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The Hatred of Public Schooling: The School as the Mark of Democracy
Educational Philosophy and Theory
Abstract
This article takes up a text that Rancière published shortly after The Ignorant School Master appeared in French, ‘École, production, égalité’[School, Production, Equality] (1988), in which he sketched the school as being preeminently the place of equality. In this vein, and opposed to the story of the school as the place where inequality is reproduced and therefore in need of reform, the article wants to recount the story of the school as the invention of a site of equality and as primordially a public space. Inspired by Rancière, we indicate first how the actual (international and national) policy story about the school and the organizational technologies that accompany it install and legitimate profound inequalities, which consequently can no longer be questioned (and become ‘invisible’). Second, the article recasts and rethinks different manifestations of equality and of ‘public-ness’ in school education and, finally, indicates various ways in which these manifestations are neutralized or immunized in actual discourses and educational technologies.
... In dieser Maxime deuten sich schließlich einerseits wichtige Impulse für die Theorie politischer Bildung an, die sich zwischen pädagogisch-politischen Unterbrechungen sinnlicher Ordnungen (Friedrichs, 2017) und praktizierend-übender "practice of equality" (Ruitenberg, 2015, S. 1) bewegen. Andererseits aber eröffnet sich hier -basierend auf Rancières (1988) eigenen Nuancierungen zur schulisch-institutionalisierten Form dieser Maxime -auch die Möglichkeit, auf die egalisierende, raum-zeitliche Struktur der Schule (Masschelein & Simons, 2010) bzw. auf Schule als Ort radikaler Gleichheit (Balzer et al., 2024) aufmerksam zu werden. ...
Ungeachtet dessen, wie gravierend genau wir die Lage hinsichtlich der planetaren Katastrophe mit Bezug auf naturwissenschaftliche Prognosen einschätzen mögen, die gegenwärtige Sorge um die Zukunft der jüngeren Generation ist ein pädagogisches Problem ersten Ranges. Dieser Beitrag greift diese Problemlage auf, um im Sinne einer pädagogischen Theoriebildung einerseits das Spannungsfeld zwischen der durch die jüngere Generation verkörperten und zur Sprache gebrachten Zukunft und des nicht nur ungewissen, sondern sogar gefährdeten zukünftigen Lebens zu reflektieren. Andererseits erörtert der Beitrag aus Anlass sozio-ökologischer Herausforderungen der Pädagogik aber über diesen Kontext hinaus allgemeinpädagogisch, inwiefern es für Erziehung und Bildung integral ist, dass Kinder und Jugendliche den Gedanken an die eigene Zukünftigkeit wagen.
... Desde la perspectiva de la ontología (es decir de lo que que la escuela es), la literatura filosófica (Galioto, 2019;Masschelein, 2011aMasschelein, , 2011bMasschelein & Simons, 2010 nos plantea respuestas desafiantes que iluminan aspectos que las políticas educativas que usan el concepto de calidad toman escasamente en cuenta. Masschelein y Simons (2014) y Masschelein (2011a, 2011b argumentan que la escuela es el lugar del otium (Scholé). ...
... This chapter is located within a broader critique directed at both institutional democracy and how young people become positioned in educational sciences. The critique towards institutional democracy argues that it focusses on producing its own legitimacy rather than equitable democratic participation and aims to control participation rather than enable it (Kestilä-Kekkonen & Korvela, 2017, p. 12;Masschelein & Simons, 2010). Such critique also points out that it has been common to attempt to increase democratic participation of young people by teaching them about democratic competences and institutional democracy (Kiilakoski et al., 2020) rather than enhancing and enabling critical discussion on societal issues (Thornberg & Elvstrand, 2012). ...
... For a detailed elaboration of this perspective on the school, seeMasschelein & Simons (2010, andSimons & Masschelein (2015). ...
... views. On the one hand, embedding such a knowledge hierarchy in the game design might seem 27 problematic from a public pedagogy perspective (Masschelein and Simons, 2010;Wildemeersch, 28 2017). On the other hand, this provides an opportunity for the players to cross the knowledge 29 boundary between them and the game designers and engage in negotiation, contestation and 30 modification of proposed knowledge and views (Engestrom et al., 1995). ...
Effective disaster risk reduction (DRR) presupposes awareness among key stakeholders on the causal factors that exacerbate disaster risks as well as a feeling of ownership over proposed DRR measures. Yet, the prevailing top-down communication of risk and the expert-centered knowledge have a limited impact in bringing significant positive change. Serious games respond to the need for a community-based DRR approach as they encourage a collective recognition of societal issues and co-learning at the different levels of the DRR governance system. However, there is still a gap in understanding how serious games facilitate co-creation of knowledge. In this article, we introduce DisCoord, a serious game first implemented in the landslide- and flood-prone Rwenzori mountains in South-West Uganda. Designed as a public pedagogy tool, Discoord bridges diverse views and sets of knowledge of DRR stakeholders separated by spatial and socio-cultural domains. Secondly, through a qualitative analysis of the dialogues, narratives and observation notes during the actual game session and debriefings, we explored the factors and processes that influence knowledge co-creation. Three different knowledge actors are involved in the co-creation process, namely the game designers, game facilitators and players.. These actors have diverse pre-game views, which are expressed through the game rules, arguments, game strategies, and game outcomes, and are confronted within the public space provided by the game. We find that crises experienced during the game, real-life based arguments provided by the players and own interpretations by the players are key factors in the co-creation process. This study leads us to conclude that games like DisCoord are useful as public pedagogy intervention as they bring different forms of knowledge together in a public space and facilitate co-learning. This paper also contends that countering a top-down approach of risk communication using a public pedagogy approach requires an openness towards the unpredictable, de-centered DRR, and plural co-learning outcomes.
... Rancière (1999, 99) defines both democratic politics and education in an unconventional way as forms of action that 'disrupt' the prevailing inegalitarian social and political order. Accordingly, the significance of Rancière's philosophy is often associated with its ability to provide conceptualisations of political resistance and emancipatory education (Biesta 2009(Biesta , 2010a(Biesta , 2010b(Biesta , 2011Bingham and Biesta 2010;Friedrich, Jaastad, and Popkewitz 2010;Masschelein and Simons 2010;Säfström 2010). One of the most visible proponents of Rancièrian thinking in the philosophy of education is Gert Biesta who has discussed the relevance of Rancière's philosophy to democracy and education in several of his publications (Biesta 2007(Biesta , 2009(Biesta , 2010a(Biesta , 2010b(Biesta , 2011Bingham and Biesta 2010). ...
