sub-study I explore the phenomenon through anecdotes developed on basis of what emerge in the interview material. The anecdotes are explored in relation to one or more of the five existentials: lived relation, lived body, lived time, lived place, or lived things (materiality) (van Manen, 2014). In the third study I plan to inquire and argue for the pedagogical significance of both teaching action sensitive pedagogy and teaching about action sensitive pedagogy to students studying professional human practices. How and what do we teach in a time of effectiveness, measurement, and calculation?

Rethinking education

The study is concerning public education, pedagogy, and policies in several ways. In today`s society people`s lives are largely institutionalized, and the way professional practitioners encounter and engage with people within these institutions is of significance for both how the person experience him-/herself, otherness, and situations of and in a world with others, both human and non-human. Thus, the way we are as professionals and human beings, and how we educate becoming teachers, social workers and nurses is essential. These are all professions who engage closely with people within institutions and adapted homes, where relations are often hierarchic and incarnated with power and control. In addition, we are experiencing an increasing degree of effectiveness, calculation, and measurement, even dehumanization and objectification, in education and professional human practices (Howard, Sævi, Foran and Biesta, 2021; Säfström, 2021; Todd, 2016), where students are measured and valued based upon their achievement and result and where professional practitioners are expected to satisfy predetermined requirements and governmental regulations. To rethink education seems more important than ever.

As we return, more or less, to our everyday life after the covid-19 lockdown, we have a unique opportunity to rethink education and human practices. Following the call for a “new” language and a reversal of the experiences in the educational landscape (Howard, Sævi, Foran and Biesta, 2021; Todd, 2016), I reconnect with educational thoughts from the past (ancient Greek thoughts, Mollenhauer, Bollnow, Arendt and Bauman among others) and try to replace education in the present, in the moment of the “now” (van Manen, 2014) – and not in the future, placing the burden of fixing societal problems on the students´ shoulders (Todd, 2016). This also means that I place students´ lived experiences of moral disquiet (anecdotes) as the source or the ground of my phenomenological analysis and reflections, as “…lived experiences can bypass the neoliberal debate in education and allows for a more open investigation of teaching that is liberated from agendas” (Foran, 2021, p. 50-51). The anecdotes that I am highlighting are both similar and unique, shared – but different, and can help us illuminate aspects of human life within “our” time age that are difficult to grasp and articulate, as that which make us sense and feel, and touches our lived body, that which appear in the gap between the past and the future (Arendt, 1961/2006), in the in-betweenness of people, but also in-between persons and an overarching system of regulations, registration and control.

By highlighting and discussing students` lived experiences of moral disquiet in professional human practices, I both attend to come closer to the core of the phenomenon and to show the educational, pedagogical, and political significance of these kinds of experiences, as what happens in the present is constantly intertwined with both the past and the future and the “in-betweens” of the world. Drawing on Goble´s (2016) analysis on encountering the sublime in art, I try to highlight the value of aesthetic education, both to bring education back to life itself and as a way to educate not only cognitive aspects of human lives, but also our ability to sense and feel, to be and be touched in and by the present. Furthermore, the study will safeguard diversity, both related to lives as we live them and encountering otherness, but also, more specifically, to the person who acts/would have acted, in situations where the phenomenon of moral disquiet appears and the one he/she acts/would have acted in relation to. Hopefully, I will contribute to a debate related to current educational, pedagogical, and institutional practices and policies.

As this is work in progress, I am constantly exploring, expanding, and elaborating my thoughts. I will, therefore, be grateful for comments and feedback on my ongoing project.

References

Arendt, H. (1961/2006). Between Past and Future. Pinguin Classics.

Bauman, Z. (1993). Postmodern ethics. Blackwell.

Biesta, G. (2022). WORLD-CENTRED EDUCATION. A View for the Present. Routledge.

Foran, A. (2021). Pedagogical practice. In P. Howard, T. Sævi, A. Foran and G. Biesta. Phenomenology and Educational Theory in Conversation. Routledge.

Goble, E. (2016). Visual Phenomenology. Encountering the Sublime Through Images. Routledge.

Howard, P., Sævi, T., Foran, A. and Biesta, G. (2012). Phenomenology and Educational Theory in Conversation. Routledge.

Romano, C. (2014). Event and Time. Fordham University Press.

Säfström, C.A. (2021). A Pedagogy of Equality in a Time of Unrest. Routledge.

