This paper revisits the scope of Catherine Malabou’s thinking as a development of the ontological turn in continental philosophy. It puts this excursion of thinking alongside an account of education in modernity as the apotheosis of biopower. It aligns biopower, as manifest in education, as form of ‘technological enframing’. In this it challenges the dominant assumption that education is somehow, ultimately, independently of its manifest form, a force for good. Foregoing the idealist addiction to education as redemption, then, it sees (...) Malabou’s contribution as significant in terms of a fundamental, ontological rethinking of education and the social politics of our time. It is argued that Malabou’s contribution offers a significant contribution to rethinking education as biopower and clearing away the dominant, redemptive myths of modern and contemporary ontotheology. This is a position never entertained in the field of philosophy of education. (shrink)

Beginning with a reconsideration of what the school is and has been, this paper explores the idea of the school to come. Emphasizing the governmental role of education in modernity, I offer a line of thinking that calls into question the assumption of both the school and education as possible conduits for either democracy or social justice. Drawing on Derrida’s spectral ontology I argue that any automatic correlation of education with democracy is misguided: especially within redemptive discourses that seek to (...) liberate education from its present enclosure. This rereading of the field of education in the light of an account of the fundamental ontology of its key institution problematizes all rhetorics of education as social salvation. Education, it proposes, cannot be conceived as the ideal soul of a corrupted or as yet defective body, the school. Education—having taken on the character of an ontotheological principle—has become a governmental instrument as much as its specific institutions. This ontological condition can be understood within various accounts of the nature of contemporaneity. This paper considers the monstrous proposal that education be abandoned as the grounds for social, ethical and cultural redemption. The good news is that this abandonment opens the possibility for thinking beyond education, a beyond that is also beyond the strictures of instrumental rationality. (shrink)

This essay examines the educational opportunities of people in poverty who receive social welfare assistance. The dominant political theory underlying social policy (including education policy) in the United States has evolved from 1960s and 1970s welfare liberalism into 1980s and 1990s style neo-conservatism—a theory that embraces principles of the market and individual liberty as paramount social values. Against this backdrop, I review two recent books that provide compelling evidence for this turn and I call for increased understanding of the relationship (...) between social welfare policies and higher education opportunities for those in poverty. (shrink)

The Price of Citizenship: Redefining the American Welfare State Michael B. Katz, 2001, New York, Metropolitan Books. Pp. 469. Hbk. $35.00.Moving Up and Out: Poverty, Education, and the Single Parent Family Lori Holyfield, 2002, Philadelphia, PA, Temple University Press. Pp. xx + 159. Hbk. $59.50 and Pbk. $19.95.This essay examines the educational opportunities of people in poverty who receive social welfare assistance. The dominant political theory underlying social policy (including education policy) in the United States has evolved from 1960s and (...) 1970s welfare liberalism into 1980s and 1990s style neo-conservatism—a theory that embraces principles of the market and individual liberty as paramount social values. Against this backdrop, I review two recent books that provide compelling evidence for this turn and I call for increased understanding of the relationship between social welfare policies and higher education opportunities for those in poverty. (shrink)

This paper surveys critical discourse studies to the present and claims that, to avoid lapsing into comfortable orthodoxy in its mature phase, CDS needs to reassert its transformative radical teleology. The initial part of the paper reasserts the need for a strong social theory given the materialist and context-bound nature of discourse in daily activity. From this basis, the paper then characterizes the “new times” in which contemporary discourse occurs, and briefly surveys those issues typically analyzed, namely political economy, race (...) and gender, and critical literacy. By considering people's ordinary lives, the paper then suggests that subject and agency, and calculative technologies of management deserve, and new modalities need, more research. Transdisciplinarity is encouraged, particularly with social psychology and critical management studies. (shrink)

As debate continues around the nature and values of education, it is important to ask the question of what factors motivate a student to engage with the ends of an educational institution. In this paper, a broad, holistic view of learner motivation, derived from Aristotelian ethics, is used to provide a model to drive institutional change. Focussing on the approach of one Higher Education institution to the particular accommodations required for students with disabilities, the paper identifies three factors which motivate (...) students, a failure to engage with the aims and ends of the educational project, a failure to see that a particular learning aim is worth attaining, and a simple lack of will‐power to attain it. To each of these failures a social cause is identified, and a change in both the institutional culture and the individual learner's approach to their education is suggested. (shrink)