Gert Biesta criticises deliberative models of democracy and education for being based on an understanding of democracy as a ‘normal’ order, which involves certain ‘entry conditions’ for democratic participation. As an alternative, Biesta introduces the idea of democracy as ‘disruption’ and the associated subjectification conception of education both of which he draws from the work of Jacques Rancière. This paper challenges Biesta’s critique of deliberative democracy by demonstrating that the ‘entry conditions’ for deliberation serve an important normative function. It is also suggested that Biesta’s critique dismisses some important dimensions of the deliberative model. The paper further contests Biesta’s conceptions of democracy and education by arguing, first, that his position involves certain contradictions that are problematic especially from a normative perspective. Second, the paper argues that Biesta’s conceptions of democracy and education might result in dismissing crucially important questions concerning the long-term evaluation and improvement of democratic and educational institutions.
... In these and other senses, Human Science Pedagogy provides the basis for a coherent alternative to what could be called the two dominant English-language discourses in education: On the one hand, a critique of educational practices and policies as intrinsically 'oppressive,' and on the other, their reduction to the instrumentalities of psychology and sociological administration. Human Science Pedagogy focuses on practical pedagogical themes of ongoing relevance in English-and Germanlanguage scholarship today, including pedagogical tact (e.g., Burghardt & Zirfas, 2019; van Manen, 2015), the pedagogical relation (e.g., Friesen, 2017;Kreis, 2018), (auto)biography as a kind of path of becoming or currere (e.g., Krüger & Marotzki, 2014;Pinar, 2019), 4 the singular nature of the school and classroom (e.g., Brinkmann, 2017;Masschelein & Simons, 2012), questions of 'philosophical' or 'pedagogical anthropology' (e.g., Wulf & Zirfas, 2014) 5 and existential aspects of education (e.g., English, 2013;Wehner, 2002). Finally, as Biesta notes, 'perhaps the most important point' to be made about Human Science Pedagogy is that it 'established the discipline' of education 'as what we might call an interested discipline[: one] organized around a certain normative interest' or intention-specifically that of 'the emancipation of the child,' or more broadly, his or her present and future well-being (Biesta, 2015b, p. 15). ...
Human Science Pedagogy is ‘a strange case,’ as Jürgen Oelkers has recently noted: In the Anglophone world, where Gert Biesta has compellingly encouraged scholars to ‘reconsider education as a Geisteswissenschaft’ (a human science) its main themes and the contributions of its central figures remain unknown. For Germans, particularly in more ‘general’ or philosophical areas of educational scholarship (i.e. Allgemeine Pädagogik), this same pedagogy is recognized only insofar as it is critiqued and rejected. Taking this strange situation as its frame, this paper introduces Human Science Pedagogy to English-language readers, providing a cursory overview of its history and principal contributors, while suggesting the contemporary relevance of its themes and questions in both English- and German-language scholarship. This paper concludes with an appeal to readers on both sides of the Atlantic to new or renewed consideration of this pedagogy as a significant and influential source for educational thinking deserving further scholarly attention.
... It is the school as a space of deferment and suspension, a moratorium. This image of the school fits quite well with one of the original meanings of the Greek word schole, which is leisure or free time, which we should not see as time where you can do what you want so much as time that is not determined by particular demands, particularly not the demands of society (see also Masschelein & Simons, 2010). To say that this puts the school in a very interesting position is also to say that I do not think that in the global networked society we can do without the school. ...
... A good illustration of this, as we indicated in the introduction to this book, is offered by the many versions of critical and emancipatory pedagogy that see education as an instrument for bringing about a more just, tolerant, and equal society (e.g. Masschelein and Simons's (2010) suggestion that from its very origin in the Greek city state the school was perceived as a danger, i.e. as a threat to society. Youngsters, separated from the sphere of the home, were given an opportunity to develop a profound interest in things they were not destined for, and to excel in them (Cf. ...
In this chapter we return to the phenomenon of education as a broader issue. We show that education can be conceived of either in an immanent or in a transcendent way. We take our inspiration here from Agamben’s classification of philosophies of life according to these two categories. More exactly, we show that a transcendent account of education is dominant today. Against this, we call for a fully immanent view. Whereas transcendence comes down to the search for an external ground for and/or justification of education, immanence refers to an autotelic idea of education, i.e. that education is meaningful in and of itself. It is an intrinsically worthwhile endeavour, in so far as it testifies to a love for the world and brings about the possibility of a transformation in our individual and collective lives, in the here and now. We also discuss the pitfalls of a transcendent approach to education, by analysing what a functionalization, politicization and moralization of education entails.
... A good illustration of this, as we indicated in the introduction to this book, is offered by the many versions of critical and emancipatory pedagogy that see education as an instrument for bringing about a more just, tolerant, and equal society (e.g. Masschelein and Simons's (2010) suggestion that from its very origin in the Greek city state the school was perceived as a danger, i.e. as a threat to society. Youngsters, separated from the sphere of the home, were given an opportunity to develop a profound interest in things they were not destined for, and to excel in them (Cf. ...
This chapter forms the basis of the argument developed in this book. It concerns an exercise in thought which consequentially works out some of the claims and divisions Arendt introduced in her seminal text on The Crisis in Education, viz. that education has an essence, that it exists for its own sake and that it should be carefully distinguished from other spheres of life. Drawing from Mollenhauer and Masschelein’s and Simons’s account of the school as a unique and contingent arrangement, we argue that education can be conceived, essentially, in terms of love for the world which demands that representatives of the existing generation draw attention to this world, and hence pass it on, but in such a way that newcomers can transform this world. Taking such a view, it becomes possible to transcend the sterile opposition between student- and teacher-centred approaches. Instead, we call, with Arendt, for a thing-centered approach.
... • schools can reduce ethnic tensions by bringing different students together, teaching politics/history/sociology as well as practices of respect, recognition and difference (Reid and Thomson, 2003) • through their civic practices, schools can produce a more democratic polity. Democracy is made and remade through dialogue with and accountability to school communities (Masschelein and Simons, 2010) • schools can be significant in local place-making (Gruenewald and Smith, 2008) and the production of social bonds (Gradstein and Justman, 2000). ...
