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Contemporary Philosophies and Theories in Education 11
Joris Vlieghe
Piotr Zamojski
Towards an
Ontology of
Teaching
Thing-centred Pedagogy, Affirmation
and Love for the World
Contemporary Philosophies and Theories
in Education
Volume 11
Series Editors
Jan Masschelein, KU Leuven, Belgium
Lynda Stone, University of North Carolina, USA
Editorial Board
Gert Biesta, Brunel University London, UK
David Hansen, Columbia University, USA
Jorge Larossa, Barcelona University, Spain
Nel Noddings, Stanford University, USA
Roland Reichenbach, University of Zurich, Switzerland
Naoko Saito, Kyoto University, Japan
Paul Smeyers, Ghent University & KU Leuven, Belgium
Paul Standish, UCL Institute of Education, London, UK
Sharon Todd, Maynooth University, Ireland
Scope of the Series
Contemporary Philosophies and Theories in Education signifies new directions and
possibilities out of a traditional field of philosophy and education. Around the globe,
exciting scholarship that breaks down and reformulates traditions in the humanities
and social sciences is being created in the field of education scholarship. This series
provides a venue for publication by education scholars whose work reflect the
dynamic and experimental qualities that characterize today’s academy.
The series associates philosophy and theory not exclusively with a cognitive
interest (to know, to define, to order) or an evaluative interest (to judge, to impose
criteria of validity) but also with an experimental and attentive attitude which is
characteristic for exercises in thought that try to find out how to move in the present
and how to deal with the actual spaces and times, the different languages and prac-
tices of education and its transformations around the globe. It addresses the need to
draw on thought across all sorts of borders and counts amongst its elements the
following: the valuing of diverse processes of inquiry; an openness to various forms
of communication, knowledge, and understanding; a willingness to always continue
experimentation that incorporates debate and critique; and an application of this
spirit, as implied above, to the institutions and issues of education.
Authors for the series come not only from philosophy of education but also from
curriculum studies and critical theory, social sciences theory, and humanities theory
in education. The series incorporates volumes that are trans- and inner-disciplinary.
The audience for the series includes academics, professionals and students in the
fields of educational thought and theory, philosophy and social theory, and critical
scholarship.
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/8638

Joris Vlieghe • Piotr Zamojski
Towards an Ontology
of Teaching
Thing-centred Pedagogy, Affirmation
and Love for the World
Joris Vlieghe Piotr Zamojski
KU Leuven University of Gdańsk
Leuven, Belgium Gdańsk, Poland
All pictures are copyright of the New York Philharmonic Society.
ISSN 2214-9759 ISSN 2214-9767 (electronic)

Contemporary Philosophies and Theories in Education
ISBN 978-3-030-16002-9 ISBN 978-3-030-16003-6 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16003-6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019936166
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of
the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation,
broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information
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protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
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The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Contents
1 Introduction�� 1
2 Education for Education’s Sake: The Idea
of a Thing-Centred Pedagogy �� 11
1 The Specificity of Education�� 13
2 The School as a Unique and Contingent Arrangement�� 15
3 The Household, the Political and the School�� 18
4 From Student-Centeredness to a Thing-Centered Pedagogy�� 22
3 The Event, the Messianic and the Affirmation of Life�� 29
1 Event, Fidelity and Truth�� 30
2 The Messianic and the Affirmation of Life�� 32
3 Beyond Dialectics/After Critique �� 33
4 Teaching and Love for the World�� 35
5 The Gift of Teaching. Or: Making a Difference to our World�� 41
4 Educational Equality and the Universal Excess of Teaching �� 45
1 Equality and the Dialectics of Identity and Difference�� 46
2 Practicing Equality�� 49
3 Gathering Around a Thing�� 54
4 An Unconditional Gift for All�� 58
5 Immanence and Transcendence in Education�� 63
1 Reconceptualizing Life in Terms of Immanence
and Transcendence�� 64
2 The Dialectics of Transcendence�� 66
3 Immanence in Education: Towards an Autotelic Account�� 69
4 Stepping into the Trap of Transcendence: Functionalization
and Politicization�� 71
5 Turning Education into Ethics: Another
Transcendent Approach�� 73
6 Immanence and Transcendence: Life and Education�� 75
v
vi Contents
6 Towards Immanence in Education: From Emancipation to

Responsibility �� 79
1 The Logic of Emancipation�� 80
2 The Logic of Responsibility�� 88
7 Towards Immanence in Education: From Expertise to Ethos�� 97
1 Teaching as a Matter of Expertise�� 98
2 Teaching as a Matter of Care�� 101
3 Immanence Versus Transcendence Once More:
Care of the Self and Self-Knowledge �� 103
4 Care of the Self, Immanence and the Question
of the Other �� 105
5 Constituting Oneself as a Teacher�� 107
8 Leonard Bernstein as an Educator:
Teaching Out of Love for the World�� 113
1 By Way of Introduction: Some ‘Methodological
Considerations’ �� 114
2 An Excerpt from Bernstein’s Teaching�� 116
3 Principles of Teaching Out of Love�� 118
4 Words and Gestures�� 121
5 An Unconditional Attitude of Affirmation�� 124
9 Leonard Bernstein as an Educationalist: Sharing
the Love for Something Worth the Effort�� 131
1 Returning to a Thing and the Effort of Fidelity�� 132
2 Love for a Thing and Love for the New Generation�� 135
3 Entry Point, Caesura, and the Invitation to Independent Study�� 137
10 Love and Hate for the World: The Educational
and Its Relationship with the Political �� 149
1 Educational Epoché of Politics �� 150
2 The Relation Between Education and Politics:
An Initial Taxonomy �� 154
3 Education and Politics: An Issue of (Non)Relationality �� 158
4 Education Versus Politics: Love and Hate for the World�� 160
5 Hope in the Present �� 163
References �� 167

Chapter 1
Introduction
It has become a cliché in much contemporary philosophy of education to start an

argument by criticizing the dominant discourse that structures educational practice
and informs educational policy today. Has it not become common sense to hold that
the dominant way people think and speak about education contributes to the aban-
doning, if not destroying of the complex, relational and transformational phenom-
enon which education is? And, how many educational philosophers would contradict
the analysis that schools and universities are driven by a logic of optimization and
accountability, that students and pupils are increasingly positioned as customers
solely interested in learning gains and individual satisfaction, that curriculum con-
tents are progressively shaped by an employability agenda, and that the teaching
profession is reduced to the possession of a set of technical skills and didactic
competences?
Without denying the accuracy of these analyses, we want to develop in this book
a more positive approach towards education – one which sets a step beyond a criti-
cal approach. This is in line with the core ideas we laid out, together with Naomi
Hogdson, in our Manifesto for a Post-critical Pedagogy (Hodgson et al. 2017). This
book is to be read as a post-critical perspective on teaching, which attempts to
approach teaching in a fully affirmative way – and more exactly: to articulate what
teaching is and what makes a teacher into a teacher. Therefore, we choose not to add
more critical elements and dimensions to existing analyses of the many ways in
which teachers contribute to passing on bourgeois and Eurocentric values, installing
a passive attitude in their students, and maintaining oppression, racism and inequal-
ity, or how teachers themselves have become a cog in a bureaucratic and administra-
tive machine, the mere executors of plans devised by experts and policy makers, a
new proletarian caste of unthinking laborers that have no other job than to slavishly
follow scripted and national curricula, and so on and so forth. Instead, we want to
sketch here a portrait of the teacher that retrieves what it means to be a teacher in
spite of the criticisms just mentioned (and many others).
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 1

J. Vlieghe, P. Zamojski, Towards an Ontology of Teaching, Contemporary
Philosophies and Theories in Education 11,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16003-6_1
2 1 Introduction
Of course, taking such a path might be called simply naive. Nevertheless, as we