Do psychological perspectives constitute the only way through which the role of musical creativity in education can be addressed, researched and theorised? This essay attempts to offer an alternative view of musical creativity as a deeply social and political form of human praxis, by proposing a perspective rooted in the thought of the political philosopher and activist Cornelius Castoriadis (1922–1997). This is done in two steps. First, an attempt is made to place the pursuit of the concept of musical creativity (...) within a larger educational and societal context of conflicting trajectories that run through (a) Modernity and (b) Education. Then, I revisit the issue of educational value of improvising and composing through creating conceptual links between the process of music-making through improvisation and composition and the project of political autonomy as conceived by Castoriadis. By foregrounding instituting imaginary over instituted imaginary, improvising and composing become active processes of positing new legitimacies, and of creating a music-making context that searches for its own foundations. It is in and through creative musical praxis that we can think about issues of hierarchies, musical values, social dimensions of different music-making processes, our relationship to past values and to historical dimensions of music. By arguing that improvisation and composition might be seen as ways of positing the issue of political autonomy in musical terms, this paper emphasises the role of improvisation and composition as a mode of potentially transformative educational practice that may foster the development of critical consciousness, linking music education to a larger project of re-discovering and at the same time re-defining democracy. (shrink)

Little of the work in critical and hermeneutical psychology has been linked to instructional technology. This article provides a discussion in order to fill the gap in this direction. The article presents a brief genealogy of American IT in relation to the influence of psychology. It also provides a critical and hermeneutical framework for psychology. It then discusses some problems of psychologism focusing on positivism, metaphysics, cultural ecology, and power. The narrow psychologism in IT produces a kind of systematic blindness (...) regarding cultural, political, and other issues. IT professionals are encouraged to engage reflectively with the power‐relations and ethical issues in which they are involved. The article points out a need for looking at psychology more comprehensively. (shrink)

This article reports research in three Nottingham schools, concerned with (1) 'The school as fertile ground: how the ethos of a school enables everyone in it to benefit from the presence of artists in class'; (2) 'Children on the edge: how the arts reach those children who otherwise exclude themselves from class activities, for any reason' and (3) 'Children's voices and choices: how even very young children can learn to express their wishes, and then have them realised through arts projects'. (...) The research methodology was rooted in two modes of inquiry, philosophical investigation and action research. The article draws on this research to argue that arts-based work in school has helped disadvantaged and/or disaffected children to engage in activities (both arts-based and others), and to be able to lay the groundwork for exercising voice and agency as they did so. If social justice is to flourish there is a need for particular kinds of public spaces and a need to create conditions such that children can learn to participate in those spaces, whether or not they are comfortable with the usual settings for 'rational argument' or 'deliberative democracy'. It is suggested that arts-based education, in some forms, is one good way of creating these conditions. (shrink)

This article analyzes the epistemological aims and justification of character education legislation passed by the North Carolina General Assembly. I take this specific state law as representative of the broader national trends in the character education movement. I primarily use the work of Richard Rorty as the theoretical lens for the analysis and critique. I conclude by commending aspects of the legislative effort, but I suggest that greater emphasis must be placed on strengthening students' ethics through democratic action inside and (...) outside schools and not on a right-leaning, conservative, and didactic curriculum. Further, as social foundations educators, it is imperative to make strides in our classrooms to expose preservice teachers to the apparent and hidden contradictions of using character education as a tool of educational reform. (shrink)

Little of the work in critical and hermeneutical psychology has been linked to instructional technology (IT). This article provides a discussion in order to fill the gap in this direction. The article presents a brief genealogy of American IT in relation to the influence of psychology. It also provides a critical and hermeneutical framework for psychology. It then discusses some problems of psychologism focusing on positivism, metaphysics, cultural ecology, and power. The narrow psychologism in IT produces a kind of systematic (...) blindness regarding cultural, political, and other issues. IT professionals are encouraged to engage reflectively with the power‐relations and ethical issues in which they are involved. The article points out a need for looking at psychology more comprehensively (e.g. critical and hermeneutical psychology). (shrink)