Academy status can create the opportunity to free the best heads and teachers to innovate, to raise the bar and to do what it takes to compete with the best schools, not just in England, but across the world. For the leaders and teachers in academies across England, this is an opportunity to improve standards and improve the life chances of our most vulnerable learners. (Department for Education, 2016) Since the Blair government came to power, the government has argued that academisation is the way to achieve success in schools serving disadvantaged students. The core rationale for the education reform agenda in England since the 1980s has depended on an ongoing rhetoric of crisis – falling standards, overseas comparisons (Francis, 2015). A causal connection is made between structural change and raising aspirations, broadening opportunities and raising standards in disadvantaged communities (Purcell, 2011). The elements of educational reform in England are well known and I will not repeat them at length here. Inter alia, they rest on the creation of a marketised school system, contracting out of a range of services, and the introduction of new forms of regulation through a quality framework which requires a specified curriculum, targets and standards, and regular monitoring and assessment of students, teachers and schools (Ball, 2008). The first round of structural reform in the 80s involved devolving budgets and responsibility for staffing, building and equipment to the school – commonly called devolution, school self-management or school autonomy. The stultifying workings of central and local bureaucracies was loosened so that heads and schools were 'free' to act. The second round of structural reform has centred on the creation of new types of schools. Academisation set its sights on removing the apparently dead hand of the LA. The crisis problematisation and resulting structurally-driven policy agenda can be understood as an attempt to stimulate supply-side innovation and responsiveness (Walford, 2014) and to unleash professional judgement and local improvement strategies. However, accountability and audit measures such as the core national curriculum, testing, exams and inspections, and league tables all work to dampen both innovation and professionalism. Conservatism in provision is more the order of contemporary English schooling; school uniform, behaviour codes, a narrow range of pedagogical approaches. A preference for uncontroversial curriculum topics and organisations are the norm (Jones and Thomson, 2008).
The book we introduce in this first chapter is not about tinkering, improving, or reforming education but clearing away the detritus of the school and using the space created to float, discuss, and explore some ideas for doing education differently. We invite you, as a reader, to think with us, against, beyond, and without the school and its paraphernalia. To think about ‘education’, rather than schooling, and what kind of education is relevant to and needed now in the complex, difficult, and dangerous world we live in. A world of poly-crisis, specifically, a context created by the intertwining and interrelations of neoliberalism and the climate crisis—as what we call the ethics of extinction. That invitation means testing our limits, questioning and changing ourselves and thinking about the practice of education differently. This is an ‘experience‐book’ and an ‘experiment-book’ rather than a ‘truth‐book’ or ‘demonstration‐book’. For Foucault, an ‘experience book’ is a book which transforms our experience by acting on us in a direct and unsettling way (See O’Leary, T. Foucault and Fiction: The Experience Book. Continuum, 2009). We have tried to write a book that intends to ‘think otherwise’ about education and to explore possibilities that are foreign to our comfortable, familiar, commonplace ways of thinking and acting, and beyond the tyranny of alternatives.
This chapter brings together work not only in the field-dependent disciplines like Cultural Studies, Food Studies, Performance Studies, Teacher Education, and Urban Studies, but also publications in the areas of Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, and Medicine to provide insights into the interconnection between space, disciplines, and Critical Pedagogies.
In this article, I argue that the neoliberal order and its close link to the notion of educationalisation make education-and public schools more specifically-an instrument for political problem-solving and labour market agendas; this, then, makes it difficult for educators to act like public intellectuals with the freedom to create spaces in which one can think, talk and act in ways that are not framed by dominant and instrumental policy. Inspired by Rancière's and Mouffe's political work, psychoanalytical thinking and by means of educational examples that stem from (trans)national policy documents (one from the OECD and two from the Danish Government), I describe and analyse how the neoliberal order, including the notion of educationalisation, frames today's education and can prevent democratic engagements from being a part of Danish public schools. One of the reasons is the strong focus on producing a productive and skilled labour force that successfully secure national economic growth and deliver what the neoliberal labour market desires. This focus contradicts both educators' and students' intellectual freedom on a daily basis, which is (still) regarded as vital to supporting education in general and in public schools in particular. Failure seems inevitable. However, failure can be a success for democracy, meaning that some 'failures' must be embraced because they are a condition for a living and flourishing democracy.
This paper examines how public education can ensure equity and diversity by clarifying the “democratic aspects” that can be captured through school-community collaborative activities in Japan and the U.S. As a result of comparison and analysis, it is indicated that in both Japan and the U.S., these activities are conducted in the context of streamlining educational administration. In addition, the participation in school management of diverse people such as local residents, parents, and children is promoted in order to grasp their needs and achieve deliberation on an equal footing. In contrast to Japan, however, these activities in the U.S. put importance on providing health and educational services to disadvantaged families and children. Furthermore, they aim to change not only schools but also communities. Therefore, this paper suggests that “democratic aspects” encompassed by collaborative activities have multiple layers: (1) “compensatory-type” (status-quo satisfaction -oriented democratic aspects), (2) “participatory-type” (deliberation-oriented democratic aspects), and (3) “transformative-type” (status-quo change-oriented democratic aspects). In order to guarantee equity of education that ensures fairness and inclusion to all children, this paper clarifies the importance of having both activities that distribute educational and welfare services on a curve to disadvantaged children and families (compensatory-type) and activities that involve children themselves in the practice, leading to the transformation and creation of the world (participatory and transformative type). The types of activities described above do not necessarily set the transformative-type as the ultimate goal. The three types interact together and pave the way toward a democratic and equitable education that is open to all and respects the voices of minorities.
In this paper we want to rethink the educational significance of the novel – and particularly of novel-reading – from the perspective of a ‘meta-novelistic’ reading of Don Quixote, often acclaimed as the “first modern novel”. Our point of departure is double: on the one hand, there is the controversial contemporary phenomenon of “de-reading”, and all the educational discussions which it entails; on the other hand, there is the existing tradition of literary education, which, from different angles, has already extensively reflected upon the (moral, epistemological, ontological) relation between novel-reading, education and subjectification, but which also sometimes seems to have exhausted its means for doing so. To problematize this double starting point in a new way, we propose to revisit the ‘origins’ of the novel and novel-reading, at the dawn of modernity. By exploring the differences between the narratives of subjectification represented by the Cartesian cogito and Cervantes’ Don Quixote, which were near-contemporaries, we try to argue for an educational-philosophical rehabilitation of the latter, if not against then at least beyond the former. In a first movement, and in dialogue with novelists Milan Kundera and Carlos Fuentes, we do so by focusing on the novel as a particular form, or ‘configuration’, of knowledge – one that is by nature experimental and pluralist. In a second movement, we link this to Jean Baudrillard’s famous distinction between “simulation” and “illusion”, claiming that novel-reading qua subjectification always involves a Quixotic practice of adventurous, ‘playful’ and public negotiation between reality and its more or less ‘illusory’ alternatives.
What kind of education is needed for democracy? How can education respond to the challenges that current democracies face? This unprecedented Handbook offers a comprehensive overview of the most important ideas, issues, and thinkers within democratic education. Its thirty chapters are written by leading experts in the field in an accessible format. Its breadth of purpose and depth of analysis will appeal to both researchers and practitioners in education and politics. The Handbook addresses not only the historical roots and philosophical foundations of democratic education, but also engages with contemporary political issues and key challenges to the project of democratic education.
