This book makes an intervention in a long-standing discussion by arguing that education should be world-centred rather than child-centred or curriculum-centred. This is not just because education should provide students with the knowledge and skills to act effectively in the world, but is first and foremost because the world is the place where our existence as human beings takes place.
In the seven chapters in this book Gert Biesta explores in detail what an existential orientation to education entails and why this should be an urgent concern for education today. He highlights the importance of teaching, not understood as the transmission of knowledge and skills but as an act of (re)directing the attention of students to the world, so that they may encounter what the world is asking from them. The book thus shows why teaching matters for education. It also highlights the unique position of the school as the place where the new generation is given the time to meet the world and meet themselves in relation to the world. The extent to which society is still willing to make this time available, is an important indicator of its democratic quality.
This important text demonstrates, not only to academics, but also to students, teachers, school administrators, and teacher educators, the urgency of a world-centred orientation for education today.
Author(s): Gert Biesta
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2021
Language: English
Pages: 126
City: London
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Chapter 1: What Shall We Do with the Children?
Existing as Subject
“Education”
What Shall We Do with the Children?
So What, Then, Shall We Do with the Children?
Education After “Auschwitz”
The Broad Remit of Education
An Outline of the Book
A View for the Present
Notes
Chapter 2: What Kind of Society Does the School Need?
The Modern School, Solution or Problem?
A Question of Quality
The Purposes and Dynamics of Education, and Doing What Needs to Be Done
The Double History of the Modern School
Changing the Question
The Rise of the Impulse Society
The Urgency of Education
Can the School Still Be School?
Notes
Chapter 3: The Parks–Eichmann Paradox and the Two Paradigms of Education
Can the Prevailing Description of Educational Reality Be Considered Complete?
The Parks–Eichmann Paradox
Does Education Make a Difference?
Paradigm 1: Education as Cultivation
Can We Educate Directly?
What Is Missing in This Picture?
Paradigm 2: Existential Education
Finding a Language: Bildung, Erziehung, and the Importance of a Distinction
The Existential Work of Education
A Final Observation
Notes
Chapter 4: Subjectification Revisited
A “Complicated and Unusual Incident”
The Three Domains of Educational Purpose
Subjectification: Be a Self!
Freedom, Existence and the Limits of the World
Subjectifying Education
What Subjectification Is Not
The Risks of Education, and Why They Are Beautiful
Notes
Chapter 5: Learnification, Givenness, and the Gifts of Teaching
Learnification Revisited
Being Given
Exploring Givenness
Marion’s Principle
A Third Reduction
Two Attitudes to Things
Exposure
Three Gifts of Teaching
The First Gift of Teaching: Being Given What You Didn’t Ask for
The Second Gift of Teaching: Double Truth Giving
The Third Gift of Teaching: Being Given Yourself
Concluding Comments
Notes
Chapter 6: Form Matters: On the Point(ing) of Education
The Form of Teaching: Redirection of Attention
An Operational Theory of Education
Education, Teaching, and the Invisibility of Learning
The Morality of Pointing
Concluding Comments
Notes
Chapter 7: World-Centred Education
Encountering the World: The Sound of Surprise 3
On Touching and Being Touched
Attention Without Intention
Anamorphosis: Finding the Place Where One Can Be Found
Teaching for the Possibility of “Being Taught”
Concluding Comments
Notes
Bibliography
Index
