The aim of this article is to rethink the relation between education and progress, claiming that discourses of progress tend to project specific visions of the future and thereby instrumentalize education to achieve these visions while foreclosing other possible futures. The first part of the paper argues that the historical pact between education and progress has been recently recast in terms of learning. Learning receives at the same time an economic and a political interpretation in this context, turning issues such (...) as unemployment or social justice into learning problems. What both interpretations seem to share, however, is that learning is conceived of as a pathway to futures already known. Drawing on the philosophy of Isabelle Stengers, in whose work the concept of learning acquires a vital position, the article reframes learning in terms of a situated encounter made possible within an artificial environment, whereby the future is not being projected, but becomes thoroughly problematic—a matter of collective concern. Recent calls to ‘learn to live with’ Covid-19, but also the effects of climate change, form the point of departure for reworking the concept of learning from the inside out. (shrink)

The article presents a thought experiment aimed at indicating a possibility for thinking education beyond the logic of progress. In its first part, the argument reconstructs the entanglement of the modern idea of progress (as found in Francis Bacon and Comenius) and education, while tracking down the specific coupling of obedience and conquest at work. Through such an analysis a link between the ideas of progress and of emancipation is determined, which leads to the acknowledgement of the difficulty of the (...) task of imagining education outside of the logic of progress. In the second part an attempt is made to match this task by suggesting that when studying with a teacher, the logic of progress is deactivated. A phenomenological analysis of the practices involved in studying with a teacher points to a specific way of living together that such a collective study involves. This way of living together is formed by continual exercises in the humble equality realized through shared attention to something worthy of study: this stems from attentiveness to what exists, and it develops an attitude of care and respect for being as such. (shrink)

This book opens an original and timely perspective on why it is we teach and want to pass on our world to the new generation. Teaching is presented in this book as a way of being, rather than as a matter of expertise, which is driven by love for a subject matter. With the help of philosophical thinkers such as Arendt, Badiou and Agamben, the authors articulate a fully positive account of education that goes beyond the critical approach, which has (...) become prevailing in much contemporary educational theory, and which testifies to a hate of the world and to a confusion of what politics and education are about. Therefore, the authors develop the idea of a thing-centred pedagogy, as opposed to both teacher-centred and student-centred approaches. The authors furthermore illustrate their purely educational account of teaching by looking at the writing and the television performance of Leonard Bernstein who embodies what teaching out of love and care for a subject is all about. This book is of interest to all those concerned with fundamental and philosophical questions about education and to those interested in education. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

At a time of pedagogical exhaustion, this article wants to imagine ways to redeem education, to spare education from its unaccomplished promises, reinvent and renew its vows, and make it somehow work towards possible futures. But how can this be done when there is no longer the old inherited faith in a direction of history with an end, no ‘telos’ nor faith that educational institutions will inevitably move societies forwards? Is there any ‘after’ if the arrow of history points in (...) no direction? What can we collectively expect from education if we have no assurance that schooling can lead to anything better than what we are now, or that caring for truth will make people freer? In place of the modernist idea of progress, the alternative narrative that is being offered to school systems and teachers is what I will describe as the ‘innovation paradigm’. Within this framework what we are, what we have, and what is in place are presented as declining, inadequate, and unsatisfactory. This narrative has become so powerful that from a ‘pedagogical popular culture’ perspective it has turned into the mainstream way of thinking about our educational institutions, practices, and hopes. Would it not, however, be more pedagogically productive to speak of ‘variation’ instead of ‘innovation’? Might this be the potential path for redeeming education after progress? [Editorial note: this paper forms part of the suite of papers entitled ‘Education After Progress’.]. (shrink)