Children have always been an essential part of politics. However, the political struggles in which children are involved are rarely, if at all, for the equality of children as such. Struggles for the benefit of children are nearly always led by adults, focusing on children’s rights in an adult-dominated world. In this paper, I develop the possibility of Children’s political struggle for equality, informed by the political philosophy of Jacque Rancière. I present the educational backdrop for Rancière’s claim that all intelligences are equal, and argue that it implies that children are by nature equal to adults, hence also equally capable of political action. By demonstrating that children are a “part of those who have no part” in the existing sociopolitical order, I examine the possibility of a collective political subject of children, and articulate the implications child politics may have.
This chapter discusses how Rancière’s writing has been taken up in educational philosophy and theory, identifying three important themes in this literature: theories of emancipatory education, theories of democratic and citizenship education, and discussions of the role of public schools in democratic societies. The problems associated with developing theories of education from Rancière’s writing are addressed, along with the problem of an overly pedagogic reading of The Ignorant Schoolmaster in educational philosophy and theory. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the significance of such interpretations of Rancière’s writing in educational philosophy and theory, before offering a brief reflection on their implications for further theoretical work translating Rancière’s writing to education.KeywordsEmancipatory educationDemocratic educationPublic role of schoolsBiesta
This chapter offers a summary of the main themes of the book. It reiterates some of Rancière’s most important contributions—including his radically disruptive view of democracy, his view of the indeterminate relationship between art and politics, and his individual rather than societal view of emancipation, which all present important challenges for education. Central themes in the uptake of Rancière’s writing in education are also summarised and evaluated, along with some major criticisms of his work. A central argument of the book (that a misplaced desire to reconstruct an educational or political project from Rancière’s writing has hampered other engagements with his work) is reiterated. The chapter concludes by discussing some of the limitations of the book, as well as its contribution.KeywordsContributionsLimitationsChallenges
The introductory chapter starts by referring to three topical examples of transformations in higher education that can be observed from a geopolitical perspective and, thus, provide a thematic entry point for the theme of the Volume: how at various levels – supranational, national, local, but also at the level of the firms or individuals – a premium has been placed on knowledge and knowledge generation activities and have been made centerpiece in imaginations of the future, in social, political and economic terms. Innovation, science capacity and education – representing the main missions of Higher Education – thus are reckoned key to succeeding in global economic competition. The Introduction discusses a geopolitical perspective on the transformations in higher education adopted in the chapters collected in this book, also relating the topic to adjacent debates in higher education research. Finally, the introduction provides a brief overview over the chapters of the book.
The chapter argues that higher education is now part of a New geopolitics of knowledge that refers to the integration of higher education in the imaginations and calculations of different actors aiming at asserting and/or improving their positions in the global knowledge-based economy. This integration, the chapter argues, not only prompts a (re-)imagination of the future of HE in terms of serving knowledge-intensive capitalism, but also reshapes and transforms HE missions and infrastructures. The chapter starts by, first, introducing a geopolitical perspective that, it is argued, can help us understand and deliberate on the implications of current developments shaping higher education. Here the theme of geopolitics is unfolded and two different strands of the debate about a (new) geopolitics of knowledge discussed that offer a conceptual perspective for assessing the relevance and implications of current developments. Second, in taking a global perspective, the chapter presents two distinct sets of contexts that shape contemporary transformations in higher education. To start with, the integration of higher education in global regionalism projects is examined in terms of the relevance of these policy contexts as a background for developments in the field; in what follows, we look into the emerging Global Education Industry that also serves as an influential shaper of higher education transformations. In a third section, the chapter discusses examples of how current transformations in higher education can be better grasped by adopting a geopolitical lens. The section considers the creation of international education hubs by states aspiring to improve their position in global economic circuits; and it discusses the placelessness of the (imagined) future of higher education by examining a current project that aims at disrupting the future of higher education: the Minerva Project.
This chapter discusses the transformation of higher education with respect to universities’ attempt to compete for the best students. The imperative of mobilization and optimization within higher education begins even before enrolment on the course of study when universities engage in the expectation management of potential students. Our main thesis is that this expectation management is increasingly supplemented by quantification, which brings the possibility of predicting student success. Accordingly, the governmental subjectification of the ‘promising student’ is provided by data and is an omnipresent discourse for prospective students. In the first part of the chapter, we delineate how competitiveness has evolved in the area of teaching and study in the university. In the second section, we refer to study choice instruments that have become an important instrument in Germany to manage the expectations of prospective students. In the subsequent sections, we demonstrate the interrelation of competitiveness, datafication and subjectivity. However, we also reflect on the educational challenges that result from this interrelation and what it means for ‘study culture’ and higher education in general.KeywordsHigher educationStudent successCompetitionOnline self-assessmentSubject-formationCritique
Review for Maria Chalari's book: Crisis, Austerity, and New
Frameworks for Teaching and Learning. A Pedagogy of Hope for
Contemporary Greek Education.
JCEPS Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies
This chapter describes inclusive and exclusionary practices concerning children’s voices. These practices were reconstructed based on the experiences of Polish student teachers who have completed their professional training in preschools. Qualitative methods were used for data collection and analysis. The aim of this chapter is to analyse the reconstructed inclusive and exclusionary practices through Jacques Rancière’s prism of the distribution of the sensible. This category allows for the evaluation of different ways of expressing voice. In the dominant school discourse, voices can be defined as significant (usually it is the teacher’s voice) and as clatter or chatter (often the child’s voice is perceived this way). Such a division is typical for educational institutions but hidden under the veil of political correctness and teachers’ assurances that they respect children’s rights to freedom of speech and opinion. Being aware of this division, especially by future teachers, is important for the implementation of the ‘aims of education’ and children’s rights culture in educational institutions.
In this paper, the argument that we make is that public education emerges from when democracy is put into practice in education. For the purposes of this paper we use pedagogic rights as proposed by Basil Bernstein as a way to frame and support this ‘putting into practice’. Democracy, we argue, has to be practiced in two senses: 1) it does not ‘exist’ but has to be continually renewed and brought to life between people, as such it is precarious and fleeting; 2) one might become better at democracy by trying to ‘do it’ more often and that education is where this ‘trying’ might occur. We draw on Rancière’s work on democracy that focusses on democratic acts or moments; on the ‘fracturing’ of sense (what is sayable, seeable, thinkable) – when people whose only part (including in education) is none, take one. A process of ‘becoming public’, we suggest, is instituted in these events. To this end, our proposal for public education is adversarial to contemporary formations of education. Conceptualising public education in this way shows that it is rare, and becoming rarer.
In this chapter, I argue that the notion of thinking can shed new light on Rancière’s conception of emancipatory education, as well as on the relation between education and politics in his thought. I show that thinking opens the dimensions of plurality and singularity in Rancière’s politics, thereby playing a crucial role in the formation of political subjects. By thinking about thinking in Rancière, I demonstrate that universal teaching – understood as a unique kind of education for thinking – may indeed be political, and politics contains a necessary aspect of education for thinking. I start by analyzing the importance of thinking for universal teaching. I argue that while stultifying education aims at confining thought to a single model, universal teaching emancipates thought and acknowledges a plurality of ways of thinking. Next, I argue that thinking plays an important role in Rancière’s democratic politics, especially in the formation of collective political subjects out of a plurality of individuals. Finally, I show that the formation of such political subjects involves educational activities that can also be seen as education for thinking, and that this educational aspect makes it possible to understand how political subjects can reproduce and generate each other.
