Educational Studies and the Domestication of Utopia

This paper offers a critique of educational real utopias. Real Utopias are experimental forms of thought and practice intended to harness the transgressive force of traditional utopianism while avoiding its associated dangers. The concept has been embraced by the field of educational studies and applied to the study of various educational settings, institutions and processes. This paper does four things. Firstly, it outlines the concept of utopian realism and highlights those aspects that are said to differentiate it from the utopia that supposedly played a role in the human catastrophes of the twentieth century. It then evaluates a selection of educational real utopias to assess whether they can, in fact, be said to have succeeded in the task of harnessing the intellectual force while overcoming the dangers of traditional utopianism. Thirdly, the paper offers a critique of utopian realism, arguing that the concept of utopia has become thoroughly domesticated. Finally, the paper defends the expansive and holistic concept of utopia that utopian realism rejects. The argument here is that only when utopia is understood as a holistic system is it able to produce its most potent pedagogical effects.     

Heidegger,Education and the ‘Cult of the Authentic’

Within educational philosophies that utilise the Heideggerian idea of ‘authenticity’ there can be distinguished at least two readings that correspond with the categories of ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ utopianism. ‘Strong‐utopianism’ is the nostalgia for some lost Edenic paradise to be restored at some future time. Here it is the ‘world’ that needs to be transcended for it is the source of our inauthenticity, where we are the puppets of modernist‐capitalist ideologies. ‘Authenticity’ here is a value‐judgment, understood as something that makes you a better person. The ‘inauthentic’ person is simply deceived. ‘Weak‐utopianism’ is recognising the forces for change in the ‘everyday‐immanent’ where we do not look to overcome the world but own it as ‘heritage’. ‘Authenticity’ here is an ontological choice, a modification of inauthenticity, not its opposite. The ‘cult of the authentic’ relates to the ‘strong utopianism’ where ‘authenticity’ has become fetishized, harking back to a purer, pre‐modern state, untainted by the ideals of the Enlightenment and ethos of capitalism. ‘Authentic education’ is the overcoming of our environments and socio‐historical contexts, opening up new horizons of meaning. The radical notion of freedom that this implies, where one is free from rather than free in the realisation of constraint, may also be another dividing line between the ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ readings, which lend themselves to a Messianic narrative. It will be argued that if ‘authentic education’ is understood through a ‘strong utopianism’ it actually re‐enforces those very same dystopian ideals they look to overcome as characterised by ‘enframing’.     

The Difference Differentiation Makes: Extending Eisner's Account

In this analysis Jane Blanken‐Webb extends Elliot Eisner's account of how learning in the arts contributes to the creation of mind. Drawing on the psychoanalytic theory of D. W. Winnicott, Blanken‐Webb argues that the acts of meaning making to which Eisner attends rely on a prior developmental achievement — namely, the establishment of self‐in‐relation‐to‐world. This prior development is important to recognize in order to appreciate all that is at stake and at play within acts of meaning making. To demonstrate this, Blanken‐Webb points to reverberations of an earlier process of psychological differentiation embedded within such acts that are crucial for aesthetic experience and that carry on a continual process of refinement of self‐in‐relation‐to‐world. While Eisner has a great deal to offer regarding the importance of providing students access to multiple forms of representation, this perspective adds that in doing so we are expanding on a foundation of self‐in‐relation‐to‐world, thus facilitating an educational unfolding that is much deeper than we typically recognize.     

Becoming a “Foreigner”: The Principle of Equality,Intersected Identities,and Social Exclusion in the Norwegian School

This article explores how some minority pupils’ self-definition as “foreigners” leads to their inability to also consider themselves diligent and talented pupils in the Norwegian school. The minority pupils’ self-definition as “foreigners” creates binary understandings of being a diligent and conscientious pupil, a definition that is often interpreted as being “Norwegian.” Through observations and conversations with young minority pupils in upper secondary school about their everyday lives, this article shows how the bodies and behavior of some minority pupils are excluded in a firm and often instinctive understanding of equality conceived as sameness. It is argued that even if the concepts of diversity and tolerance are important foundations in the Norwegian education policy, this principle creates a specific notion of a “normal pupil.” This tacit normality has different consequences for different minority pupils, creating complex intersected identities along the categories of gender, social class, and ethnicity. While the notion of a normal pupil creates social exclusion for some pupils with a minority background, this article argues that the entanglement of other categories provides opportunities for success for other minority pupils in the same educational system.     