defend in the Manifesto, it is time – today more than ever – to bring a positive story,
and to draw again attention to aspects of teaching we tend to side-track or to forget
about, because we have become so accustomed to solely criticizing what is wrong
in the world of education. Again, we do not want to suggest that critical studies of
education and teaching are wrong-headed and unnecessary, but we do hold that they
cannot be the be-all and end-all. The main issue we have with the critical way of
thinking is twofold. First, it has become an almost inevitable framework within
which to think and speak about education, and hence it makes us blind for any affir-
mative view on teaching. Second, it also seems to have become ineffectual. There is
no end to debunking the wrongs of this world and to convincing others (and our-
selves) that we are the victims of false consciousness. As we will show in this book,
following a critical perspective all the way through amounts to agreeing to resigna-
tion, relativism and cynicism. Therefore, the critical paradigm has lost its transfor-
mative potential altogether. Or, in Latour’s (2004) words, criticality has run out of
steam. It can only add more critique to critique, and eternally defer any vision of
what is good and desirable to a future that will never arrive.
Instead of displaying naiveté, we believe that our affirmative take on education
and teaching is the only one which brings hope in the present world. This speaks to
another claim which is central to the argument we develop in this book, viz. that a
critical approach is essentially a political endeavour which testifies to a hate for the
present world, whereas education can be conceived of in terms of an unconditional
love for this world. As such, politics and education are predicated upon mutually
exclusive logics. The main idea we defend in this book is that teaching is in itself
staying true to the love one has for a particular subject matter. Or more exactly: that
this love, as well as the relentless effort to put this love to public display for the new
generation, and to make them attentive to what is good in the world, so that they can
begin anew with it, defines the teacher as teacher.
By fleshing out such a substantial account of the teacher, we take sides against a
particular strand of critical thinking that has become dominant today, and which
actually comes down to a suppression of teaching, if not to a radical negation of the
value of teaching, i.e. the denial that teaching is a meaningful educational practice.1
As Gert Biesta (2017) shows – in a recent book that also tries to retrieve, or redis-
cover, teaching – the critical discourse has to be understood against the backdrop of
a discussion between two ‘models’. On the one hand, the traditional, but outdated
transmission model: a teacher-centered model that assumes that teaching causes
1
With the terms critical thinking and critical tradition we do not mainly refer to the tradition of
critical theory in education (e.g. Adorno, Mollenhauer, Klafki, Gruschka) and critical pedagogy
(e.g. Freire, Giroux, McLaren, Kincheloe). It is true that our own arguments in many respects run
counter to this tradition, as it exemplifies what we call ‘critical’ here. However, our relation with it
is far more complex. While, on the one hand our own views dovetail with some of the basic
assumptions informing this tradition, on the other hand, our rendering of the term ‘critical’ is
broader and it encompasses many other theoretical strands that have become dominant today.
1 Introduction 3
learning in the same way that the sun causes one’s skin to burn, and that there is no
learning without teaching. On the other hand, the progressive model which is more
fashionable today: not teaching, but learning is the central notion for adequately
understanding educational processes. Teaching can contribute or hinder this natural
process, and the default position is the latter: teachers shouldn’t be in authority, but
only facilitate learning in their students. Students should be in charge over their own
learning process, and actively construct knowledge and skills, driven by their own
interests and the problems they meet in their own life world. Good teaching is
teacher-light.
Now, both models have shortcomings, which have been severely criticized by the
critical pedagogy approach (Ibidem). Obviously, the traditional model is to be con-
demned on grounds of killing off the capacity to become autonomous and critical
subjects and of deforming the character of students so that they become willing to
accept the conditions of a massified industrial society, and to contribute to its persis-
tence. But, the progressive model is to be denounced on similar grounds: the stress
on individual learning plays in the hand of the post-industrial knowledge economy.
Students today are constantly required to be maximally productive, creative, flexi-
ble, innovative, resilient, and above all unique. This, surreptitiously, contributes to
the present status quo: all societal and political problems become a question of
individual accountability. Poverty, sickness, unemployment and inhumane working
conditions are people’s own responsibility. As such the “learnification of education”
(Biesta 2006) systematically contributes to existing forms of oppression, violence
and inequality.
For critical pedagogues, the solution to this consists of acknowledging that edu-
cation and teaching have a political function. On the one hand, this leads to unearth-
ing how both traditional and progressivist models serve the status quo. On the other
hand, this entails a call for the right form of education: teaching students to become
engaged, critical, autonomous and community-oriented citizens who support a
strong democracy. However, this once more boils down to a marginalization of
teaching. This is not only because, when push comes to shove, progressivist peda-
gogies, such as dialogical, student-led and problem-based learning, are the preferred
methods. This is also because teaching gets thoroughly instrumentalized and func-
tionalized: teaching is only accepted in so far it contributes to established goals,
which – as we said – are essentially political: societal emancipation and democratic
citizenship.
In this book we advocate the exact opposite position. Although we do admit that
learning takes place without teaching, that there always is political meaning to what
happens at school, and that we should be opposed to all forms of oppression, vio-
lence, and injustice that education (re)produces, we also think that teaching should
not be reduced to an activity the meaning of which is to be understood from its
contribution to political goals – worthy as they are. Doing so, we forget what teach-
ing is: we do not stay true to our own experience with teaching. Therefore, in this
book we try to speak out anew, i.e. to find the right language to articulate what
teaching is.
4 1 Introduction
To do so, we deem it necessary to develop a strong account of teaching, meaning

that we look at teaching as a practice that is meaningful in and of itself (in spite of
its inevitable factual entanglement with political processes). That is why we call our
project ontological. With this we do not mean that we try to establish an essence of
teaching in any traditional or strongly normative way, or that we want to define the
necessary and a priori conditions of possibility that decide on good teaching. That
would be pure philosophical arrogance. Instead, we try to connect to what we all
can experience ourselves: the touchstone for the analyses we present in this book is
whether or not they speak to people who have been taught (and we guess that is all
of our readership) and those who are teachers themselves (whom we especially
envisage as our readers). In that sense the project we take up is also phenomenologi-
cal through and through. We want to bring to the surface what we already know and
what we already do, but which often remains difficult to render explicit. Thus, the
aspiration of such an exercise is merely to give an account that readers (hopefully)
will recognize, and which highlights aspects of experience that make a difference –
to paraphrase here Norm Friesen’s (2011) beautiful definition of phenomenology.
What we propose in this book is confident and vulnerable at the same time. On
the one hand, we will use a language that might sound rather assertive. We do this,
willingly and conscious of the exaggeration it involves, and for the benefit of paint-
ing the clearest picture of the teacher that is possible. In order to give an account that
makes a difference, it seems important to us to make strong claims and to introduce
sharp distinctions and oppositions (a method we will defend further with Arendt in
Chap. 2). On the other hand, it is up to the reader to verify what we say. We assume
that s/he can recognise her/his own experiences (of teaching and of being taught) in
the ontological description of teaching we give. If this is not the case, the argument
we draw simply doesn’t hold.
We are also inspired here by the Germanophone tradition of Pädagogik, in the
first place by the later work of Klaus Mollenhauer (1986) who adheres to the idea of
a pedagogical hermeneutics. With this he means that rather than assuming that,
because we all have our own different experiences, we cannot ever come to a com-
mon understanding of educational phenomena, and of teaching more specifically,
we should trust and be willing to test out that we can come up with a language that
resonates with concrete experiences. Hermeneutics is not a starting point leading up
to the unfortunate observation that in the end we are all prisoners of our language
games, but a goal to be strived after. In that sense, the propositions in this book are
an intervention and an invitation to work out a – hopefully – common understanding
of teaching.
In that sense, we certainly do not want to come up with a final description of
teaching, nor do we aspire to prescribe what teachers should do. Instead, we pro-
pose a way of speaking, thinking and conceiving that might enable teachers to rec-
ognise the intrinsic worth of what they are already doing and experiencing, and
1 Introduction 5
possibly, a language that might also enable others (i.e. future teachers) to teach.2
This might help them in inventing their own way of being a teacher. We do not want
to impose our views on the reader, but rather develop a language that could be used
to reclaim teaching – against the background of the analysis shared by many educa-
tional philosophers today that teaching is at risk of becoming a devalued, supressed
and illegitimate educational practice.
As such, we take sides with those who believe that the main task of educational
philosophy and theory is to disclose “what we do and how we comport ourselves
when we educate”.3 These are the words of Klaus Prange (2005, p. 7, translation J.V.
and P.Z.), who is another representative of the Germanophone tradition of Pädagogik,
and to whom we will return later in this book (more exactly when we will discuss
his idea that the answer to the question ‘what is teaching in itself?’ is: showing [zei-
gen]). Prange calls for “rendering explicit and articulating in concepts the under-
standing of education we have always put in practice, albeit only implicitly. As such
we will disclose the unique being of education, as it is today and as it was in the
past, over and against other spheres of action, so as to come to a more profound
understanding of education” (Ibidem, p. 8, translation J.V. and P.Z.).4
With Prange and over and against a critical perspective on education and teach-
ing, we just want to articulate, but in a more precise manner, what we experience
when we teach or are being taught. In that sense, what we are looking for is exactly
an ontology of teaching. Another way of putting this is: we are after retrieving
teaching as a profound educational category – a category that matters and that
makes a difference. Or, as Gert Biesta would have it, finding a properly educational
language to speak about education, and as a result give back teaching to teachers
(Biesta 2015a). As will become clear in the book, the background to this is that we
regard education as an autonomous sphere of human action, i.e. as a dimension of
our lives that has its own logic, and that therefore needs to be expressed in a lan-
guage that is built-up from the inside out. The proper way to address education is on
its own terms, and not in terms that stem from other spheres of life.
There is another reason for naming the project in this book ontological. This is
because our analyses rely heavily on the Heideggerian approach of distinguishing
between the ontic and the ontological (Heidegger 1962). To grasp why it is useful to
2
This way of seeing the function of educational theory might be traced back to the founder of
modern Pädagogik, Johan Friedrich Herbart (1908 [1806]), who argued that “[t]he aim of all who
educate and demand education is determined by the range of thought [Gesichtkreis] they bring to
the subject” (p. 78). In that sense, it might be claimed that what we are aiming at in this book is to
develop a language that refers to a range of thought, a Gesichtkreis, within which one could under-
stand and practice teaching (Cf. Zamojski 2015).
3
The original German text reads “was tun wir und wie verhalten wir uns, wenn wir erziehen?”
4
The original German text reads “das immer schon ausgeübte und mehr oder minder deutlich
ausgesprochene Verständnis von Erziehung herauszuheben, begrifflich zu fassen und damit die
Eigenart des Erzieherischen heute wie früher herauszuschälen, gegen andere Verhaltungen abzuhe-
ben und so zu einem vertieften Erziehungsverständnis beizutragen.”
6 1 Introduction
do so, consider the following simple illustration. The fact that we are never alone,
but always live in the presence of others that might be radically different from our-
selves (Mitsein), is an inescapable part of living a human existence. It is an ontologi-
cal condition. It is essential to being the kind of beings we are. However, this
condition doesn’t fixate anything at the ontic level, i.e. the many forms in which
concrete beings (individuals) give shape, contingently, to their living together with
others. At the ontic level, there is a rich variety ranging from the most sociable
people to the most extreme misanthropes and loners. The important point is that
both sociability and social isolation should be understood as ontic responses to an
ontological condition. It is this which first makes sociability and isolation
intelligible.
Analogously, we will speak about ‘the teacher’ throughout the book as an onto-
logical figure, which is to be distinguished from particular teachers and teachings –
the ontic level. This is, we will try to flesh out what it essentially means to be a
teacher, but this is not meant as a formula from which it can be deduced what good
teaching is in concrete, personal, historically and culturally contingent contexts.
What we try to articulate are some essential dimensions we need to take into account
when trying to understand what makes a teacher into a teacher, but this has no fur-
ther normative consequences. For instance, if we define the teacher in terms of love
for a subject matter, this is an ontological description. But, from this no prescription
can be deduced, e.g. that all teachers need to be passionate, fanatic and overly
enthusiastic. Instead, the point is that love for a subject matter has many diverse
forms on the ontic level, and in some cases internal control and self-restraint can be
ontologically understood as the expression of love and devotion.
Such an ontological account entails that we give a description of teaching as
distinguished from many other phenomena, practices, experiences, and actions that
come with the job of a person that works as a teacher in a particular educational
institution. Hence, we want to get to the meat, so to speak, distil a ‘pure’ account of
the teacher, and set teaching apart from all other educational and not-educational
practices, tasks, events, situations, etc., that people institutionally positioned as
teachers have to deal with. This is not to deny that in the real world teaching is a
much more messy reality than the way we portray it in this book. Of course, from
an ontic perspective (e.g. when a sociologist or a historian looks at the teacher), it is
inevitably the case that teachers support students in ways that parents, friends, coun-
sellors, medical professionals, guardians, etc. do (and in some circumstances they
might actually take these roles over completely). We hold nothing against this, but
in order to articulate a fully educational ontology of teaching, these other phenom-
ena need to be bracketed out. Doing this, once more, does not mean that we are
disregarding these other real-life phenomena – they are still important, and they
influence teachers and their teaching. But they are not themselves teaching.
In sum, our ontology of teaching refers to an affirmative and substantial account
of what it means to be a teacher: a mere phenomenological depiction without nor-
mative pretences, but one which suspends any critical concern. Whether or not the
1 Introduction 7
account makes sense depends on its level of recognisability by the reader. As