Architectural theory – the collection of theoretical approaches by which the aesthetic, technological and societal challenges of architecture are defined and challenged – has only recently come to define itself as a field that is to play a major role in the education of future architects. This study explores the formation of architectural theory as an academic discipline in the second half of the 20th century. It focuses on Belgium, and more specifically its northern part Flanders as an excavation site. This field is not scanned or mapped in its totality, but rather explored by making deep drills into the educational landscape. In doing so, this study reveals a specific culture of architectural education, which drastically transformed in the period between the 1960s and 1990s. Rather than studying the publications or written accounts produced by canonised historical figures, this contemporary past is examined through the lens of four architect-educators or ‘gatekeepers’ who produced, adapted and contested new ideas on architecture in the studio and the classroom.
In this study, one methodological challenge supersedes all others: how to respond to the ‘haunting silence’ of the teacher’s work in historical documents and consequently, to the inaccessibility of past classrooms? To cope with these challenges, the study relies on the notion of ‘the materi- alities of schooling’ which was advanced by scholars in the fields of Visual Studies and Educational History. Hence, it asks how, in addition to more conventional oral and the textual materials, objects such as diagrams, paintings, maps and thumbed manuscripts circulate meaning visually. As a result, images and objects function as gateways into the black box of the classroom and into past schooling practices. These objects are bound together by illustrative actions or gestures of the gatekeepers under study.
Each chapter in this study addresses three main questions. Firstly, they look into the ‘means’ by which architectural knowledge or theoretical insights were disseminated to a student public. Which visual tactics and gestures the gatekeepers used to generate, launch, contest or disseminate new ideas? Secondly, this focus on the means of theory shines light on the different discourses and theoretical paradigms that were introduced in the classroom or the studio. A last question then addresses the institutional agenda of all figures. Was the implementation of theory in the curriculum a strategic move? And, how did theory support broader institutional directions? These three interconnected lines of enquiry offer a more nuanced and situated account of architectures different ‘intellec- tions’ in our period of study.
The first chapter looks at the lit- tle-known educational project initiated by Belgium’s acclaimed socialist and modernist architect Renaat Braem, (1910–2001) who taught at the Antwerp National Higher Institute for Architecture and Urban Planning (NHIBS) from 1947 till 1975. When Braem was appointed interim director in 1962, his first action was not to change the curriculum but to reconstruct the physical configuration of the school. By adding an eye-catching staircase painting, he accentuated an important passage in the school building. Claiming a central position in the institute, the staircase functioned as a stage and an auditorium on which an ideological and educational program was enacted in an implicit, yet very physical manner. This staircase provides the basis for a historical reconsideration of Bream’s ideologi- cally inspired body of work.
Paul Felix (1919–1981), a Catholic architect-educator, who was affiliated to the KU Leuven from 1952 till 1979, is our second gatekeeper. This chapter neither focuses
on his pioneering modernist architectural designs, nor on his limited published work, but studies his day-to-day work of reading, teaching and reforming. The latter remains
a relatively untapped and yet immediate
context in intellectual history. By developing a textual exegesis of a thumbed key text of Felix’ course, the 1968 text La fonction et le signe written by the Italian thinker Umberto Eco (1932–2016), this chapter redirects the predominant focus on canonical texts of architectural theory to the work of those actors who were not foremost producing, but consuming theory.
A third protagonist is Alfons Hoppen- brouwers (1930–2001), a flamboyant friar
and educator who was associated with the Sint-Lucas Institute in Schaerbeek from 1957 till his death in 2001. This chapter takes as its starting point the abstract painting series that Hoppenbrouwers produced at the end of the 1990s and carried into the theory classroom. It writes a ‘social biography’ of these paintings by tracing them back to their three sites of production: the street, the studio in a Catholic brothers’ house and the theory classroom
in the Sint-Lucas Institute for Architecture
in Brussels. Following this trajectory reveals Hoppenbrouwers’ multi-layered educational project. His paintings were pedagogical vehicles through which he taught his students not only how to perceptually understand space, but foremost how to read architectural history.
The last chapter then looks at the pedagogical experiments of Koen Deprez (*1961) at the Sint-Lucas Institute in the course of the 1980s and 90s. This chapter traces
how a military logic of strategy and tactics infiltrated Deprez’s architectural design pedagogy. Central to this investigation is a burned map, which functioned as a pedagogic tool for Deprez. This chapter looks at how
a military exercise, once transported to
an educational context, became a tool for promoting a user-oriented design practice.
It will look at how Deprez developed design tactics that blended military theory with Situationist ideas, and, how this was part and parcel of a pedagogical mindset cultivated at the Sint-Lucas Institute.
Der Beitrag wirft – über eine Bezugnahme auf Rancière – eine systematische Perspektive auf die Rolle des Streits für Theorien der Erziehung. Hilbrich und Ricken konstatieren zunächst in den ins Deutsche übersetzten Werken Rancières eine gewisse abwertende Haltung gegenüber der Pädagogik. Beiden geht es aber weniger darum, Rancière aufgrund dessen zu kritisieren. Vielmehr fragen sich Hilbrich und Ricken, wie es zu dieser Haltung kommt, wobei sie zu dem Schluss gelangen, dass es die zentrale Rolle des Begriffs des Streites in der Rancière’schen Perspektive ist, die ihn zu diesem impliziten Urteil führt. Den Autoren geht es darum, mit Rancière eine streittheoretische Optik auf Pädagogik zu entwickeln, die hierbei als eine Ordnung von ‚Brüchen‘ – als dissensuelle Ordnung – gedacht wird. Durch eine Kontrastierung dieser bei Rancière entwickelten Figur des Streits mit dem Honneth’schen Begriff des Kampfes, versuchen sie, jenen Begriff des Streits an den pädagogischen Diskurs um Anerkennung anschlussfähig zu machen. Unter Referenz auf Schleiermachers Begriff der ‚Selbsttätigkeit‘ arbeiten sie schließlich am Ende ihres Textes das Spezifische eines pädagogischen Streitbegriffs heraus.