Todd, S. (2016). Facing uncertainty in education: Beyond the harmonies of Eurovision Education. European Educational Research Journal. Vol. 15(6), p. 619-627.

van Manen, M. (2014). Phenomenology of Practice. Routledge.

van Manen, M. (2002). Writing in the Dark. Phenomenological Studies in Interpretive Inquiry. The Althouse Press.  

     No one doubts that informational technologies make knowledge and skills more easily accessible. But does this access grant an understanding about the real life application of it all? Does it motivate learning? Does it bring about the experience of sharing? Does it enable the renewal of the world? (Masschelein, Simons, 2015). Digitalization of content, digital thinking, digital creation, media education and its application in learning, media as a form of manipulation – all of it impacts the development of a young person’s value system (Duoblienė, 2018). Pedagogy has the ability to properly integrate the technological area into the educational process and help both, teachers and students, realize that it is in itself a part of the overall culture which shapes their values.

     Interpersonality has shifted from the linear interaction between a teacher and a student into a triangular interaction between technology, the educator and the student (Latour, 2005). This bond includes the culture of education, various means of technology, the content of education and its programs amongst other things. In this scenario, the educator teaches the student to connect the forementioned elements through the process of education. Therefore, certain questions arise:

How does technology influence and change the process of creation of educational content?  Exactly, how much and what kind of influence does the educator possess in the interaction between the student and technology? How do the values held by the educator and by the student change the attitude towards technology use? And how do technologies change the relationship between the educator and the student?

     During the global COVID-19 pandemic technologies became essential in the process of education and as a result a question of if (and how) is it possible to maintain the existentially meaningful bond between the educator and the student during distance learning, became prominent. It became very relevant to determine whether this relationship is not left to be governed by the third party – technology itself.

     In addition to the responsibility the educator accepts in regards to self, others, the environment, the organic and the non-organic world, the educator has to be concerned with the existential experiences of every participant of the process of education. If technology is a part of the culture, then the insertion of a computer program amid the educator and the student is nothing other than a different form of education.

      Even though the balance can shift, the two modes of existing – “having“ and “being“ (Fromm, 1976) can remain, because the balance of it in a person’s value system in the context of education is determined by self-expression and educational goals.

     According to E. Fromm, most people accept “having“ as the most natural mode of existence, sometimes even as the only acceptable mode of living, which, in turn, makes it highly difficult to comprehend „being“ as a mode of existence and “having“ as only one of the possible directions. The essence of these two terms are rooted in a person’s life experience and are reflected in daily life.  Therefore, they are a part of the educational process as well (2008, p. 24).

Distance learning during the pandemic created an opportunity to look at the division of “having“  and “being“ from a new point of view.

     1. Learning. The reverse of “having“ and „being“. “Having“ takes the place of “being“.

According to Fromm, students, who lean more towards ”having“ will take the lecture in, will comprehend the meaning of what was said and will attempt to write down every single word, in order to succeed during the examination. However, “the content does not become part of their own individual system of thought, enriching and widening it“ (Fromm, 2008, p. 24).

     Students, who lean more towards „having“ will attempt to maintain the knowledge they have gained – they will keep diligent notes or memorize the materials. Pondering or personalization of the materials is not required. And if the lectures are recorded during distance learning, there is no need for note keeping. Possession of the recorded lecture becomes the requirement and the “having“ of the recording equals to attendance. This is confirmed by a survey conducted in 2020 among bachelor degree students, after the completion of the „ Philosophy of Education“ course. All students willing and wanting to share their opinions were asked to answer open ended questions. The survey indicated certain changes in the “having“ and “being“.   

     First of all, students described distance learning as “quality“, and in terms of time and space – flexible, education:

Online organized learning met our needs very well, saved us a lot of travel time and enabled us to attend lectures more frequently (S11).

It was convenient, that the professor agreed to record the lectures, so that the students were able to watch them at a time most suitable to them, because it wasn‘t always possible to attend the lectures at the time provided (S7).

You can listen to lectures while being somewhere comfortable (S1).

