The present paper is about the author’s current research on children’s education in urban contexts. It departs from the rising offer of programmes for school children in out-of-school contexts (e.g. museums, libraries, science centres). It asks what makes these practices educational (and not just interesting, entertaining and/or audience building). Based on Biesta ( 2006a , 2010 ) theory of education, the author frames and analyses the educational characteristics of, and possibilities of articulating, in and out-of-school educational practices. This paper aims (...) at understanding if the occasional outing from primary school premises promotes interruptions in the humanist foundations of school. In order to analyse relations between different institutions and professionals (to be) engaged in educational activities and programmes, Nóvoa ( 2002 , 2009 ) essays will be brought to the discussion, namely his conception of the ‘Public Space of Education’—as a space where culture, education, arts, sports and leisure are shared responsibilities, and where diverse institutions are networked aiming towards societal pluralism. I argue for the possibility of using cities’ public spaces as contexts with a worldly quality to complexify children’s education. Nevertheless, I draw attention to the unbearable educational lightness that these practices may carry if they do not go beyond the praise of chance; as well as to their unsustainable weight if they perpetually repeat school’s normal orders and add up rational discourses. (shrink)

In this article we want to rethink the educational significance of the novel from the perspective of a ‘metanovelistic’ reading of Don Quixote, often acclaimed as the ‘first modern novel’. Our point of departure is two-fold: on the one hand, there is the controversial contemporary phenomenon of de-reading, and all the educational discussions it entails; on the other hand, there is the existing tradition of literary education, which has already extensively reflected upon the (moral, epistemological, ontological) relations between novel reading, (...) education, and subjectification, but which perhaps also has exhausted its means for doing so. To problematize this double starting point in a new way, we propose to revisit the ‘origins’ of the (Western) novel and novel reading, at the dawn of modernity. Exploring the differences between the narratives of subjectification represented by the Cartesian cogito and Cervantes’ Don Quixote—which were near-contemporaries—we strongly argue for an educational–philosophical rehabilitation of the latter. 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 educational subjectification always involves a quixotic practice of adventurous, ‘playful’, and public negotiation between reality and its more or less illusory alternatives. (shrink)

The present paper is about the author’s current research on children’s education in urban contexts. It departs from the rising offer of programmes for school children in out-of-school contexts (e.g. museums, libraries, science centres). It asks what makes these practices educational (and not just interesting, entertaining and/or audience building). Based on Biesta (2006a, 2010) theory of education, the author frames and analyses the educational characteristics of, and possibilities of articulating, in and out-of-school educational practices. This paper aims at understanding if (...) the occasional outing from primary school premises promotes interruptions in the humanist foundations of school. In order to analyse relations between different institutions and professionals (to be) engaged in educational activities and programmes, Nóvoa (2002, 2009) essays will be brought to the discussion, namely his conception of the ‘Public Space of Education’—as a space where culture, education, arts, sports and leisure are shared responsibilities, and where diverse institutions are networked aiming towards societal pluralism. I argue for the possibility of using cities’ public spaces as contexts with a worldly quality to complexify children’s education. Nevertheless, I draw attention to the unbearable educational lightness that these practices may carry if they do not go beyond the praise of chance; as well as to their unsustainable weight if they perpetually repeat school’s normal orders and add up rational discourses. (shrink)

Although there is ample interrogation of advertising/commercial/media culture in critical pedagogy, there is little attention paid to the fine arts and to aesthetic experience. This lacuna is all the more perplexing given Paulo Freire’s use of artist Francisco Brenand’s illustrations for his culture circles. In this essay I will return to Freire’s original description of the relationship between fine art images and conscientizacao in order to map out the future of the image in critical pedagogy. This return to the origin (...) of the use of images in literacy programs will highlight the interdependent nature of word and image but also will demonstrate some of the long standing misconceptions of the way fine art images function in relation to education and politics. In conclusion I will suggest that if images have a future in critical pedagogy, then this future must ultimately move beyond Freire. As an alternative genealogical anchoring point for the development of the aesthetics of critical literacy, I suggest a turn to the work of Jacques Rancière. Through his conceptualization of the “pensive image” as well as the “emancipated spectator” we can begin to understand how the fine art image can work to realize Freire’s democratic ideals without relying on Freire’s problematic formulation of the image-pedagogy relationship. In conclusion, I suggest that the philosophical model necessary to support critical literacy is not Freire’s culture circle so much as Kant’s aesthetic community now revitalized via Rancière’s own aesthetics of dissensus. (shrink)

Just over a decade on from a spike of interest in Jacques Rancière’s writing within educational philosophy and theory, I revisit his interventions on democracy and education to make the case for (re)engaging with Rancière’s writing now to address important questions about contemporary education policy, the role of schools in democratic societies and public debate over the curriculum. Specifically, I argue that Rancière’s interventions on the Platonism that characterises both ‘progressive’ and ‘traditional’ arguments about school curricula in such contexts offer (...) a vital tool for understanding the shifts in education policy and educational debate that animate our current political moment. Building on work that has applied Rancière’s writing to analyse neoliberal education policy, I argue that Rancière’s writing provides a distinctive analytical lens for interpreting a recent shift towards neo-conservative education policy agendas, and the imbrication of schools within the ‘culture-wars’ that characterise the contemporary political landscape in several national settings. Taking recent policies concerned with the teaching of values in England as an example, I argue that a Rancierian perspective on such policy is helpful for revitalising research concerned with education and the role of public schooling in societies that wish to maintain some claim to democracy. (shrink)

In the novel The City and the City, by China Mieville, the reader follows the Kafkaesque journey of Inspector Tyador Borlu through a labyrinthian political conspiracy set in two politically autonomous yet territorially overlapping cities: Beszel and Ul Qoma. Although “grosstopically” interwoven like topographic doppelgangers, the two cities are perceived as distinct political and cultural territories. Even as citizens from the two cities intermingle on divided streets, live in buildings where different floors exist in different cities, and children climb on (...) trees territorially split (“crosshatched”) down the center, they must learn to “unsee” and “unnotice” one another. The major role of education is to teach .. (shrink)