Unter Bezugnahme auf den bisher nur auf Französisch erschienenen Text Rancières ‚École, production, égalite‘ (1988), versuchen die Autoren den häufig anzutreffenden Eindruck zu korrigieren, dass mit dem ‚unwissenden Lehrmeister‘ die Schule als solche, als institutionelle Form grundsätzlich infrage gestellt werde. Im fokussierten Text argumentiert Rancière für ein Verständnis der schulischen Form als eines Freiraums, in dem weder die Herkunft noch andere Merkmale der Schüler*innen eine Rolle spielen und der gleichzeitig von gesellschaftlichen oder ökonomischen Erfordernissen und Zielvorgaben entkoppelt ist. In dieser scholastischen Fabel bildet die Schule einen Raum, der per se mit anderen gesellschaftlichen Zugehörigkeiten bricht und so ein Spiel des Lernens (einen ‚espace de jeu‘) ermöglicht, in dem unter gleichen Voraussetzungen und in einer geteilten Gemeinschaft, Handlungsfähigkeiten erworben werden, die keiner vorgegebenen Ordnung entsprechen müssen. Jene Fabel erzählt davon, dass hier jeder grundsätzlich alles lernen kann. Für die Autoren bildet diese Form der Erzählung einen Bezugspunkt, um die mit den industriellen Revolutionen einsetzende funktionale Ausrichtung schulischer Lernprozesse zu kritisieren.
This paper aims at contributing to new ways of thinking about democratic education. We discuss how revisiting this concept may help raise fresh questions in relation to non-formal fora grappling with intricate sustainability issues that span international borders. Starting from Rancière’s ideas on democracy, we first examine a conception of democratic education derived from these ideas. Next, we turn to a complexity informed notion of education as proposed by the two strands of emergence and enaction. We discuss how, in introducing additional dimensions, these strands might fruitfully complement the Rancierian conception of education. We conclude our discussion by proposing to reposition democratic education as a process of (co)-emergence afforded by a series of critical moments which, we suggest, can call forth radically novel visions for governing the commons.
The public character of school is being recently put into question more often. I examine the title question in three different aspects (juridical, institutional and performative), each of which is linked with some disturbing transformations of public schools (privatization of the public, re-feudalization, commodification of education). By virtue of such an analysis and with reference to the research on the essence of the public I make an attempt at formulation the key meanings of the public character of school.
In our experience, education students at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, and those becoming and/or developing as teachers in education settings, often struggle to see the value of theory. Whilst this might be partly a product of political changes to education, it can also be attributed to a lack of options about how to put theory to work as an active strategy for influencing thinking and practice. We hope this book offers some possibilities.
This book takes its title from Zizek’s call to ‘do theory’ (see Butler, 2006) on the ‘examined life’. Education students will be at the centre of the process of making clear why theory is important and how it can be used, firstly to make arguments about educational debates more convincing, and secondly to bring more critical charge to the practice of teaching.
Zizek is also well known for using film and other popular culture texts as examples of how theoretical ideas play out in our everyday lives. This book is different to other publications for students of education and emerging teachers because we use media and pop culture texts in every chapter to help us explore the issues and debates around education. We do this in two ways – 1) by looking at the direct representation of education in popular culture and 2) by looking at how ‘ideology’ in media and pop culture relates to ideas about education.
An Fortbildungen in der Frühpädagogik lässt sich gut untersuchen, wie Gesichtspunkte pädagogischer Wirksamkeit und Steuerungshoffnungen behandelt werden; denn diese stellen einen wichtigen Ort für das Veränderungssprechen frühpädagogischer Praxis dar. Dies gilt insbesondere vor dem Hintergrund des politisch und öffentlich forcierten Ausbaus der Kindertagesbetreuung wie auch den jüngsten Debatten um Verwissenschaftlichung. Ausgehend von einer Sichtung der Ambivalenzen der Frühpädagogik gegenüber Formen Neuer Steuerung und New Public Management arbeitet die Studie an ethnographischen Feldprotokollen Formen und Figuren von Wirksamkeit in frühpädagogischen Fortbildungen heraus. Als zentral erweist sich die zunehmende Aufforderung zu Legitimation und Wirksamkeit, die nicht zuletzt aus dem Anspruch einer offenen und überholbaren pädagogischen Praxis resultiert.
This chapter maps key ideas and pedagogies for worldly orientations to internationalising education. In doing so, it develops insights into non-Western Higher Degree Researchers (HDRs) as intellectual agents through exploring practices of trans-linguistic divergence. Evidence relating to the generation of trans-linguistic divergence, made possible by introducing concepts from languages othered by English, is analysed.
Monolingual literacy theory (MLT), and its associated politics and practices, claims to act against inequality in the name of social justice. However, the literature suggests that MLT has no capacity for imagining multilingual communities. Research indicates that Anglophone, Western-centric education portrays MLT as the only legitimate vehicle for internationalising education, and monolingual, white, middle-class, native speakers as its only legitimate owners. Here it is important to point out that native-speaker MLT has prohibitive, if not damaging effects, stamping a price on ‘NESB’ (non-English background speaking) students, rendering them second class or worse.
In contrast, we argue trans-linguistic divergences provide intellectual resources for pursuing worldly orientations to internationalising education. Trans-linguistic divergences among the intellectual cultures and languages of non-Western HDRs open up the scope of what is thinkable—for theorising or meaning-making. Taking ‘trans-linguistic divergences’ as the standpoint means opening up intellectual cultures to generating innovative possibilities for new pedagogies, disciplinary change, and perhaps even responsive and responsible international education policies. We point to historical research as evidence that knowledge has been borrowed and blended across a vast array of diverse intellectual cultures. This historical research can inform pedagogies for effecting knowledge exchange and co-production through the internationalisation of education, especially the research education of non-Western HDRs.
Thus, we provide some insights into pedagogies of trans-linguistic divergence. The cultural-linguistic variances between English and non-Western languages are such that the categories suggested by the concepts, metaphors and images from these languages open up divergent possibilities for theorising and critique. HDRs who combine the heterogeneous theoretic-linguistic resources from their linguistic repertoire can test and attest to the theoretic-linguistic divergence made possible by bringing them together. In doing so, they create a collage, a variegated admixture of theoretic-linguistic tools by combining concepts, metaphors and images from their heterogeneous linguistic resources. Pedagogies of trans-linguistic divergence can provide such collages through the use of four interrelated strategies, namely ‘play’, ‘inventory’, ‘encounter’ and ‘mystery’ (Rancière, Aesthetics and its discontent, 2009). These strategies enable HDRs to move beyond creating an awareness of the mechanisms of monolingual domination to actually using trans-linguistic divergences to produce worldly orientations to internationalising education. Pedagogies of trans-linguistic divergence provide a way to deal with the complacency of monolingual literacy theory in Anglophone Western-centric universities.
Through an exploration of educational democracy, this chapter provides practical resources for advancing worldly orientations to internationalising research education. Here, the most important concept is that of intellectual equality (‘zhishi pingdeng’; ‘知识平等’). The presupposition and verification of intellectual equality is integral to declassifying intellectual divisions governing the world’s production of theoretic-linguistic tools and critiques.