explained, we want to formulate a language that speaks to us today, and in particular
to those who are teachers themselves. In that sense, as we will claim in the book, our
endeavour could be compared to making a portrait – the quality of which is to be
judged on its capacity to show something that strikes us as relevant and meaningful,
i.e. something that appeals to our own experiences with teaching. That is also why
in two chapters of this book we zoom in on a most concrete example of a teacher,
Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990) – the composer and conductor who also taught the
American public about classical music during his educational television shows. We
claim that a careful and detailed analysis of his performance (of teaching) and his
writings (on teaching) is helpful in fleshing out an ontological account of teaching
(Chaps. 8 and 9). This is not to claim that Bernstein is according to us ‘the’ example
of the teacher – the best and/or the only example. Then again, the account we pres-
ent here would end up being normative and biased. But, being an excellent illustra-
tion, and one we both happen to be familiar with, Bernstein offers very concrete and
accessible material for analysis. This does not imply that there are no other and
better examples, and therefore this book is also an invitation to think about other
telling illustrations that might do the same job.
An important part of such an analysis, is to take into account the gestures of the
teacher, as will become clear later on. That is the reason why throughout the book
the reader will find still photographs of Bernstein ‘at work’ as a teacher. We have
chosen to illustrate this by incorporating about ten still photographs throughout this
book. Obviously, these are not meant to put this figure on a pedestal. Neither is this
selection of stills meant to focus on the figure of Bernstein. They should be viewed
and read as pictures of a teacher who displays particular teacherly attitudes and
gesticulations, which are related to the subject matter at hand, music. In Chaps. 8
and 9 we will indicate in greater detail why we have chosen each of these ten stills.
Of course, this book is first and foremost a philosophical study, and hence it is
also a conversation with other authors without whom it would have been utterly
impossible just to begin with developing an ontology of teaching. However, con-
trary to much work in the field of philosophy of education, we do not limit ourselves
to one author, a few authors, or a particular school of thought. And, we do not aim
at giving an exegesis of authors. Instead we refer to a variety of authors which have
proven to be interesting for developing a coherent and substantial account of the
teacher. But, it is fair to say that our main source of inspiration is Hannah Arendt’s
(1968) defence of education for education’s sake, and that this lays the groundwork
for the rest of the book (Chap. 2). Nevertheless, we also set a few steps beyond the
Arendtian frame, and that is where other philosophers come in – and, again, the
reader might be surprised to find such a colourful hotchpotch together in one book.
Moreover, most of the authors we use are also not educational theorists themselves.
The reason is that we do not elaborate a particular philosopher’s standpoint on edu-
cation, but rather start from a profound educational issue and then look for insights,
arguments and formulations in those philosophers we think can help us out.
8 1 Introduction
We make use of the work of Badiou and Agamben (Chap. 3), and of Rancière
(Chap. 4) to specify Arendt’s general claims about education in relation to teaching.
Based on reading together Badiou and Agamben, we will argue that affirmation,
love for the world and drawing attention to some ‘thing’ (i.e. the subject matter)
constitute the being of the teacher. This will be developed further with Heidegger,
Latour and Rancière – to whom we also turn to complement Arendt’s inadequate
reflections on the issue of (in)equality in education. We turn then once more to
Agamben (Chap. 5), and to the distinction he introduced between immanent and
transcendent philosophies of life, to spell out in more generic terms how our
approach should be qualified. We then go on developing what immanentism means,
discussing the work of Picht and Jonas (Chap. 6), in order to argue for to the role of
responsibility in defining the teacher. Thereafter, Foucault will be our guide to
sketch a more concrete picture of the teacher in terms of a teacherly ethos and to
specify what a teacher training program that conforms to the ideas developed in this
book would look like (Chap. 7). As already indicated, the next two chapters deal
with Leonard Bernstein. First, we give a detailed analysis of his performance on the
Young People’s Concerts (Chap. 8). This is, we present Bernstein as a teacher.
Then, we zoom in on Bernstein’s writings on education, to portray Bernstein as an
educationalist (Chap. 9). In the last chapter we discuss at length an issue which is
probably the most thorny, if not controversial point in this book: the relationship
between education and politics. Here we are much inspired by the work of Elisabeth
Ellsworth (1989), although we take her ideas in a new direction. Given the post-
critical commitment that informs our project, this is probably the cornerstone to our
attempt to develop an ontology of teaching. Taking teaching fully seriously, an
epoché of politics is requisite, but this doesn't entail that these spheres are entirely
unrelated.
This project is the offshoot of an ongoing discussion between the two authors
that started at the conference (Re)thinking school, which took place at the University
of Gdańsk on 25 and 26 September 2015. We discovered that we shared the same
concerns about the role and place of the school, and that we were both thinking
along the same lines. This is partly because our own thought about education is
profoundly indebted to the work of Jan Masschelein and Maarten Simons. At the
same time, it appeared that we developed our own ideas against the background of
different authors and traditions, and more specifically Badiou and Agamben. The
idea for this book materialized during our reading and discussion of the two books
which these two thinkers wrote on Saint Paul (Badiou 2003; Agamben 2005). Here
we found a most inspiring language to start thinking anew about education, and
more exactly about teaching – a plan that was also sparked by our mutual interest in
music education and the figure of Bernstein as a music teacher.
This book could not have been written without the rich and stimulating discus-
sions we had with colleagues and friends who have shown an interest in our project:
Tyson Lewis, Stefano Oliverio, Sharon Todd, Jarosław Jendza, Hans Schildermans,
Paul Smeyers, David Lewin, Stefan Ramaekers, Norm Friesen, Naomi Hodgson,
Tomasz Szkudlarek and Morten Korsgaard. We want to express here a special word
1 Introduction 9
of gratitude to Olga Ververi, with whom we watched, analyzed and discussed epi-
sodes of Bernstein’s Young People Concerts for many hours, to the Springer assis-
tant editor Annemarie Keur, who supported us in the production of this book with
great diligence and care, and for Gabryel Smith who helped us getting clearance to
include photographs from the New York Philharmonic Archive.
The second chapter of this book is a more elaborated version of Vlieghe, J.
(2016c) Edukacja w warunkach szkolnych. Ku pedagogice skupionej na rzeczy.
Studia i Badania Naukowe. Pedagogika. The third chapter is based on Vlieghe, J.
and Zamojski, P. (2017). The event, the messianic and the affirmation of life: A
post-critical perspective on education with Agamben and Badiou. Policy Futures in
Education.
Fig. 1.1
© New York Philharmonic Society
Chapter 2
Education for Education’s Sake: The Idea
of a Thing-Centred Pedagogy
The affirmative account of teaching we develop in this book is predicated upon a