Narrative authority vs. perjured testimony: Courage,vulnerability and truth

This paper outlines a method for describing and analysing discursive practices in education. Discourse analysis exposes and clarifies the discursive practices by which and through which all aspects of education are carried out. An analysis of representative “classic” texts of radical educational theory was undertaken in order to study the discursive construction of knowledge. The case‐studies reveal a discursive operation of recontextualization,where a paradigm‐shift away from the functionalist discourse of education is effected. This operation involves “translating” the categories of “education” and “schooling” from their familiar discursive contexts to a new context where they enter into new relations with unfamiliar terms and categories. The radical education critique and the knowledge organized around and through it fall into a pattern which echoes the sermon genre of the jeremiad, which facilitates the construction of knowledge in terms of the gap between “full humanity” [Freire] or the Jeffersonian ideal [Bowles and Gintis] and the actual present state of alienation. Radical discourse in effect both constructs that gap and determines the means by which it can be closed.     

Education,Dialogue and Intervention: revisiting the Freirean project

In the past two decades Paulo Freire's philosophy of education has been the subject of much discussion by academics, school teachers and adult educators in a variety of formal and informal settings. While Freire initially gained recognition for his work with adult illiterates in Brazil and Chile, since the early 1970s his ideas have found increasing application in Britain, the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. This article reconsiders the literacy methods through which Freire initially attracted international attention. Freire's approach to literacy education in Brazil is outlined and brief reference is made to the other major adult education programmes with which Freire has been involved since 1964. A number of serious criticisms of Freirean pedagogy are identified, all of which deal in some way with what might be termed the problem of ‘imposition’ in Freire's work. Critiques from Berger, Bowers and Walker suggest that the Freirean project entails the imposition of a particular world‐view and mode of social practice on adult illiterates. According to these critics, Freire assumes that he knows better than the oppressed the nature of, and the best solution to, their oppression. The author argues that the Freirean system is indeed non‐dialogical and impositional in certain respects, but concludes that Freire's literacy efforts were ultimately worthwhile.     

Minimal utopianism in the classroom

Abstract

In this paper, we build on recent work on the role of the ‘utopian pedagogue’ to explore how utopian thinking can be developed within contemporary higher education institutions. In defending a utopian orientation on the part of HE lecturers, we develop the notion of ‘minimal utopianism’; a notion which, we suggest, expresses the difficult position of critical educators concerned to offer their students the tools with which to imagine and explore alternatives to current social and political reality, while acknowledging the contingent ethical constraints of the system within which they and their students are working. While agreeing with utopian theorists such as Darren Webb who have defended the need for ‘blueprint utopias’ in education in the face of the reduction of the idea of utopia to a purely process-oriented pedagogy, our focus here is on the prior educational task of providing the conceptual and communicative tools for utopian thinking to emerge. The collaborative nature of this paper is reflected in the interdisciplinary sources on which we draw in developing our ideas, including moral philosophy, literary theory, political philosophy, anarchist theory and utopian studies.     

A doctoral graduate's return to the elementary classroom: An example of sociological ambivalence

The importance of critical reflection in teaching has been well established in the educational literature. However, the author expands the discussion of critical reflection by using a heuristic inquiry approach to examine his transition from graduate school back to the elementary classroom. Using journal entries as his primary data source, he argues that schools and universities are characterized by three sets of conflicting norms-doing and thinking, acceptance and debate, and dependency and autonomy. He also argues that “practitioner scholars,” those who try to reconcile their roles as both practitioners and scholars, may experience what is often referred to as “sociological ambivalence.”     

Turning a City into a Milieu of Study: University Pedagogy as “Frontline”

In 2016 Bruno Latour delivered a lecture at Cornell University in which he responded to what he called the actual situation of disorientation and (literal) lack of common ground by offering some “hints for a neo‐Humboldtian university.” One hint he offered was that we should consider pedagogy as the frontline for staging an approach to societal challenges that links basic research and public engagement. Here, Jan Masschelein follows and extends upon this hint through exploring some ways to reclaim or reinvent the university as pedagogic form. Concretely, he describes the development of a course on designing educational practices that is conceived as a way to turn cities into a milieu of public and collective study. Masschelein's contribution to this symposium offers a “technical story” about physical, material experiences, one that contains some prepositions and propositions, an example, many detours, and a few practical notes and considerations. By this means, he explores the meaning and form pedagogy takes when we do not reduce it to teaching and extension, but instead approach it as the genus and the locus of a nexus between public engagement and basic research. Masschelein concludes by proposing the “public design studio” as a pedagogic form suited to the neo‐Humboldtian university.     