This means ignoring assertions concerning intellectual inequality. We argue for an emerging theoretic-pedagogical framework in which non-Western HDRs and their domestic Western counterparts are regarded as equally intelligent. The presupposition that drives these pedagogies is that research educators can provide appropriate guidance and advice to enable non-Western HDRs to use their linguistic and intellectual resources for making original contributions to research. Positioning non-Western HDRs solely as data sources reproduces inequality by drawing a division between ‘empirical individuals’ and ‘epistemic individuals’ (Bourdieu, 1988). In contrast, we propose the goal of worldly orientations to internationalising research education to declassify the division that assigns theorising and critique to the West, and data generation to the non-West.
The book is based on a longitudinal program of research involving non-Western multilingual HDRs from China. A key outcome is an account of pedagogies on intellectual equality, which provides an innovative approach to worldly orientations to internationalising research education. By ignoring alleged inequalities, this chapter develops a rationale for redistributing prevailing Anglophone Western-centric sensibilities and senses with respect to multilingualism and the resources non-Western intellectual cultures can provide for theorising and critique.
Our starting point breaks with the conventional, uncritical and misguided belief that non-Western intellectual cultures have no modes of critical thinking. Rather than insist on the impossible by demanding that non-Western HDRs become ‘authentic’ Anglophone Westerners, this quest is directed at realising the best of their capabilities for critique and scholarly disputation, which is achieved through their linguistic and intellectual resources. Within this framework, non-Western HDRs have opportunities to develop their capabilities for scholarly modes of theorising and critique by using their complete multilingual repertoire. This innovative theoretic-pedagogical framework provides useful principles for research education. These include maximising the educational advantages of their multilingual capabilities; using their intellectual cultures to generate resources for theorising; and verifying in writing their claims to be producing original theoretic-linguistic knowledge and modes of critical reasoning.
Acknowledging the multilingual capabilities of non-Western Higher Degree Researchers (HDRs) requires implementing educational measures that enable them to pursue high levels of academic proficiency in their languages, especially in terms of theorising. Our theoretic-pedagogical framework for post-monolingual education is directed at deepening and extending HDRs’ capabilities for using their languages for academic research. Worldly orientations to internationalising research education are finding expression in the shift from monolingualism, through context-bound serial multilingualism, to post-monolingualism. This chapter explores a key element of worldly orientations to internationalising research education, namely—pedagogies of post-monolingual education.
In this paper I focus on the problem of normativity as it has been identified and discussed in relation to Ernesto Laclau’s theory of identity. The main feature of this theory is that it proposes a universal structure where various forms of identification are described in the same political logic. In his analysis of populism, Laclau clearly argued that understanding how social identities are constructed is impossible when we try to theorize the “ontic” content of particular ideologies, demands, etc.; what is needed is understanding those movements in terms of their “ontological” political logic which is linked to the desire for a fullness of society (Laclau 2005).
In recent years philosophers of education have used the ideas of both Jacques Derrida and Jacques Rancière to rethink the ethical and political possibilities and responsibilities of education (for example, Biesta, 2001, 2010b; Masschelein, 1996; Masschelein & Simons, 2010; Peters, 2003, 2009; Ruitenberg, 2010, 2011).
Designed to present a critical analysis of the memorial landscapes composed on facebook sites to commemorate female martyrs of justice in the Sicilian antimafia movement, this exploratory study examines the case of magistrate and antimafia activist, Francesca Morvillo. I argue that while Morvillo's facebook site works simultaneously as an archive of feelings and a public pedagogical project that infuses documentary records of the post- 1980's decades of antimafia activity with affect, her facebook site eventually overshadows her memory in much the same way she is overshadowed in more mainstream antimafia public cultures. Thus, I suggest that Morvillo's facebook can also be read as a site of struggle that displaces her memory with iconic images of antimafia history that commemorate masculine histories and relegate her to a figure who lacks political significance worthy of remembering. How, I ask, does Morvillo's facebook site - this archive of feelings - articulate particular affective investments that resonate to the common, everyday understanding of invisible, forgotten figures and the ways in which discourses of memory and the memorable are taught? The displacements of her memory pose specific challenges to sustaining Morvillo's legacy and raise important questions in the post-feminist moment about what, in 1990, Teresa De Lauretis described as the paradox of the 'non-being of a woman'. This paradox serves as my point of departure for considering the absence of Morvillo's memory in the public imaginary specifically and the implications this absence has for imagining a feminist antimafia consciousness attached to ideals of self-sacrifice and martyrdom more generally.
The man has been teaching educational philosophy and philosophy of/as education at the university for a rather long time. Now, at his pleasant surprise, he has been invited to write an ‘intellectual self-portrait.’ He accepted the invitation, as he mostly accepts them, but he knows it would be an illusion to conceive of this labor as a recollection of his past.
The article focuses on the way in which voice operates within the current discourse of democracy, citizenship, and learning. Based on an analysis of «learning devices» and «citizenship devices» we will show that the individual is asked to articulate him or herself in particular ways as evidence of engagement, of inclusion, and of participatory democracy. It is someone's «personhood» -issues related to identity, preferences, feelings of ownership⋯- that comes to count as evidence of civic engagement and political involvement. This process of personalization - the inscription of the individual as a person that turns him or her into a European citizen-will be described as an important aspect of the current mode of governmental subjectivation. To address this we explore, in line with Jacques Rancière, the notion of «political subjectivation». While governmental subjectivation involves a process of identification with the order of society, political subjectivation is a paradoxical process of de-identification with the social order. It is about the articulation of one's voice as equal within a social order in which one has no voice according to the ruling organisation of positions.
This article reflects on the desire to defend and claim public education amidst the educational policy effects of contemporary neoliberal politics. The defence of public education, from schools to higher education, undoubtedly provides a powerful counter-veiling weight to the neoliberal policy logic of education-as-individual-value-accrual. At a time of intense global policy reform centred on marketisation in education, the public education institutions of the post-war welfare state are often characterised as being lost, attacked, encroached upon and dismantled. In this paper, I contend it is important to avoid mobilising a memory of public educational pasts that do not account for their failings and inequalities. Turning to a historical engagement with the emergence of neoliberal politics, the paper explores how challenges and contestations surrounding ‘the public’ from multiple standpoints converged in the rise of neoliberalism. Recognition of these convergences and contestations, I suggest, assists to provide a more nuanced account of the relationship between neoliberal reform and the welfare state, and thus of the complex task of imagining, claiming and working towards a just and equitable public education.