specific understanding of the concept of education which we draw to a large extent
from Arendt’s (1961) text, The Crisis in Education. In this essay, Arendt presents an
uncompromising criticism of things that, in her view, go wrong in the American
school system of the 50s, but her arguments could equally be read as a comment on
many things that happen in the world of education today. Against this background,
Arendt looks for a precise definition of what she calls “the essence of education”,
and it is to this intellectual exercise we turn in this chapter. We take from Arendt
some fundamental insights, concepts and distinctions that lay the groundwork for the
chapters to follow. More exactly, we take from her work the idea that education
needs to be carefully distinguished from processes such as learning, instruction and
socialization, but also from other spheres of life, such as family, politics and the
sphere of work. More positively speaking, Arendt seems to provide a view according
to which education is good in itself, and needs no external justification. Education is
for education’s sake. And, this is the main idea we want to develop in this book.
Furthermore, we will build further on her understanding of education as an intergen-
erational meeting during which the existing generation passes over the ‘old’ world to
the newcomers – out of love for our common world, but also out of love for the new
generation. This, then, grants the opportunity to bring new beginnings to this world.
Although Arendt’s own writing on education is quite limited, she has become
today a major reference point for educational philosophy and theory (e.g. Gordon
2001; Levinson 2005; Lewis 2009; Masschelein and Simons 2013a; Bergdahl and
Langmann 2017). This chapter contributes to the existing scholarship on her work
in three ways. First, we develop Arendt’s arguments in a ‘materialist’ direction. This
is, we show that her defence of an autonomous sphere of education, distinguished
from other dimensions of life, is dependent upon particular material and technologi-
cal conditions. Our reading is also materialist in that we suggest that Arendt’s
renowned criticism of student-centeredness does not necessarily entail a return to
teacher-centeredness. Instead, we argue, it involves a thing-centred pedagogy.
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 11

J. Vlieghe, P. Zamojski, Towards an Ontology of Teaching, Contemporary
Philosophies and Theories in Education 11,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16003-6_2
12 2 Education for Education’s Sake: The Idea of a Thing-Centred Pedagogy
Briefly put, this means that it is the concrete thing one studies in the classroom, i.e.
the subject matter, which has authority over both student and teacher and which
defines both as student and teacher.
Our second point is that this thing-centred approach goes together with particular
forms of educational practice (e.g. studying (Lewis 2015b) and repetitive exercise
(Cf. Vlieghe 2013)). It also entails a specific form of instruction, which Arendt
briefly analyses in terms of “love for the world” and the specialization of the teacher
in a particular subject matter (rather than in the art of teaching). What we essentially
try to do in this book is to flesh out in much greater detail than Arendt suggests
herself what this particular form of instruction comes down to – and for which we
want to reclaim a language of teaching which has become increasingly problematic
in our day and age (Cf. Biesta 2017). We will lay out its ontological structures, be it
not in an essentialist way, but in terms of aspects of what it means to be a teacher.
Third, in this book we want to take up and develop a particular Arendtian ‘meth-
odology’. In her essay on the crisis of education, Arendt makes very sharp and
unyielding claims about what is and what is not educational, and this has caused
much criticism in readers, even those sympathetic to her main train of thought (e.g.
Todd 2010). Nevertheless, as the subtitle of the book in which this text was first
published indicates, in order to deal with the pressing educational issues our world
is faced with, one needs to conduct “exercises in thought”. Here this means: starting
from bold and sometimes axiomatic statements, and to develop them rigorously, if
not radically, in order to see how such an experiment might help us in coming to a
better understanding of what education is. In this chapter, we follow Arendt’s
approach and start with conducting a similar and not less radical Arendtian exercise,
with the explicit objective to see if – and to what extent – it speaks to the present
world of education.
Hence, in a first section, we will carefully distinguish education from many phe-
nomena that are ‘educational’ solely in a secondary or superficial sense. We do this
because more and more all processes in which people acquire new knowledge, skill
and attitudes tend to be immediately and without much thought identified as educa-
tional. However, for Arendt (1961, pp. 195–196) and ourselves, education has a
precise beginning and an end,1 and it is dependent upon specific spatial and tempo-
ral conditions – which we will call, following Jan Masschelein and Maarten Simons
(2013a), school conditions. Hence, in the second section, we define the school in
terms of concrete and unique, formal and material characteristics, which can be
traced back to the Ancient Greek world. Taking issue, in the third section, with
Arendt’s plea for the autonomy of the school and with her critique of constructivism,
we develop in the last section a thing-centred perspective that is all about keeping
alive the possibility of a rejuvenation of our common world.
1
Saying this, however, does not imply an understanding of education as a process with precisely
defined intentions and outcomes. What we mean here is that education requires a detachment from
the family sphere, and so it has to start at a particular age. Moreover, it is essential for education to
happen that students belong to a new generation, which means that education ends when one
becomes an adult.
1 The Specificity of Education 13
1 The Specificity of Education
At first sight, education might happen anytime and everywhere: parents demanding
their children to be polite to other people, school teachers convincing students to eat
fruit rather than candy bars, employees learning how to fill out a new form, and –
why not – grandparents who are instructed how to operate a smartphone by their
own grandchildren. However, none of these instances would count as education in
Arendt’s book. Although in all these examples much learning and instruction takes
place, they cannot be called properly educational.
For Arendt, who follows Schleiermacher (2000) on this point, education is essen-
tially something that happens when an existing generation gets involved with the
new generation, by welcoming and introducing them to the world they commonly
inhabit. Moreover, and here Arendt is close to Heidegger’s (1962) analysis of the
basic conditions (Existentiale) of human existence,2 education is an inevitable
dimension of our common humanity: it is an ontological rather than an ontic catego-
ry.3 We have no choice but to be confronted with the advent of new generations
(unless of course our species would become infertile one day). Analogous to the
way in which we cannot escape death (Sein-zum-Tode) or cannot avoid sharing the
world with others that have very different opinions about how to lead our lives
(Mitsein), we also must respond to the challenge we encounter with the arrival of
each new generation. Whereas politics is the proper response to our being together
with others (what Arendt [1958] calls plurality4), and philosophy and religion a way
to deal with the fact of death, education is the answer we – the existing generation –
must give to the advent of newcomers in an already existing world.
Therefore, adults can learn from children and they might learn many new things
after leaving school, but in the last two examples we listed (learning how to fill out
a new form, and grandparents taught by their grandchildren about smartphones), it
does not make sense to say that they are being educated. The first two examples
(learning to be polite and to eat healthy) come closer to what according to Arendt
the essence of education is. Nonetheless, rather than being conducive to education,
these cases concern mere socialization (Arendt 1961, p. 195): here children learn
how to make it in life and how to live well in future society. They acquire the basic
skills and knowledge necessary to make our societies safe and well-ordered envi-
2
Although Arendt was quite critical of existential phenomenology, we will present her thoughts as
closely related to the Heideggerian project of articulating the basic ontological structures of human
life (Cf. Hinchman and Hinchman 1984).
3
This is also a point which Klaus Mollenhauer makes in Forgotten Connections: even those (such
as many belonging to the post-Second World War generation in Germany) who refuse to educate
the new generation still educate. One cannot not educate (Mollenhauer 2013).
4
Of course, Arendt also holds that politics is only possible thanks to the uniqueness of every human
life, and hence predicated upon natality. However, in terms of answering to existential conditions
it is possible to distinguish between the domains of education and politics by claiming that the last
sphere inevitably deals with plurality, whereas – as we will show in this book – plurality doesn’t
play a key role in defining the former sphere. In The crisis in Education (1961, p. 174), Arendt
literally states that the essence of education is natality.
ronments. However, for Arendt, there is more to education than solely ensuring the
well-functioning of the society we live in. Education is also the passing on of the
existing world to the next generation in such a way that the young can begin anew
with this world. As such we respond to the existential condition of natality (Ibidem,
p. 174). With every child that is born (in an ontic, i.e. biological sense), there is also
the possibility of beginning all over again with the world (birth or newness in an
ontological sense). Hence, education is about the possibility of transformation in a
radical sense of that word – not about the continuation of an established order of
things, as in the first two examples we listed.
Stated differently, whereas education (always) implies instruction and learning,5
it is not the case that all forms of instruction and learning are educational. This is
not to say that the four examples we mentioned are meaningless activities. On the
contrary. But, there is a danger of an inflation of the meaning of the word education
if we regard it as a synonym for learning and instruction. This is of the greatest
importance, in view of the “learnification of education” (Biesta 2010a) we are wit-
nessing today, as we already mentioned in the introduction. This is a tendency which
has implications for the whole of society (Cf. the “pedagogization of society” as
pointed out by Rancière (1991) and Masschelein and Simons (2013a)). Every soci-
etal issue is defined in terms of lack of competence and needs to be resolved in
terms of the controlled acquisition of the necessary competences. For instance – as
we have already mentioned – unemployment is no longer defined as a problem with
societal or economic roots (e.g. there are not enough decent positions for everyone),
but as a learning deficit in individual employees. To give another example, parenting
is more and more dealt with as a learnable skill rather than as a state of being which
comes naturally with becoming an adult: books, television shows and websites with
professional advice abound, and the societal (and increasingly more also the gov-
ernmental) pressure on taking this advice seriously is enormous (Cf. Ramaekers and
Suissa 2012). In all domains of life, we are constantly addressed as subjects in need
of learning. There is no escape. Even when visiting the toilet there is a poster hang-
ing on the wall explaining us in detail how to wash our hands.
Clearly, adults taking a supplementary training to get a new employment, parents
learning the latest expert knowledge on how to raise their children, or all of us being
reminded of the simplest rules of hygiene are not educational in the sense Arendt
defines it. For her, education is taking place between an existing and a new genera-
tion, and it involves the possibility for newcomers to begin anew with the world.
The last examples of learnification and pedagogization of our society illustrate
rather well that what is at stake here is the continuation, rather than the renewal of
our world: we must learn things in order to become productive, flexible and reliable
parts of a society obsessed with economic productivity and the avoidance of psy-
chological and medical health risks (Cf. Sennett 2007). Whether we want to live in
such a society and whether we could take the world in a different direction is not an
5
To a more radical perspective, it is conceivable that there is education without learning, as
defended in Gert Biesta’s last book, where he develops the example of “adopting a concept”
(Biesta 2017). In view of the stress we put on the thing of study, we would disagree with this point
of view.
2 The School as a Unique and Contingent Arrangement 15
issue in a learnified society. In order for it to be possible for a society to really reju-
venate itself, and – for instance – to give up the idea that productivity and risk avoid-
ance should be the structuring principles of a good life in common – we need
education, and more precisely schooling (and certainly not just learning and social-
ization). We will come back to this possibility of renewal of the world in the last part
of this chapter. First, we specify what we mean by school education.
2 The School as a Unique and Contingent Arrangement
So far, we have argued that education is a very specific and narrowly defined phe-
nomenon. So is schooling. We are easily inclined to regard schools as institutions
each and every society has, i.e. as if it concerns a necessary and universal phenom-
enon. Of course, it is most likely that every society needs a system of instruction to
initiate the next generation into the world. However, it could be argued that only
specific societies, thanks to the contingencies of history, have developed schools.
This is to say that school is not so much an institution (i.e. something to be defined
in view of a societal function), neither is it an ideal we should try to realize every-
where, but a unique arrangement of introducing newcomers to the world, i.e. a
particular way of bringing together adult and young people, bodies and souls around
a common subject matter (Stiegler 2010; Masschelein and Simons 2013a).
In order to give a more detailed explanation of this idea, first consider an analogi-
cal example: matrimony. From a sociological point of view, this could be considered
an institution: a way of living together between adults (and children) in order to
secure procreation and to resolve conflicts over claims on property when people
come to die. Likewise matrimony could be seen as an ideal: a lasting and fulfilling
way of going through life together – a dream we all cherish, but which hardly ever
materializes (except in Hollywood films and popular songs). However, matrimony
could also be regarded as a contingent arrangement of living together, because there
have been societies which functioned very well without matrimony as we know it
today (e.g. the ancient Roman familia). It is not a universal phenomenon. Moreover,
it is an arrangement because once people are wedded their behaviour is automati-
cally steered in particular ways: going alone on a holiday or lie-in till noon every
weekend are less likely, if not impossible, when one has a partner and children to
live together with. This arrangement makes us do particular things, and prevents
other things from occurring.
Whereas matrimony is often these three things at once – institution, ideal and
arrangement – the school is primarily an arrangement, and more specifically one
that has effects that run counter to the logic of ideals and institutions.6 Whereas the
6
Nonetheless, in the course of history, the school has often become institutionalized and put at the
service of political, economic, religious and other ideals. These attempts could be seen as strategies
to tame and inoculate the school in its pure form, e.g. by making it into an instrument for socializa-
tion (Masschelein and Simons 2010).
matrimony arrangement is about closing off change in view of a stable society,