     It is clear, that students consider the distance form of studies as quality education, which completely disagrees with the thoughts of E. Fromm, who said, that the quality of a student‘s education is directly correlated with the real world. First of all, listening has to be a live process that occurs in real time in the same physical space, so that the students can instantly react to what‘s being said. The most important goal is to influence a change in the student‘s mind after the lecture; to make them think about what they understood. It is imperative that the content of the lecture would be stimulating, yet so far, it is left undetermined exactly how attractive and stimulating the recorded lectures were. But what‘s clear is that students evaluated the quality of virtual learning by amalgamating the form of learning with its content.

1. Learning. “Being“ as a continuation or a compensation.

     Since the first few lectures of the course were physically attended by students and only later on were switched to distance learning, the process continued as if not much has changed – students still participated in discussions, spontaneously reacted to what was being said (even if they didn‘t always have their cameras on). The opinions of students outlined a certain continuation:

It was great, that up until quarantine our professor motivated us to discuss, to express our opinions, to not be afraid to speak up. So, that when we switched to distance learning, nothing changed in that regard (S5).

     Furthermore, this type of continuation, according to the students, described the quality of the process:

There was very little difference in how the professor conducted the lectures pre-quarantine and during it, which was the biggest bonus (S8).

The dedication of our professor and discussion based format was so engaging that you would lose the track of time (S14).

     By remembering their experiences during in person lectures, students continue the same practices during distance learning. Such a memory could be described as remembrance based in the mode of being: “remembering in the mode of being implies bringing to life something one saw or heard before.  We can experience this productive remembering by trying to envision a person's face or scenery that we had once seen. We will not be able to remember instantly in either case; we must re-create the subject, bring it to life in our mind. This kind of remembering is not always easy; to be able to fully recall the face or the scenery one must once have seen it with sufficient concentration“  (Fromm, 2006, p.27).

1. Learning. “Being“ as involvement into the trap of the virtual world.

Some students accept the virtual space as a way of life they are more accustomed to:

It felt easier to express my thoughts on this platform than in real world (S2).

Distance learning changes the perception and understanding of time and space. Being in two spaces at once made learning more interesting:

It was more interesting to learn remotely, because you were able to attend the lecture and be at home at the same time (S8).

We were able to peacefully listen and understand the materials; there were no outside distractions (S4).

What‘s important, according to Fromm, is the remaining possibility to retain the “being“ mode of existence in the process of distance learning:

The course material and a “lively“  atmosphere during the lectures were encouraging self-reflection, because after every lecture it felt like I not only gained knowledge or skills, but I found something out about myself as well. After one of the lectures I thought to myself “How would the “real“ lectures look like?“ to which my immediate answer was that the lectures happening right now are the most “real“ ones (S10).

Our professor had a great connection with the entire group. Lectures were pleasant and interesting and the discussions conducted during the seminars were natural, mutually respectful and equivalent. That really opened up my thought process. So, does it really matter in what manner are the lectures conducted if the message comes through? (S6).

The professor was indeed very kind. The only thing I would tell her is to worry less about how you look in front of the camera. I mean, I get it, we are all modern women with our own complexities, but I want to tell you that you look great, because you are a wise and a highly experienced woman, a professor, so thank you for that (S2).

     In a computer generated hyperreality, where being occurs through various means of media, two rivaling narratives of “being“ and “having“ are joined by a third mode of a modern day human – “appearing“. The term “appearing” , popularized by a critic of society G. Debord (2006), conceptually inserts itself among “being” and “having” and expands the field. Debord was the first one to write about the disappearance of reality – a sentiment echoed by many postmodern critics of society up until and including S. Zizek. Debord builds on what Fromm said, but notes that the primary “being” became “having” and then disappeared and was replaced by “appearing”. On the other side of a symbolic visual reality, the material, existential reality disappears. In “Society of the Spectacle“ (2006) Debord was one of the first ones to recognize the disappearance of the existential reality and its transformation to a visual reality.

Theoretical assumptions of Fromm and Debord give us a platform to analyze the relationship of the three different modes of existence: “being”, “having” and “appearing” in the context of nowadays education, since distance learning has already motivated us to rethink the forms of “being” and “having” in the space of educational virtual reality.

References:

Debord G. (2006) Spektaklio visuomenė (Society of the Spectacle), Kaunas: Kitos knygos

Duobliene L.(2018) Posthumanistinus ugdymas.Dekoduoti (Posthumanist Education. To Decode), Vilnius: VU leidykla.

Fromm E.  (2008), To Have or to Be?, London and New York: Continuum

Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-network-theory. Oxford; New York: Oxford UP.