Wie kaum eine andere Profession befindet sich der Lehrberuf - und mit ihm eine ganze Disziplin - in einem enormen Spannungsfeld: auch wenn - fast überall und nicht nur in politischen Sonntagsreden - immer wieder die zentrale Bedeutung des Erziehungs- und Bildungssystems für die Reproduktion der Gesellschaft betont wird, so ist doch das Bild der Pädagogik in der gesellschaftlichen Öffentlichkeit von Mustern der Verachtung der Pädagogik bestimmt. Dieser Widersprüchlichkeit geht der Sammelband aus unterschiedlichen Perspektiven nach. Den Autorinnen und Autoren geht es darum, den allzu bekannten Topos der Verachtung der Pädagogik genauer zu analysieren und in seiner Bedeutung für die pädagogische Profession auszuloten.
Background/Context
The article reflects on the public role of education on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the publication of Hannah Arendt's essay, “The Crisis in Education” and in facing the current transformation of public policy into “new public management.”
Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study
Based on Arendt's essay, “The Crisis in Education,” the article explores that peculiar setting and architecture between family and world that is called school. The leading concern for this investigation is the school's public meaning. The point of departure is that today, the public role of education is an urgent concern, that is, the school's public role is questioned in view of the current processes of privatization, and what is critically described as the “capitalization of life.” In this contribution, based on a reading of Arendt's essay and relying on the analysis of a specific school design by the architect Wim Cuyvers, two different ways of thinking the public meaning of school education are explored. One way of thinking takes the school as an infrastructure of “intro-duction,” while the other way of thinking regards the school as an infrastructure of “e-duc(a)tion.”
Research Design
This article is an analytic essay.
Conclusions/Recommendations
The article shows that it is impossible to think “a new beginning in our world” without thinking the school as public space. Drawing on some thoughts of Agamben and the school architecture of Cuyvers, the article offers an outline for elaborating the Arendtian thinking of the “perfect school.” This school is conceived of as a space where people are exposed to things, and being exposed could be regarded as being drawn outside (or as e-ducation), that is, into public space. Public space is a “free space” or the space of “free time.” This free time is precisely the sense that the Greek “scholé” seemed to indicate—a space where (economic, social, cultural, political, private …) time is suspended and where people have time at their disposal for “a new beginning.” Whereas the museum is the setting that accumulates time, the school could be seen as the setting for suspending time. The school as “public architecture,” then, is not a space/time of “intro-duction” and “in-between,” but a space/time of “suspension” and “e-ducation.”
After describing both average scores, dispersion, and social inequalities in achievement in the various countries included in the latest Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) study, this article relates those ‘products' to country economic and cultural characteristics. It then explores relations between student scores and a number of institutional characteristics of countries' educational systems. Results show that relations exist between average scores and certain institutional or pedagogical practices such as grade repeating or tracking. A high degree of social inequality in achievement proves to be associated with overall score dispersion and degree to which educational system differentiates among students.
Wer gegenwärtig über das öffentliche Ansehen der Pädagogik nachdenkt1, kommt nicht umhin, die anhaltend drastisch erfahrbare Ambivalenz, ja Widersprüchlichkeit der öffentlichen Wahrnehmung von Pädagoginnen und Pädagogen, des pädagogischen Systems insgesamt wie auch der Erziehungswissenschaft mitzubedenken; verkürzt formuliert: trotz aller Beschwörungen und ‚Hochglanz‘-Beteuerungen, dass Bildung — und mit ihr die Pädagogik insgesamt — gesellschaftlich nicht nur unverzichtbar, sondern überhaupt wichtiger denn je sei, hält sich doch in der Öffentlichkeit hartnäckig eine weithin negative Einschätzung eben dieser Pädagogik. Und mit Blick auf die bundesdeutsche Bildungspolitik der letzten Jahre muss man hinzufügen, dass es durchaus nicht selten die gleichen Leute sind, die beides — bisweilen ungebrochen und gänzlich unirritiert — sogar in einem Satz verknüpfen können. Diese Widersprüchlichkeit schlägt sich — nicht allein, aber doch zentral — in der allen pädagogisch Tätigen nur zu bekannten Paradoxie der stetigen, ja drastischen Aufgabenvermehrung auf der einen Seite und der zunehmenden Unterfinanzierung und Kürzung auf der anderen Seite nieder. An diesem strukturellen Widerspruch etwas zu ändern, hieße sicherlich zunächst und vor allem, die Frage zunehmend unterfinanzierter öffentlicher Haushalte und das darin sichtbar werdende Bild von Öffentlichkeit und Gesellschaft zu thematisieren; es heißt aber auch, sich mit den Hintergründen der ambivalenten gesellschaftlichen Wahrnehmung des pädagogischen Feldes insgesamt zu beschäftigen.
Schools and classrooms, as well as the work place and the Internet, are considered today as learning environments. People are regarded as learners and the main target of school education has become ‘learning’ pupils and students how to learn. The roles of teachers and lecturers are redefined as instructors, designers of (powerful) learning environments and facilitators or coaches of learning processes. The aim of this paper is to argue that the current self-understanding in terms of learning environments is not merely about a renewal of our vocabulary, but an indication of a far more general transformation of the world of education. It is argued that the current self-understanding in terms of ‘learning environments’ and ‘learners’ indicates a shift in our experience of time and place; a shift from (modern) historical self-understanding towards (post-modern) environmental self-understanding. The essay draws upon Foucauldian concepts in order to map the modern organisation of time and space in ‘schools’. This past organisation is confronted with the current organisation of time and space in ‘learning environments’. By contrasting both maps the paper focuses on the main characteristics of the current experience of time and space, that is, ‘environmental self-understanding’, and explores in the final section the dark side of this self-understanding.
The Bologna Process 2020—The European Higher Education Area in the new decade. Communiqué of the Conference of European Ministers Respon-sible for Higher Education, Leuven and Louvain-la-Neuve
- Leuven
Leuven/Louvain-la-Neuve Communiqué (2009) The Bologna Process 2020—The European Higher Education Area in the new decade. Communiqué of the Conference of European Ministers Respon-sible for Higher Education, Leuven and Louvain-la-Neuve, 28–29 April 2009.
Kwaliteit en kansen voor elke leerling Een visie op de vernieuwing van het secundair onderwijs. Voorstel van de Commissie Monard
- Monard
Monard (2009) Kwaliteit en kansen voor elke leerling. Een visie op de vernieuwing van het secundair onderwijs. Voorstel van de Commissie Monard. Brussel, retrieved from http://www.ond. vlaanderen.be/nieuws/2009/bijlagen/0424-visienota-SO.pdf Pennac, D. (2007) Chagrin d'école (Paris, Gallimard).
Onderwijs als ‘overdracht’: culturele ‘ontmoeting’ of politiek/samenspel?
- B. Verschaffel
On the Shores of Politics
- J. Rancière
Historisches Wörterbuch der Pädagogik
- J. Ruhloff
What if Democracy Really Matters
- C. Ruitenberg