While civic education may not always be explicitly included in school curriculums, it can still be imparted through various non-teaching practices and in different places. In this article, we will delve into three potential educational spaces -memorials, museums, and libraries- that are commonly found in Western democracies. We will explore the significance and scope of each of these spaces and discuss their respective ethical, political, and aesthetic responsibilities. Additionally, we will examine how they possess agency and can influence the educational (...) process, recognizing that even non-human entities, such as nature itself, can play an important role in shaping our understanding of civic education. (shrink)

In this paper we consider some of the problems inherent in the attempt to define and circumscribe an exclusively ‘educational love’, as presented by Joris Vlieghe and Piotr Zamojski in a recent paper for this journal. In seeking to move beyond the confusing interpersonal relations involved in student-centred discourses on teaching, the authors aim to articulate an ‘educational love’ that is more oriented towards subject matter than the student subject. In the process, the concept of love itself becomes increasingly abstract (...) and open to interpretation. Further, the attempt to reconcile these elements in an uncomplicated ‘love for the object’, following the example of Alain Badiou's St Paul, constitutes an injustice to the other subjects—the students—involved in the teaching situation. We consider the ways in which such abstractions might sit with student teachers, to demonstrate how and why the intersubjective dimension—with some of the possible emotive messiness that is implied therein—must not fade from view, if we are to avoid conceiving of education as something that can be purified of individual interest, motivation and desire. (shrink)