Masschelein J., Simons M. (2015). Education in Times of Fast Learning: the Future of the School. Ethics and Education, 10, p. 84-89.

In this contribution we want to discuss what it has meant for the school to move into the digital sphere over the last two years, due to the Covid-19 pandemic. For this purpose we introduce the hypothesis that the digital is a separate sphere of life – in the sense introduced by Hannah Arendt in The Human Condition (1958). This means that apart from leading our lives in the private, the political, and the educational sphere, today we are also partaking in a new digital sphere that consists of a different form of life compared to  the other three. With this we mean that it is possible to identify practices that are unique to the digital sphere (avataring, scrolling, browsing, texting, sharing, hacking, tagging, taking selfies, cancelling, trolling, etc.) and phenomena (e.g.  virality, #tags, etc.) that are specific for the digital. What is crucial for an Arendtian understanding of the spheres of human life is that humans normally go about living in different spheres, that they relate to each other and influence each other, even though they keep their autonomy and heterogeneity. Now, from an Arendtian perspective, the emergence of the digital is not easy to interpret, especially in view of her critical account on the emergence of the social sphere – a paradoxical merging of the private and the public (Arendt 1958, pp. 38-49). This is so, because digital media are not alien forces that come to intrude upon our lives. Instead, they are elemental (Peters 2015), i.e. in the contemporary world they frame our very being as humans: digital media function as the infrastructure of our lives. They have come to define our ontological constitution. Our Being has evolved into a digital Being true and true. Hence, the discussion in media studies on whether there  still exists something external to the digital, i.e. whether it is possible to indicate experiences or practices that are not mediated by digital media today (see Langerkvist 2019, p. 3).

The aim of this contribution is not – however – to take sides in this discussion and make a case for experiences and practices that are not-digital (although leaving such a possibility open is in the background of our analysis). Instead, we want to inquire into what it means when schooling takes place within the digital sphere, i.e. when schooling fully gets an on-line modus operandi, as almost all students and teachers have experienced as of recently. This as good as universal experience that just came about, and since then people all around the world have been publicly discussing whether and when “we will go back to school”[1] – as if what happened on-line was not school at all. Although eventually there seems to be no consent about the potential longing for on-site schooling (as the proper, or better than the on-line modus of schooling), it is remarkable that this particular phrase almost without exception became common parlance during subsequent lockdowns and this in so many various languages and cultures. This suggests that in our day-to-day experience school has been displaced into a foreign terrain. In this paper we want to take this idea seriously, to develop it in a more substantial way and to consider some questions that inevitably arise.   

There are many angles one could take as a point of departure here. In this contribution we take our clue from Devin Proctor (2019) who claims that today Heidegger’s question of what it means to be a human needs to be considered, no longer  through the concept of being-in-the-world, but  in terms of being-in-the-internet which “involves the internet’s own interneting as an existential a priori […] just as the world is constantly worlding and the things in it are constantly thinging” (227). Should this be a valid assertion, it is necessary to ask whether we still can speak of a common world, and hence whether the political, as well as the school are still possible. Therefore, when considering moving school online - via the hypothesis of the digital sphere - it seems fruitful to focus on one essential dimension of schooling which it shares with the political sphere, viz. in both politics and educational we make things public, we turn something (e.g. a thorny issue or study material) into a public matter: this something is brought to the fore in such a way that a collective is formed around it and people start to pay full attention to it (Cf. Masschelein & Simons 2013). What is therefore needed, we argue, is a careful and detailed analysis of what it entails to render something public in politics, in education and in the digital sphere, and to find out what the differences are. This will raise key questions about the relations between the digital and school.

We begin with the sphere of the political, where making things public has the following twofold meaning. One is related to moving a thing from the domain of the private to the domain of the public. Habermas (1991) notes that the origin of this displacement was the process of the separation of King’s treasure from the state treasure – which is the actual birth of the Modern State (and, also, the moment of the separation of the political from the other spheres – that were completely intermingled during the whole of the Middle Ages[2]). This displacement is paradigmatic for the whole political process of Modernization. It comes down to elevating matters shut up in the private sphere to the level of public concern. This is exactly what emancipation, as the core ideal of Modernity, means. The other understanding of making things public is somewhat related to this, as it denotes making apparent what is obscure/hidden. Still following Habermas (1991), the origin of this’ is the emergence of journalism, which seems to be the very principle of ‘Öffentlichkeit’ that Habermas (1991) reconstructs via Kant. In sum, a political way of making things public means: (1) revealing what is hidden, and (2) pointing to something missed in the public discourse. In some cases both meanings apply (e.g. Frances Haugen’s revelations concerning Facebook).

