1st Edition
A Pedagogy of Equality in a Time of Unrest Strategies for an Ambiguous Future
A Pedagogy of Equality in a Time of Unrest addresses education and teaching as fundamental democratic forms of equality. It offers an alternative route for democracy and education and shows how particular shifts in ways of thinking and practising can lead to an education in favour of a democratic life for all.
The book identifies the distributive paradigm in education, and dismantles central aspects of such a paradigm. It revolves around the themes of equality, commitment, change, emancipation, freedom and ambiguity, all set in relation to the distinction between schooling and education. Drawing on a range of theorists such as Jacques Rancière and Judith Butler, as well as the early Sophists, the book develops strategies to counteract any attempts to close down opportunities of emancipation through education.
This book will be of great interest to academics, researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of the philosophy of education, history of education, critical sociology of education and educational theory. It will also appeal to activists and those interested in emancipatory forms of education and pluralist democracy.
Preface
Introduction
Chapter 1. Change, Hope, and Commitment
Introduction
The Distributive Paradigm in Education
Liberal Hope in Education
Moving Beyond Hope
The Function of Hope in the Distributive Paradigm
There May Be No Hope but There is Still a Commitment
Concluding Thoughts
Chapter 2. Rethinking Emancipation, Rethinking Education
Introduction
Schooling is the Problem, Not Schools
The State of Education and the Educational State
Postmodernism and Emancipation
Emancipation and Ambiguity
Schooling Without Ambiguity and Change
Rancière and Emancipation
Rethinking Emancipation Means Rethinking Education
Concluding Thoughts
Chapter 3. Education and Teaching as Verification of Equality
Introduction
The Political and the School
Re-Negotiation of the Meaning of Schooling
Order, Inequality and Equality
To Be Attentive
The Ethical Foundation of Knowing the Truth
Concluding Thoughts
Chapter 4. Teaching as the Passion of Equality at the Border of Inequality
Introduction
The Swedish Case
This Madness of Public Discourse on Schooling
Three Examples of Empty Speech on Schooling
The Passionate Teacher
The Community of Poets and Teaching
The War on Chaos is a War on Borders
Concluding Thoughts
Chapter 5. Paideia and the Search for Freedom in the Educational Formation of the Public of Today
Introduction
The Revival of Educational Thought
Education Without the Law
Dividing the Whole
I Am the People Too
Concluding Thoughts
Chapter 6. The Scandal of a Culturally Responsive Pedagogy, Or Teaching "Anything to Anyone"
Introduction
Culture I
Culture II
Culture and Education
Multiculturalism and Polycultural Society
Responsive Pedagogy and Democratic Order
Concluding Thoughts
Chapter 7. A Pedagogy of the Depressed
Introduction
No Future
A Pedagogy of the Depressed?
What is Wrong with Instrumentalism?
Neo-liberal Aggression Towards the Publicness of the Public
Turning Public Interests into Private Interests
Distributive Education and Schooling for All
The Claustrophobia of Automated Learning
The Educational Impulse as an Instantiation of a Split in Reality
Teaching Without a Future
Concluding Thoughts
Chapter 8. Conclusion
Biography
Carl Anders Säfström is a Professor of educational research and Director of the Centre for Public Education and Pedagogy, Maynooth University, Ireland. He publishes extensively in educational theory and philosophy on the topics of democracy, equality and the concept of teaching in challenging times.