school arrangements precisely foster possibilities for profound change. The school
interrupts the functional logic of the self-reproducing society. And, the direction of
this change is not specified. Therefore it doesn’t make sense to speak about the
school in terms of (future) ideals to realize. The analogy with matrimony thus only
holds in so far the school is the name of specific material, spatial and temporal con-
ditions. It is a particular way of bringing together the generations around a subject
matter. It makes certain things possible, and it prevents other things. These things
have certain formal characteristics which are absent (or less probable to happen) in
the case of learning and instruction outside of school contexts.
Furthermore, the origin of the school is contingent: it has not existed always and
everywhere. The school was invented in the Ancient Greek City State after the end
of the Peloponnesian wars, and it has the shape we know it to have today thanks to
decisive technological inventions, not in the least the creation of the printing press
in the fifteenth century. Claiming that the very existence of the school is bound up
with chance societal and technological evolutions is also saying that one day the
school might disappear again, and in the digital day and age we are living in, this is
no longer inconceivable (cf. Vlieghe 2015b).
Some of the unique features of the school arrangement should be emphasized in
relation to the history of this remarkable phenomenon. First, the school as we know
it today is unthinkable without the development of particular technologies of reading
and writing. As Klaus Mollenhauer (2013) and Neil Postman (1982) have argued,
the invention and spread of printed books at the beginning of Modern Times has
substantially changed what we hold true about raising the new generation. Whereas
education in Medieval times was a matter of presentation (children grew up along-
side adults, and learned everything there is to know by observing and imitating their
parents), it became ever more a matter of representation as a result of the prolifera-
tion of printed texts (Mollenhauer 2013). Rather than bringing up the young in the
immediacy of the world (of their parents), education becomes increasingly medi-
ated. Not only because of the fact that from now on specialized personnel (school
teachers) got involved, but also because the world is increasingly accessed by the
use of illustrated textbooks, rather than by direct experience. Comenius’s Orbis
Sensualium Pictus (1658) was one of the first examples of this mediated relation-
ship, and it counts as an archetype for many schoolbooks up until today. Encountering
the world as represented means that the young are no longer just people who happen
to be not-yet grownups: they become pupils and students. This also implies that it
becomes the responsibility of the elder generation to define what aspects of the
world will be represented (and which ones will be filtered away) and in which
order – i.e. what will be included in a well-ordered curriculum. A major result of this
is that specialized places for mass education were created7 – which offered the
7
As Postman (1982) has shown, this is also connected to the fact that with the massive spread of
books society saw itself very suddenly confronted with an almost unmanageable growth in (spe-
cialized) knowledge. Learning to read and write became thus as indispensable as acquiring speech.
Hence the need for mass schooling.
2 The School as a Unique and Contingent Arrangement 17
opportunity to be a student, i.e. to be fully engaged with a subject matter without the
need to bother about the future adult life. These places were, of course, schools.
Historically speaking it is of course incorrect to hold that schools didn’t exist
before the invention of printing, as it is obvious that in Medieval times there were
already cathedral schools, and universities originated as early as the twelfth century.
Nevertheless, it is only with the development and proliferation of printing that the
school got some of the essential characteristics that define it as a unique arrange-
ment.8 Its mass character (i.e. the fact that everyone within a certain age group is
supposed to go to school, or that schooling is never a solitary affair, but a chance
gathering of different people who have no particular ties with each other before-
hand) is one of the most visible signs of its uniqueness. More importantly, as
Mollenhauer argues, schools are also unique places where things can ‘slow down’
(Mollenhauer 2013, p. 31).9 With this, he means that pupils and students are granted
the opportunity of not having to behave as adults do (which was exactly what hap-
pened to most youngsters in the era of presentation when upbringing consisted of
the mere imitation of adult life). They are allowed to ‘lose time’, and to occupy
themselves with ‘useless’ things, such as devoting themselves to a subject matter for
its own sake – even if this has no immediate importance for their future adult lives
(Cf. Masschelein and Simons 2013a). Other typical features of schooling are also
dependent upon the slowing down mode, such as the repetitive character of school
practices or the prevailing of form over content: in the real world outside of school
repetition is seen as a waste of time (or as something that we should maximally try
to avoid), and a concentration on the formal stands in the way of getting results. In
the school, however, it might be important to get mathematical formula right or to
master the text of a poem without the slightest mistake by continuously repeating it
(rather than using the same formula to solve real-world problems or asking our-
selves what the added economic value of poetry is) (Cf. Vlieghe 2013).
Nonetheless, as we just indicated, it could also be argued that some of the unique
characteristics of the school arrangement are much older than the beginning of
Modernity. And so it is useful to go back even further in history, and more exactly
pay attention to the first arrangements that were actually called schools – and from
which, as Masschelein and Simons (2013a) have pointed out, its very name derives
(skholé): the schools that where first created in the Athenian City State in the sixth
century BCE (around the same time democracy and philosophy saw the light of
day). Here, for the first time in history, people were gathered in disregard of their
family or societal background (or at least to a certain extent, as women, slaves and
immigrants were not allowed to go to school). In that sense schooling was a most
revolutionary invention as in the former, archaic, period instruction was the privi-
lege of the highest castes, and it was moreover aimed at the continuation of the
existing (unequal) order of society (Cf. Marrou 1982).
8
It is also worth noting that the introduction of writing with pen and paper in the nineteenth cen-
tury, the importance of which is often ignored, might be of an equal importance (See Vlieghe
2015a, b).
9
In the following chapters, we will explore the issue of the exceptionality of educational time in
greater detail.
That is also why Klaus Mollenhauer (1986) most perceptively claims that before
the invention of the school there were properly speaking no educational issues
(p. 160). In archaic times society was organized in ways that are seen as naturally
given, i.e. as unchangeable. And therefore, the sole commitment of the existing
generation consisted of introducing newcomers into a fixed order of things, and
leading them to their one and only destination – e.g. the position they are supposed
to take according to their family and social background. With the invention of the
school a time and place was created where society could reinvent itself in radically
new ways.
Moreover, according to Harold Innis (2007), as long as knowledge was a monop-
oly for a select social category, innovation of existing ideas was less likely to hap-
pen. Not only because only a very small percentage of the populace could contribute
to the body of knowledge, but above all because the ruling class had a great personal
interest in keeping knowledge a secret affair.10 Therefore, the school could also be
considered one of the first public places. It formed a precondition for the rejuvena-
tion of ideas about ourselves and the world – what we would call scientific progress
today.
3 The Household, the Political and the School
Returning to the work of Hannah Arendt, we would like to draw attention to another
unique and radically new element brought into existence with the development of
the first schools in the Ancient Greek era. To do this, we first need to have a look at
the sphere of politics. According to Arendt’s (1961) understanding of things (seen
through the lens of Aristotle), communal life was based on the sharp distinction
between the life in the household, i.e. the private life oriented towards survival and
economic prosperity (zoé) on the one hand, and the truly human life on the market-
place, the public or political life (bios) on the other hand. We can only have a good,
i.e. democratic, life in common if we are willing to leave now and then the private
sphere behind us and go to the agora, the city center,11 to discuss with others about
10
It is worth noting that today we witness a process of privatisation of knowledge (also pedagogic
knowledge) leading towards the restauration of such secrecy and therefore to the suppression of
education as such (Cf. Jendza and Zamojski 2015).
11
The agora could also be translated as the market place. The fact that today the market firstly
refers to a place of commerce (e.g. the ‘free market’) testifies, according to Arendt, to a deep per-
version of Western culture. It signals that private forces have come to colonize the public sphere.
The market place has lost its political role and has become an economic place. Interestingly, the
very word ‘economy’ draws form the Greek words oikos (the home) and nomos (the law). Economy
means first and foremost the art of conducting one’s household. Therefore, for a citizen of the
Athenian city state it would have been clear that economy is an activity we perform at home (a
merely private pursuit that serves survival), but not something that contributes to the good life
(perhaps this explains why indeed the Athenian citizens were relatively poor people). Incidentally,
Athenians that preferred the life of the household over the good life, i.e. the political life, were
called idiotès – from which our word ‘idiot’ derives (Arendt 1958). We come back to Arendt’s
concept of politics in Chap. 10.
3 The Household, the Political and the School 19
how we should live together. It is of vital importance that this literally takes place in
a different context than the household.12 When we remain at home, we are too much
preoccupied with our own interests, and with our own smaller and bigger duties
(and those of our family members, i.e. of spouses, children and slaves). The agora