When we turn, subsequently, to making things public at school, we side with Arendt (1961) who argues that education is simultaneously about the protection of the newcomers from the world, and their introduction to an already existing world (in a way that would enable the young to begin anew with the world). However, this double movement is performed not in public, and neither in private. It is performed only among students in a separate, sphere of education, established just for this purpose. In the West a particular invention was installed to make this happen: school. As Masschelein & Simons (2013) noted, school refers to ‘free time’ in which things are put on the table in order to be studied collectively. At school teachers invite everyone in the classroom to study something together. This renders all of them students: people who are equally ignorant, who are interested and attentive, who investigate and don’t cease looking to find out something new, etc. They study together: they experiment, try out, fail and begin again, play with things, assemble them, reconfigure them. The purpose of this collective effort is not economic gain or a political ideal, but a de-coding of how things operate, which Bernard Stiegler (2010) has called grammatisation. This means that at school questions about how things work are at the same time questions about how things might work differently. Studying the grammar of subject matters opens the possibility to begin anew with the world. Essential to this understanding of school is that there is a teacher involved who performs particular gestures. She points at things so as to make them into things of common interest, i.e. matters we start to care for, and – by the same token – this gesture makes these things available to all: they are made public in a particularly educational sense, which is akin to, but not identical to making public in the realm of politics.

Next to the political and the educational sphere, we finally turn, our gaze to the issue how things are made public in the digital and which practices are involved, keeping with the idea that it regards a sphere of life of its own. There is some body of scholarship (e.g. Zuboff 2019; Kosiński 2013; Thi Nguyen 2020) suggesting that today we are inhabiting a completely new ontological situation  directed at opening privacy to the public eye. Social media, cookies technologies, tracking geo-positions of smartphones, accumulating data (big data phenomena) make the private life of individuals apparent, and sometimes also publicly available (data leaks, or posting/sharing on social media). What is crucial to note is that this is not the same as the political move of elevating matters shut in the private sphere to matters of public concern. There is a huge difference here, because what is revealed does not foster freedom, equality and justice (viz. emancipation), but serves just a private, i.e. individual concern.

This has consequences on many levels. In the private sphere it leads to the simulation of the private (Baudrillard 1983) in view of the public eye. In the political sphere, we face the danger of tearing the common world apart into isolated echo chambers and epistemic bubbles (Thi Nguyen  2020). News is turned into personalised newsfeed, and as a result there are no facts anymore that are common to all– just silos. It has become increasingly difficult to have real and meaningful conversations (e.g. on the pandemic), because there is no thing in common to relate to (people in different bubbles have different sets of facts, and hence they literally live in different worlds).

This leaves us with some questions. First, can there be school in these conditions? What is the meaning of moving the school into the digital sphere? Is this really possible? Can we gather people around a thing, focus their attention, generate a common interest for it, and engage in collective study practices while being in the digital? This is: can we school the digital? [3] Or, is it the case that the digital will impose its logic every time when school is moved online? What happens in such a case? Is it possible at all to experience and to examine one common world when schooling online? Can matters of shared interest arise in digitalised school? If so – can we displace the logic of the digital by moving school online?

The above analysis suggests that it is very difficult to perform teacherly gestures that turn matter into a subject matters available to be studied by all, as it is very difficult to sustain the idea of the common world. This is so, because we have focused here on the way the digital functions today, i.e. on its actuality. However, we believe, that the infrastructure of the digital can be used in different ways, that there is a potentiality of the digital that is recognisable both in political sphere (e.g. the use of social media during the Arab Spring) and education (cf. Marin 2021; The Manifesto for Teaching Online 2020). Therefore, it might be the case that instead of a fixed form of life we should perceive the digital as a public thing itself that can be profaned, i.e. recomposed through new uses.

References:

Ali Reza Beigi, S., Lewis, T.E. (2018). Studying with the Internet: Giorgio Agamben, Education, and New Digital Technologies. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 37 (6), 553-566.