Should Anger Be Encouraged in the Classroom? Political Education,Closed‐Mindedness,and Civic Epiphany

In light of recent political developments in Western democracies, several political commentators and theorists have argued that encouraging anger in citizens may contribute to social justice and should therefore constitute an aim of civic education. In this article, Douglas Yacek investigates these claims in depth. In doing so, he expands on previous work on the political and educational significance of anger — particularly by critical and “agonistic” theorists of civic education — in two distinct ways. First, Yacek explores the psychological costs and benefits of cultivating student anger. Second, he examines the potential cultural effects of anger in Western democratic societies. While sympathetic to the defenses of anger that have been recently offered in political and educational theory, Yacek concludes that we should be cautious about embracing anger in civic education. In particular, he argues that anger involves serious psychological risk, may exacerbate the social problems that it sets out to solve, and can lead to a disposition of adversarial and politically counterproductive closed‐mindedness. In the closing sections, Yacek suggests that experiences he calls “civic epiphanies” are central to cultivating a politically beneficial form of open‐mindedness, and argues that such experiences should therefore be encouraged in civic education.     

Postdigital cross border reflections on critical utopia

Abstract

Critical pedagogy is in crisis. To address this crisis, this paper reinvents Paulo Freire’s concept of utopia in and for our age of the Anthropocene. Understood as a system, postdigital critical utopia provides us with normative foundations and returns agency from invisible data and algorithms to human beings. Understood as a process, postdigital critical utopia unmasks the myth of neutrality and adds an important element of myth, religion, ritual, and faith. Understood as an orientation, postdigital critical utopia needs to be balanced by dystopia, integrate environmental considerations, and act with a combination of epistemical curiosity and hope. Theoretical and practical attempts at introducing advanced technology to reimagine new utopias now take place in media theory, hacking, activism, and small pockets of the academia. To transcend its own crisis and remain relevant, contemporary critical pedagogy movement must urgently join these attempts. However, catching up with technological development is only the tip of a much larger iceberg. In order to take the lead in processes of modernization, critical pedagogy movement needs to actively develop utopian visions and techno-administrative systems which may support these visions.     

Use of behavior modification with academically gifted students: A review of the research

This article responds to attitudes about giftedness in M. Sapon‐Shevin's article, “Explaining Giftedness to Parents: Why it Matters What Professionals Say.” Giftedness is not a reward or a privilege, but an aspect of a child's individuality that should be understood and taken into account by the educational system. Gifted children's needs are not solely academic, and it is parents who are responsible for meeting those needs. They need information from as many sources as possible. They are also excellent sources of information themselves, so the relationship between professionals and parents should be reciprocal. This article also responds to some of Sapon‐Shevin's objections to the book Guiding the Gifted Child, (Webb, Meckstroth, Tolan, 1982). In the preparation of this article, the writer worked closely with coauthors James T. Webb and Elizabeth Meckstroth, whose pioneering work with the SENG Project at Wright State University provided the basis of Guiding the Gifted Child.     

The Phenomenon of Information Literacy

Information literacy is being increasingly recognised as an important educational outcome for university graduates. How it is experienced, however, has only recently become the subject of scrutiny. The study reported here examines varying conceptions of information literacy amongst a group of lecturers, librarians, staff developers and learning counsellors. A phenomenographic approach was used to discover their conceptions. Data were gathered from participants, both male and female, through interviews, e‐mail discussions and workshops. As an outcome of the analysis, seven categories, or “faces” of information literacy were discovered. These categories depict information literacy as it is conceived or experienced. They provide target conceptions for the educational process which differ from the more conventional competencies or skill‐based objectives.     