is a place where we can fully engage ourselves in something that transcends our
own private interests, i.e. the fate of the city (the world) we commonly inhabit.
Moreover, this is also a place where we can appear to one another as equals: here
we are willing to listen to others (even if they have strongly different ideas and even
if they happen to belong to a minority group) and to come to decisions to which
everyone can agree. So, it should be clear that truly democratic politics requires the
strictest separation of the spheres of the private and the public, i.e. of the household
and the political. The political is a sphere that – contrary to the private – is not natu-
ral. It is not just always there, nor does it come about spontaneously. The private is
a sphere of necessity, which originates in zoé, in the fact of biological existence. The
public is rather in excess of necessity. Here human freedom can realize itself,
although this might imply to risk one’s own life, and hence to go against the biologi-
cal urge of survival. Hence, in order for the political sphere to appear, measures
need to be taken, i.e. the appearance of such an excess has to be designed. In other
words, the Athenian democracy could only function well thanks to what we have
been calling an arrangement. There had to be a place specifically created for this
kind of meeting to happen, and society had to be organized in such a way that citi-
zens had the time and the opportunity to go and discuss there on an equal basis.13
This small digression is necessary to understand, with Arendt, that next to the
rigorous separation between the domains of the household and the political, there is
a third sphere in-between the private and the public (Arendt 1961, p. 188), which
needs also to be strictly opposed to the private and the public. This is the sphere of
education, skholé. The school is not an extension part of the family, nor is it the
preamble of political life. It is something altogether different. It is an exceptional
time and place where children were taken away from their family and temporarily
gathered with others (unlike them) and with a representative of the elder generation
(a teacher) – without having to be preoccupied with any worry about the good of
neither the family, nor the city. Children literally had to move to another, new and
perhaps uncomfortable place, at a distance of the safe and cozy place the family
offers to take care after them together with those of the same ilk. At the same time,
the world of adult responsibilities and the risk of political life (agon) were also
placed at a distance, so that students had the opportunity to fully and truly devote
themselves to the study of particular subject matters.
12
It should be noted that Arendt is not opposed to the sphere of the household (or to economics for
that matter). It is a necessity of life to look after our private needs and to find shelter. What is of
importance is that this sphere has its proper place and should not interfere with other spheres of
life.
13
Hence the importance of the ‘mask’, which was not seen as a concealment of one’s true identity,
but as a precondition for equality to occur (Arendt 1958).
At this point, Arendt’s words – written in the 50s of the last century – gain all
their prophetic poignancy. Today, more and more the school has become colonized
by both the logic of the family and of the public world (Cf. Furedi 2010). On the one
hand, many today would argue that the school should be fundamentally reformed in
order to cater pupils’ personal, medical and psychological needs. The school should
be a place where children feel at ease and where all pupils and students should be
offered the service that meets their idiosyncratic conditions. Individualized learning
programs should be set in place, as well special arrangements that are tailored to the
many social, emotional and physical characteristics of each and every learner – with
the sole objective of increasing wellbeing and student experience. Teachers should
become facilitators, and learning should be student-centered and even student-led.
Students should feel completely safe and comfortable, and being looked after as if
the school were a home.
On the other hand, many today would defend the idea that the existing school is
an otherworldly place, divorced from reality. Here, potentially productive people,
just lose their time as they are merely kept busy with pointless things such as drill-
ing on formula and memorizing facts of history. What is the point of carefully con-
structing a theorem if, in real life, it is only the application of mathematical insights
that matters? Analogously, many would argue that studying history for the sake of
history belongs to history: what counts is that we learn from history for the present.
As such, the curriculum should be rethought in function of the needs of a fast chang-
ing world, and of whatever it is our society or our economy requires.14 Likewise, in
view of the many problems we are facing today, from an undeniable apathy vis-à-
vis politics, over youth delinquency to Muslim radicalization, many expect the
school to solve all these problems. Pupils should start as early as possible to become
politically engaged and tolerant citizens, as well as responsible, productive and
entrepreneurial agents of our society. To such a view the school should become a
political instrument.
In both cases, the school is no longer allowed to be the unique time and place the
Greeks designed it to be. First, defining the school in terms of the household means
a reduction of the school to a mere biological function (Arendt 1961, p. 185). The
school is only a means for survival, for making life more comfortable and for
tending to particular needs. As such, Arendt argues, we remain prisoners of the
realm of animality, or – on a more philosophical level – of the realm of necessity. If
education was only about responding to needs and interests that are already given,
then there would be no difference between the life of humans and the life of ani-
mals.15 In this case, education is merely a matter of raising and upbringing, but it has
14
In a sense, the economization of the school is a reduction of the school to both the sphere of the
home and the world of politics. When we desire students to become preoccupied with what is
economically worthwhile, we are asking them to follow private and egoistic interests (home
sphere), as well as to take up a responsibility which should be reserved for adults only (public
sphere). This goes in line with Arendt s diagnosis about the rise of the social sphere as the merging
of the private and the public (Arendt 1961, pp. 38–49).
15
We are summarizing here Arendt’s ideas as set out in the 50s. In view of discoveries in the field
of zoology, it has become clear that the sharp distinction she makes between humanity and animal-
ity no longer holds. If the criterion is changeability in ways of life, for instance, many counterex-
3 The Household, the Political and the School 21
nothing distinctively humane. This is because our humanity depends upon being
taken away from the sphere of the family, and – more generally – from our own
direct life-world and singular needs and interests. What defines us as humans is our
capacity to begin anew with the world, our natality.16 But, as long as we stay within
the safe surroundings of the home (or – for that matter – a school designed as a
home) this capacity is stifled. This means that, as progressive as it may sound, look-
ing at (and after) students in terms of their medical, social and psychological issues
and disorders is actually taking away from their hands the possibility of educational
transformation.
Second, defining the school in political terms is also going against the essence of
education. For Arendt (1961), as we explained, politics is a sphere characterized by
three features: active engagement, risk (agon), and unconditional equality. Citizens
must leave their homes, take up responsibility, and potentially put their lives at stake
for the sake of a common world. Moreover, this must happen in such a way that all
have an equal chance of taking part in the public debate. The school however is
characterized by the exact opposite features. It is a sphere of inequality, Arendt
holds, because it is a place where the generation of newcomers meets the generation
which already inhabits the world. As such, it is a fallacy to assume that bestowing
political rights upon children is the next logical step in a long history in which, one
by one, groups of disenfranchised people have been given a voice (i.e. slaves, vas-
sals, women, immigrants, etc. having been emancipated), and that it is therefore
high time to give children political rights too. This would go against the
intergenerational essence of education (Arendt 1961, p. 188). Whereas the sphere of
politics is defined by the absolute absence of authority, educational relations – if
they are truly educational – are asymmetrical (Arendt 1961, pp. 189–190). For the
time being, we will follow Arendt on this point, but we will come back to this claim
in Chap. 4, where we argue that there exists a unique form of educational equality
which is important for defining the school (Cf. Rancière 1991). We regard this as a
necessary supplement to Arendt’s views to which she stayed blind, because she only
approaches the issue of equality from a political – and not from an inherently edu-
cational – point of view.
amples can be provided, such as – for example – the recently discovered fact that orcas are the only
animals apart from humans whose evolution is driven by culture (Cf. Foote et al. 2016). However,
these considerations are not important for the argument set out here. What is at stake is not to know
with certainty which creatures should be included under an extended concept of humanity and
which not – an attempt which, as Agamben has argued in The Open (2003), is doomed to fail.
Instead, what is at stake here is humanization itself: the possibility that creatures (no matter which
ones) can escape the realm of necessity and give shape (in unexpected ways) to their own way of
life.
16
Here Arendt is – again – very close to Heidegger (1962). Animals, in her view, are fully defined
by their nature, by their essence. That is why tigers, for instance, have always lived in the same
way. An animal species’ way of life remains the same throughout history (or only changes very
slowly due to natural selection pressure). Humans, on the other hand, have no essence. Everyone,
and every generation, has to find out what it means to be human. Hence the enormous variation in
modes of life that characterizes human history and culture. Whereas most animals live exactly the
same life as their ancestors did, say, 20,000 years ago, there is the possibility that human life
changes radically in a generation’s time.
More importantly, bestowing political responsibilities upon pupils and students