Arendt, H. (1958). The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Arendt, H. (1961). The Crisis in Education. In Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought. The Viking Press: New York

Baudrillard, J. (1983) Simulations. Transl. Paul Foss, Paul Patton, Philip Beitchman. New York: Semiotext[e]

Habermas, J., (1991 [1962]) The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Th. Burger & F. Lawrence (transl.) Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press

Kosiński, M., Stillwell, D., & Graepel, Th., (2013) Private traits and attributes are predictable from digital records of human behavior. PNAS, 110(15), 5802-5805. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1218772110

Lagerkvist, A. (2019) Digital existence: an introduction. In: Digital Existence: Ontology, Ethics and Transcendence in Digital Culture. A. Lagerkvist (ed.). London -New York: Routledge

Marin, L. (2021) On the Possibility of a Digital University. Thinking Mediatic Displacement at the University. Cham: Springer

Masschelein, J., Simons, M. (2013) In Defence of the School. A Public Issue. E-ducation Culture & Society Pub.: Leuven

Peters, J. D. (2015) The Marvelous Clouds: Towards a Philosophy of Elemental Media. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press

Proctor, D. (2019) Cybernetic animism: non-human personhood and the Internet. In: Digital Existence: Ontology, Ethics and Transcendence in Digital Culture. A. Lagerkvist (ed.). London -New York: Routledge, pp. 227-241

Sennett, R. (2002) The Fall of Public Man. London: Penguin Books

Stiegler, G. (2010) Taking Care of Youth and the Generations. Transl. S. Barker, Stanford: Standorf University Press

The Manifesto for Teaching Online (2020) Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press

Thi Nguyen, C., (2020) Echo Chambers and Epistemic Bubbles. Episteme Vol. 17 Issue 2 (June 2020) pp. 141 – 161, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2018.32  

Zuboff, Sh. (2019). The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. The fight for a human future at the new frontier of power. London: Profile Books

Abstract for the project in progress:
Since the pandemic, new “creative” technologies are increasingly employed in the university’s learning and teaching activities as innovations, this working-in-progress departs from the educator her experiences in teaching large sizes of master students (around 300 students) in accounting, during the pandemic time, to examine the term of “education” in (accounting) education for a pandemic time. What has been/can be accounted for in teaching (and learning) in the covid-19? How can we (students and I) “see” one another in this time? What forms of teaching are created and mobilised? from where are “new” practices created, with what affects and effects?
I argue for a “reclamation” of the conventional teaching practices that we may have for granted to (re)establish a connection and relationship between the teachers and the students, for instance, keeping a diary, walking, using hands, telling a (children’s literature) story, naming, taking register of students in the covid-19 time etc. But what are these conventional practices? What have been experimented in this time? This paper attempts to illustrate with my encounters with students, to reflect on and remember a time of education in special times. I speculate with certain practices, such as walking, writing a diary, meeting via Zoom using hands making crafts, etc. There are not standard methods/approaches/rules for me as an educator can follow, instead lots of cases depends on the particular circumstances we have been situated. It rather depends. Therefore, I hope to recall my own experiences in my teachings (in pandemic) as an auto-ethnographic (diary) reflection to discuss these “forms” of pedagogy, that enables the teacher herself to feel with the students in a speculative way.

Theoretical foundation: “Teacher” as a researcher-in-practice
The past two years have been the most disruptive time but also the most “creative” time in my teaching/learning of accounting in one of the UK’s universities. I found an entirely different experience of connecting with students from daily interactions. I hope to present an ongoing auto-ethnographic study of searching the “practices” (not necessarily curriculum-based activities) that enables me as a teacher to connect with students, to provide an account of the pedagogy forms that were created and experimented in the pandemic time.
This enquiry draws on an idea of “education” interpreted in Latin, as “edu-care”, to suggest a way of “leading-out”, out of the comfort zone, in submitting to the unknown encounters (Ingold, 2017). The pandemic, the covid-19 crisis has imposed great number of limitations and interruptions to human world, and so does it to the higher education. The uncertainties of the online teaching and learning during the pandemic time has caused great amount of stress and anxiety in the class I have been teaching. As Ingold argues in the “anthropology and/as education”, anthropology matters as it is a practice of attention and exposure (Ingold, 2014, p.278). I wonder, by being attentive and submissive to the uncertain circumstances what can be used to (re)stablish a sense of trust, belonging and care on an online environment?
I draw upon the concept of “practice” in practice theory as an underlying notion of the study, and particularly link this “practice” concept with the notion of “teacher” as a researcher-in-practice (Hammersley, 1993) to know what works/what does not work, in a speculative accountability (Zuiderent-Jerak, 2015). I ask, via engaging with the students, what kinds of practices in the accounting education can emerge from the pandemic situation. I further ask how this takes place and shapes me as a teacher to make sense what “matters” in an accounting education in a changing time. In this way, this enquiry does not “represent” normative good principles existing in previous pre-pandemic accounting education, but “emerge” due to a need of urgency, a need of care and a need of connection and response (Osberg et al., 2008).

