While the notion of risk remains under-theorised in moral philosophy, risk aversion and moralist self-protection appear as dominant cultural tendencies saturating educational orientation and practice. Philosophy of education has responded to the educational emphasis on risk management by exposing the unavoidable and positive presence of risk in any endeavour to learn and teach. Taking such responses into account, I discuss how the theoretical connection of risk and education could be radicalised through an ethical approach combined with epistemological and existential concerns. (...) My aim is to propose an ethics that is sensitive to the difference between risks taken and risks imposed and to the cultural variations of what counts as danger. Finally, I explain how the educational relevance of such an ethics requires a prior questioning of the western understanding of self and world that has functioned as a subtext of the dominant view of risk. (shrink)

This essay challenges the current emphasis on certainty, measurement and control in the field of education and the widespread view that confusion hurts students. Drawing on some recent analyses of Socrates as well as my own interpretation of his dialogues, I discuss how he might respond to the quest for certainty in education. Socrates would want us to welcome confusion and embrace uncertainty, and urge us to reconceptualize the quest for certainty as an ongoing process aimed at increasing complexity and (...) enhancing understanding. Based on the insights I gleaned from Socrates, I argue that creating a space for perplexity and uncertainty in our classrooms is crucial for the goal of fostering citizens who are critical and independent thinkers. I conclude this essay by proposing a number of ways in which teacher educators can help their students welcome confusion and embrace uncertainty. (shrink)

Many philosophers of education emphasise the impossibility to really ‘solve’ philosophical—and with that, educational—problems these days. Philosophers have been trying to give philosophy a new, constructive turn in the face of this insolvability. This paper focuses on irony-based approaches that try to exploit the very uncertainty of philosophical issues to further philosophical understanding. We will first briefly discuss a few highlights of historical uses of irony as a philosophical tool. Then we concentrate on two different interpretations of irony, formulated by (...) Bransen and Rorty, that aim at gaining insight into how we make meaning of the world, while at the same time recognising that such an understanding would be impossible. After discussing some problematic aspects of these interpretations a third interpretation of irony is developed, based on a third view of the nature of meaning-making. Following these three interpretations, we will discuss their philosophical merits and the different kinds of insight they can produce for philosophy of education. (shrink)