comes down to the refusal by the elder generation to take up responsibility for the
world, and to be exposed to risk themselves. Instead of dealing with the challenges
we are faced with as adults, Arendt says, we hope that they might find resolve by
passing the buck to the sphere of education (Arendt 1961, p. 191). For instance,
instead of overcoming our own lack of political engagement we demand that schools
instill civic virtue in the young by organizing citizenship education. Instead of ask-
ing ourselves – after the 2008 financial crisis – whether other than neoliberal models
of society are desirable, we hope to safeguard the existing state of things from future
catastrophe by starting to teach children how to invest money in a responsible way
(Cf. Furedi 2010, p. 51).
As such, Arendt (1961, p. 192) claims, our culture is prone to a profound perver-
sity. Whereas politics should be inherently progressive i.e. concerned with changing
the world for the better, it has become utterly conservative: the existing generation
has resigned to the task of imagining a more humane world and has reduced the art
of politics to efficiently managing society according to economic imperatives. On
the other hand, education has become the object of continuous reforms in the name
of societal and political needs, whereas it should be essentially conservative (Cf.
Furedi 2010). As Arendt famously holds, next to protecting the child against the
world (for instance by not giving it yet the responsibility to change the world, so that
it can study in the ‘slowing down mode’ and literally loose time, and by protecting
it from the risk involved in the political life), the most important task of education
consists of protecting the world from the child (Arendt 1968, p. 192).17
4 rom Student-Centeredness to a Thing-Centered