Related Accounting Education studies in the pandemic time
Within accounting scholars, the most wide-range impact of the Covid-19 accounting education research is conducted by Sangster et al. (2020), which has acted promptly to the Covid-19 and used a global approach to survey educators from 45 countries to learn from their respective teaching and learning experiences. This research by far has been cited for 75 times by various educational studies. This paper provides a summary of how the Covid-19 impacts universities all over the globe in different contexts, what the issues and concerns are for accounting educators with a suggestion on future research directions and potentials. The participants’ responses in the paper provide a context knowledge of the change of the practice in the accounting education field, but it cannot provide a detailed in-depth analysis of the change of a particular education practice to examine how this happen and what consequences of the change of practices leads to. Crucially, this paper has not asked or questioned, what education means, in a Covid-19 crisis time.
Other accounting scholars have reacted by writing reflective essays proposing new research directions. For instance, Fogarty (2020) raised the question of how technology influences students’ learning and how the expectation of students as well as instructors change within the pandemic time. Powell and McGuigan (2020), based on their reflexive experiences, caution accounting scholars the risk of an overreliance on digital and virtual technologies, that can remove the richness and complexity of human interaction, connection and authenticity taking place via a face-to-face mode of learning environment. They emphasised the opportunity of embracing Covid-19 as a way of re-imagining a humane accounting education.
Recently, accounting scholars also start to propose new understanding of accounting as “relational accounting” (Arjaliès, 2020). Arjaliès (2020) reflected how the trees have taught her lesson of “naming” to establish a relationality between human and non-human beings during the pandemic time. In this paper, she proposes to embrace our courage, emotions and passions to re-imagine account(ing)s and bring humanities back to the accounting education to account for our world. This paper is educative in the way of the author reflecting on how the pandemic has changed her and her views on the discipline and the role of education in accounting and different ways to account for the world. I resonate with this relational view of accounting, and particularly take into consideration to create a scholarship inquiry to explore the practices of connecting in our learning and teaching in everyday accounting education practice. In this way, this enquiry is educative, explorative and inventive.

Methodology/Methods: an autoethnographic study
I take my own encounters as the “sites” for exploring the practices, that connect students and me, during the pandemic time, in a diary format. In particular, I focus on the following practices, keeping a diary, walking, using hands, telling a (children’s literature) story, naming, taking register of students in the covid-19-time etc, to explore the meaning of education, and the changes of “forms” in pedagogy.
(Unfinished: due to the word limits the presentation of my “diary” notes are omitted in the abstract.)

References
Arjaliès, Diane-Laure (2020). "What trees taught me about Covid-19: On relational accounting and other magic." Forthcoming in the Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal (AAAJ).
Fogarty, Timothy J (2020). "Accounting education in the post-COVID world: looking into the Mirror of Erised." Accounting Education 29(6): 563-571.
Hammersley, Martyn (1993). "On the teacher as researcher." Educational Action Research 1(3): 425-445.
Ingold, Tim (2014). "That’s enough about ethnography!" HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 4(1): 383-395.
Ingold, Tim (2017). Anthropology and/as Education, Routledge.
Osberg, Deborah; Biesta, Gert and Cilliers, Paul (2008). "From representation to emergence: Complexity's challenge to the epistemology of schooling." Educational Philosophy and Theory 40(1): 213-227.
Powell, Lisa and McGuigan, Nicholas (2020). "Teaching, virtually: a critical reflection." Accounting Research Journal.
Sangster, Alan; Stoner, Greg and Flood, Barbara (2020). "Insights into accounting education in a COVID-19 world." Accounting Education 29(5): 431-562.
Zuiderent-Jerak, Teun (2015). Situated intervention: Sociological experiments in health care, MIT Press.