This book examines the role of teaching within public education. It critiques its function in today's educational policies and theories and establishes an alternative way of understanding teaching. It explores teaching from within a Sophist tradition of educational practice and thought.
The first part of the book discusses the vital link between public education and democracy, the shifts in schooling's role in fostering competition and comparisons at the cost of social responsibility and democratisation. It identifies the driving force of those shifts as forces of aggression and destruction, central to a neoliberal ideology. The second part of the book argues for a practice of Sophistical teaching rather than Socratic teaching. It explores in-depth what it could mean to be teaching in an up-to-date sophist tradition of educational thought and practice.
The book also includes insights for teaching to counter aggressive forces of nationalism, racism, and late capitalism's violence and the escalating climate crisis. Readers will be able to understand teaching within educational thought and precisely how different teaching forms can contribute to education as democratisation.
Author(s): Carl Anders Säfström
Series: SpringerBriefs in Education
Edition: 1
Publisher: Springer Nature Singapore
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: xvi; 97
City: Singapore
Tags: Educational Philosophy; Teaching and Teacher Education; Educational Policy and Politics; Education, general; Philosophy of Education;
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Motivation and Scholarly Project
Traditions of Educational Thought
The chapters
Contents
Chapter 1: The Free Time of Education
1.1 Introduction
1.2 The Time of the University and Scholé (σχολή)
1.3 Education and the Conditions of Democracy
1.4 The Danger at Play in Instrumentalising Education
1.5 What Are our Responsibilities in a Time of Production?
1.6 Why Is the Time of Production in Schools and Universities So Harmful?
1.7 Automation of Behaviour
1.8 Conclusion
References
Chapter 2: School Failure, Violence and Democratic Possibilities in Education
2.1 Introduction
2.2 School Failure
2.3 Precariousness and Violence in Education, and Non-violent Response
2.4 Teaching as Active Non-violence beyond Success and Failure
2.5 To Throw Failure Back to its Contingency
2.6 Conclusion
References
Chapter 3: Aristocratic Versus Democratic Principle of Education
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Upbringing, Schooling and Education
3.3 Aristocratic Versus the Democratic Principle of Education
3.4 Aristocratic Nature Versus Democratic Nature
3.5 Culture as Static Versus Culture as Praxis
3.6 The Violence of the Aristocratic Principle
3.7 Educating the Democratic Principle
3.8 Education in the Sophist Tradition of Thought
3.9 Teaching Equality and the Grievability of all Living
3.10 Conclusion
References
Chapter 4: Socratic Versus Sophist Teaching
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Two Archetypes: Socratic Teaching and Sophist Teaching
4.3 The Critique of the Socratic Archetype of Teaching as Reproduction
4.4 The Sophist Archetype of Teaching as an Adversarial Response to Inequality
4.5 Time to Teach and the Possibility of Ambiguity
4.6 Conclusion
References
Chapter 5: A Sophistical Practice of Teaching
5.1 Introduction
5.2 The Making of the Sophists and the Subjugation of Educational Thought and Practice
5.2.1 The Perfect Man and the Perfect State
5.2.2 The Idea of Schooling
5.3 Breaking the Crust of Convention of Platonian/Aristotelian Scientific Education
5.4 The Inherent Plurality of Comparisons and the Discipline of Pedagogy
5.5 Teaching as a Practice in Democratisation
5.5.1 The Poetic Act of Teaching
5.6 Conclusion, a Sophistical Practice in Liveable Life
References
Chapter 6: Conclusion
6.1 Equality/Inequality
6.2 Education Is Not Schooling
6.3 Public Education
6.4 The Practice of Writing Education against Anti-Education
6.5 Schooling Time, Essences, Authentic/Un-Authentic Self
6.6 Reproduction
6.7 The Democratic Principle and Teaching
6.8 A Final Word
References
References