Feats of Strength for Weak Utopianism: Giorgio Agamben,Educational Potentiality and the Studious Spatiality of the Active Learning Classroom

One outcome of the increasing interest from philosophy of education circles in the work of Giorgio Agamben has been the possibility of apparently small alterations to enact a radical emancipatory change. This ‘weak utopianism’ (Lewis, 2013) found in Agamben's work means that traditionally radical changes are viewed with skepticism, as grand alternative designs often merely result in the operationalisation and actualisation of new ordering rather emancipation. In a recent commentary on Agamben's philosophy of education, Igor Jasinski (2018) argues that the theory of weak utopianism means that innovative classroom designs ‘should not be considered’ examples of Agambenian philosophy of education at work. In this article, I respond through an analysis of the case of active learning classrooms. Despite existing as a form of innovative classroom design, I argue that they nevertheless abide Agambenian principles in the philosophy of education as spaces open to—without demanding—study. The active learning classroom is not the ideal‐type studious space but a paradigm, the case that stands outside of (while standing in for) the rest of the set. Situated in‐between inspiration and implementation, I argue that active learning classrooms are the paradoxically strongest form of weak utopianism, leaving educational potentiality open while also representing a significant rethinking of the spatiality of the classroom. Active learning classrooms thus pose significant questions both for Agambenian philosophy of education in particular and critical pedagogy in general.     

Paulo Freire in a Hall of Mirrors

Since first published in English in 1970, Pedagogy of the Oppressed has inspired generations of scholars and social activists to examine the inherent potential of Paulo Freire's theories on grassroots intellectual emancipation and education in marginalized communities. The interpretive lineage of Freire's writings is vast, indeed. To date, scholars continue to mobilize Freire's ideas to establish meaningful connections between what he describes as “liberatory teaching” and the role progressive educators must play in bringing about a more just and humane society. Freire's popularity outside Brazil, however, has come with inevitable tradeoffs worth considering, particularly as regards the epistemological directions and labels affixed to his educational philosophy. Considering the “many Freires” phenomenon, Sandro Barros takes a genealogical approach in this essay to the metanarratives that have made up Freire scholarship outside Brazil. His analysis is guided by the following questions: (1) What kinds of hermeneutic cultures have enveloped Freire's ideas in academic contexts? (2) How have these cultures shaped the reading practices that surround his texts?     

Reformist Distractions and Educational Labor: Two Perspectives on Paying for Grades

In this essay Bryan Warnick examines two recent analyses of the practice of paying students for grades, with a focus on educational justice. Philosopher Derrick Darby argues against cash‐for‐grades programs on the grounds that such programs leave educational inequality intact. Warnick contends that Darby's arguments are incomplete. Increasing levels of educational “adequacy” is morally desirable, Warnick argues, even if inequality remains unchanged. There is also an obligation to engage in “localized practice reforms” that benefit small groups of disadvantaged students, even if such reforms do not change the structural problems that lead to inequality. At the same time, engaging in a close analysis of “cash” as an incentive does reveal specific reasons why the inequality that persists under cash‐for‐grades might be particularly troublesome. In contrast to Darby, Alexander Sidorkin argues that paying students for learning is not only allowed, but ethically obligatory. Schooling, for Sidorkin, is a form of labor and labor demands fair compensation. Warnick challenges the idea that schooling is a form of exploited labor by looking across a range of issues, including the nonpecuniary benefits of schooling. At the same time, it seems that schooling could become a form of exploited labor, given current trends. Overall, the justice of cash incentive programs remains an open question. The essay concludes with a discussion about how we can move forward with a philosophical analysis of cash‐for‐grades programs.     

Class Analysis and the Emancipatory Potential of Education

Recently, a range of educational theorists have explored and extended upon popular currents in political theory through articulating “open” and “unknowing” pedagogies. Such contributions represent a radical turn away from the presumed “universals” found in proclamations of justice and emancipation and, ultimately, the centering of class analysis. At the same time, inspired by and building upon Bourdieuian theory, another cluster of educational research has developed a nuanced understanding of the social, cultural, and educational mechanisms involved in class reproduction. In this essay, Jessica Gerrard offers a critical — though sympathetic — response to these dual trends. Bringing together theories of reproduction in conversation with theories of pedagogical possibility, Gerrard argues for a renewed understanding of working‐class relations to education that incorporates an understanding of working‐class action and struggle.     

Hope and Education

This essay reviews David Halpin's Hope and Education, which aims to bring theories of hope and utopia to bear on the practical processes of schooling in contemporary Britain, and which sees education as an intrinsically hopeful and future‐oriented process. It argues that the properly utopian character of Halpin's project is subverted by his espousal of a currently fashionable pragmatism, represented by Richard Rorty and Anthony Giddens, which insists that ‘good’ utopias must be realistic and practical. Utopian hope for a better world, in which a transformed educational process will be central, is ambushed by this pragmatism and reduced to managerialism.