F
Pedagogy
The plea for conservatism formulated by Arendt might sound outright reactionary –
i.e. given in by a militant zeal to stick to the world the way it is. In the remaining
part of this chapter, we show that it is not. On the contrary. We first argue that what
is really at stake in this plea for conservatism is a criticism of erroneous conceptions
that have come about with the demise of the teacher-centered model of education.
More positively speaking, it entails a plea for what we will call a thing-centered
model. Second, we also defend the view that this qualified form of educational con-
servatism is actually a precondition for true societal change and renewal.
When Arendt wrote her small essay on the Crisis in Education in the post-Second
War American Society, nobody could misunderstand its controversial message. This
17
Another reading of this famous passage could be: on the one hand, there is the obvious biological
function of protecting the child against the world, as task which has always been taken to heart by
the sphere of the household (i.e. protecting the child from the world); on the other hand there is
also the properly educational side of upbringing, which happens in school and which consists of
protecting the world from the child.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
New-York, 6 décembre.
Toujours ici en expectative. J’ai déjà vu la plus grande partie des

monuments, établissements publics et privés de New-York et
recueilli une foule de renseignements sur toutes choses ; mais je n’ai
ni le temps ni le désir de décrire une cité tant de fois décrite.
Je dirai seulement quelques mots du monde américain, sur
lequel, soit dit en passant, on a généralement des idées assez
fausses chez nous, et que le grand succès de l’Oncle Sam de
Victorien Sardou a été loin de redresser.
Le moment actuel est la pleine saison des bals, soirées,
réunions, réceptions, et tout autant, sinon plus qu’à Paris, l’hiver à
New-York est mondain à l’extrême. Mais ici n’est pas mondain qui
veut.
Nous nous imaginons volontiers que, dans cette société ultra-
démocratique par ses principes avoués, ce qu’on nomme en France
« le monde » est un mélange confus de tout ce qui a de l’argent ou
une situation, que les salons sont des caravansérails, où l’on entre
et d’où l’on sort à son gré, que chacun se meut à la seule règle de
sa fantaisie, ainsi que la foule sur une place publique un jour de fête.
Jamais préjugé ne fut aussi peu fondé, car, plus que dans tout
autre pays, les castes aux États-Unis sont tranchées, les détails des
origines de chaque famille étudiés et commentés, et nulle part,
j’entends au point de vue des relations, les nuances ne sont plus
sensibles et la fusion des groupes difficile, lors même que la
puissance incontestable du « dieu dollar » veut établir l’égalité
sociale entre les gens « comme il faut » et ceux qui ne le sont pas.
Le critérium le plus important de ces degrés d’aristocratie
mondaine est l’ancienneté des familles. On tient compte,
assurément, des traditions qui s’y sont perpétuées ou éteintes, du
rôle que ses membres ont joué, des situations qu’ils ont occupées ;
mais, en principe, les descendants des signataires de la déclaration
d’indépendance sont du « grand monde », comme diraient nos
bourgeois, et les descendants d’un émigré de la veille, s’il ne s’est
allié à l’une de ces familles qui prennent rang au-dessus des autres,
ne sont pas du monde du tout.
En un mot, politiquement et civilement, tous les Américains sont
égaux, mais socialement ils ne le sont pas ; aussi faut-il le tremplin
de bien des millions pour franchir les barrières qui marquent les
différents niveaux de castes très jalouses de leurs théoriques
privilèges.
On s’est beaucoup émerveillé chez nous, — et beaucoup amusé,
— des coutumes américaines qui permettent tant de liberté aux
jeunes gens des deux sexes dans leurs rapports mutuels. Cette
liberté, assure-t-on ici, ne dépasse jamais les bornes de la plus
stricte convenance. « Jamais » est probablement beaucoup dire, les
exemples cependant ne prouvent rien, étant susceptibles de
confirmer les exceptions aussi bien que les règles, suivant la
manière dont on les choisit. Il est certain qu’à New-York, comme
dans toute l’Amérique, une jeune fille peut sortir seule, aller d’un
bout de la ville à l’autre, sans qu’un regard impertinent, une parole
offensante la fasse rougir.
C’est affaire d’habitude. Au Japon, les Européens se plaisent à
aller dans les bains publics regarder les dames qui se baignent
toutes nues ; ils en rient à gorge déployée, et pendant ce temps-là
les Japonais et les Japonaises rient d’aussi bon cœur de notre
étonnement, parce qu’ils ne le comprennent pas et qu’ils le trouvent
ridicule.
Les coutumes sociales, dans tous les pays, sont basées sur un
certain nombre de « telle chose ne se fait pas », qui deviennent bien
vite pour tout le monde, et à tous les degrés, la loi et les prophètes.
A New-York, on rencontre à chaque instant des jeunes femmes et
des jeunes filles seules, occupées à faire des emplettes ou des
visites ; on trouve cela tout naturel parce qu’on y est habitué, et on
se garde de les importuner parce que « cela ne se fait pas. » Et c’est
la meilleure des raisons. Cette liberté, qui nous semble
extraordinaire, a pour conséquences des usages bien éloignés des
nôtres. Telles sont les soirées données ailleurs que chez soi : les
maisons américaines étant petites et le nombre des amis étant
parfois considérable, si on a cependant assez de fortune pour
pouvoir donner un bal, on invite son monde chez Delmonico, — le
Bignon de New-York ; — on y trouve un superbe appartement,
musique, souper, service, une entrée privée où, pour ce jour-là, vos
amis seuls ont accès. Quand on a bien dansé, causé et flirté, chacun
prend sa voiture, la maîtresse de la maison comme les autres, et on
rentre tranquillement chez soi.
Votre cercle de relations est-il très étendu, vous faites mieux
encore : la jeunesse seule est invitée ; les papas et les mamans,
débarrassés de l’insupportable corvée qu’ils font en France avec tant
de résignation, restent paisiblement au logis ; mademoiselle va au
bal avec son frère, si elle en a un ; sinon, une femme de chambre
l’accompagne jusqu’au vestiaire et elle trouve toujours là quelque
jeune femme de ses amies avec laquelle elle fait son entrée.
La saison des bals commence après le jour du « Thanks giving »,
qui est ordinairement le dernier jeudi du mois de novembre. L’ancien
usage, encore très suivi, veut qu’en ce jour chaque famille se
réunisse au complet, après avoir rendu grâce à Dieu pour les
bonnes récoltes et les bienfaits reçus pendant l’année. Alors se
succèdent les réceptions d’après-midi, les grands dîners et les bals,
et cela dure jusqu’au carême.
Un trait assez remarquable de la société de New-York est la
coutume des soirées « par abonnement. » Des invitations anonymes,
au moins dans la forme, sont adressées portant les mystiques
initiales F. C. D. C. (Family Circle Dancing Class), et la famille qui les
reçoit souscrit ou ne souscrit pas à quatre réunions dansantes, dans
lesquelles on est sûr de ne trouver que des gens du meilleur monde.
Un autre jour, c’est le Common sense qui envoie des cartes : encore
un bal par souscription. Quelquefois, c’est une réunion de skating,
toujours organisée d’après le même système.
Cela est bizarre, j’en conviens ; mais le premier résultat de ces
habitudes est d’amener les jeunes gens à aller davantage dans le
monde, de s’y faire plus facilement connaître et apprécier, de s’y
créer plus jeunes des relations et d’y tenir déjà une place à un âge
où nous ne les comptons pour rien, ce qui les ennuie et par
conséquent les éloigne.
Parmi les plus célèbres bals fondés à New-York, on cite ceux des
« Patriarches ». Ce sont trente pères de famille qui souscrivent une
certaine somme et ont chacun la disposition de sept billets à
distribuer entre leurs amis. Les bals des Patriarches sont donnés
chez Delmonico ; ce sont les plus élégants et les plus recherchés. Il
y en a trois par saison.
Inutile de parler des modes. On ne connaît ici que les nôtres. Les
belles Américaines y ajoutent un caractère de hardiesse fantaisiste,
qui fait de leurs toilettes des chefs-d’œuvre de grâce, quand une
mauvaise inspiration ne les amène pas au ridicule.
La vie des clubs à New-York est à peu près la même que dans
les grandes villes européennes. Le plus beau de tous est le Union
Club ; c’est le rendez-vous des fashionables et des knickerbockers,
fils des premiers colons de la ville, très fiers des droits qu’ils ont sur
le sol natal, et grands gastronomes, à en juger par la respectable
réputation culinaire du Union Club. Le Loyal League est un club
presque exclusivement politique, hanté par l’élément républicain, en
opposition avec le Manhattan, club des démocrates. Il faut citer
aussi le Century, qui a beaucoup d’analogie avec notre cercle des
Mirlitons ; c’est une réunion purement littéraire et artistique, dans
laquelle l’admission est fort difficile. J’en passe un grand nombre
plus ou moins importants, mais qui ne viennent qu’en seconde ligne
après ceux-ci.
La saison des bals est aussi celle des expositions ; j’en ai vu une
ces jours-ci dans laquelle les noms de Dupré, de Jacques, de Vibert,
de Bouguereau, de Cot tenaient la première place, et dont le produit
était destiné à subventionner une école d’art décoratif, qui, fondée
depuis deux ans seulement, paraît avoir donné d’assez beaux
résultats.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
A bord du Labrador, 10 janvier 1879.
Nos craintes se sont, hélas ! réalisées. Notre voyage est

interrompu, et cette belle expédition, si intéressante et si heureuse
jusqu’à ce jour, ne se continue pas. La Junon, toujours à Panama,
alors que nous la croyions en route pour San-Francisco, où nous
devions l’y rejoindre, vient d’être rendue à ses propriétaires. Elle va
refaire, sans nous, le chemin que nos jeunes enthousiasmes avaient
tant égayé.
Les compagnons du tour du monde sont déjà dispersés ;
quelques-uns ont continué leur voyage par les voies ordinaires ;
d’autres ont déjà regagné la France, où le Labrador me ramène en
ce moment.
La Société des voyages d’études a été gravement atteinte par les
manœuvres de la compagnie à laquelle elle avait affrété la Junon.
Notre expédition avait été cependant organisée par des hommes de
haute valeur et d’une honorabilité indiscutable ; dans tous les pays
que nous avons traversés, elle avait recueilli les plus sincères et les
plus vifs témoignages de sympathie ; mais partout des annonces
ambiguës, insérées par les armateurs dans les journaux locaux, des
bruits malveillants répandus, des demandes d’arrêt du navire
expédiées en réponse aux protestations de la Société, devaient lui
porter un grand préjudice. Le dommage ne tarda pas à se traduire
par des pertes d’argent ; car, même dans les ports où le mouvement
commercial était le plus actif, la Junon ne put prendre de fret.
Nous l’avons vue, à Montevideo, par exemple, venant de se voir
retirer un chargement promis, obligée d’acheter des pierres pour
lester le navire, et perdant par cela même, avec les recettes
légitimement espérées, le crédit auquel elle avait droit.
Quand nous atteignîmes Panama, cette situation était devenue
trop grave pour pouvoir se prolonger. La Société des voyages, à
découvert d’une somme de plus de 200,000 francs remise aux
armateurs, se résolut à leur rendre le navire, en les déclarant
responsables des conséquences.
Quels motifs ont pu dicter la conduite des propriétaires de la
Junon ? N’y aurait-il donc là qu’un esprit de mercantilisme exagéré,
une appréciation étroite et fausse des éléments matériels et moraux
de l’entreprise ?… Il nous est impossible de trouver d’autres raisons.
Quelles qu’elles soient, il est triste de penser que c’est seulement de
notre pays que sont survenus les obstacles.
J’ai ici le droit et le devoir de constater les efforts loyaux et
énergiques de notre commandant pour faire cesser une persécution
à laquelle il n’a jamais fourni aucun prétexte et qui a commencé
avec le voyage lui-même. Je dois également rendre hommage à ses
solides qualités de marin, à celles du personnel qu’il avait choisi.
Nous leur devons d’avoir fait 5,000 lieues dans les parages les plus
variés, parfois les plus difficiles, sans une avarie, sans un accident et
sans perdre un seul homme.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Donc, lecteur, pardonnez-moi si je manque à ma promesse. Je
m’étais engagé à vous faire faire le tour du monde. Hélas ! nous n’en
avons fait qu’un peu plus du tiers, et parmi mes voyages à travers
trois autres continents, c’est le premier où il m’arrive de ne point
atteindre le port… Infidèle Junon !
En ce moment, le magnifique Labrador roule et bondit sur les
vagues du fougueux Atlantique. Sa mâture « chante » sous les
efforts de la tempête ; son large pont est balayé par les eaux, des
stalactites de glace pendent à tous les agrès, et de violentes rafales
de neige ajoutent encore à la difficulté des manœuvres… Mais, bah !
nous en avons vu bien d’autres.
Encore huit jours de patience et nous allons revoir la patrie, nos

familles, nos amis. — C’est égal, je n’en reviens pas encore… d’en
revenir sitôt !
TABLE
Pages
De Marseille à Gibraltar 1
Gibraltar 17
Les îles Madère 29
De Madère à Rio-de-Janeiro 49
Rio-de-Janeiro 85
Rio-de-Janeiro. (Suite.) 107
Montevideo 133
Buenos-Ayres 159
Le détroit de Magellan 189
Les canaux latéraux des côtes de la Patagonie 215
Au Chili. Valparaiso et Santiago 239
Au Pérou. Le Callao et Lima 275
Au Pérou. Le Callao et Lima. (Suite.) 299
Panama 321
New-York 341
Paris. — Imp. Ve P. Larousse et Cie, rue Montparnasse, 19.

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Towards an Ontology of Teaching

Thing centred Pedagogy Affirmation

Towards a New Pedagogy for Teaching Foreign Language

The Art and Heart of Good Teaching Values as the

Transforming Teaching and Learning in Higher Education:

Study and Teaching Guide for The History of the

Research Driven Pedagogy Implications of L2A Theory and

Towards a Philosophy of Caring in Higher Education

A Most Incomprehensible Thing Notes Towards a Very

Marx Capital and Education Towards a Critical Pedagogy

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/8638

All pictures are copyright of the New York Philharmonic Society.

ISSN 2214-9759 ISSN 2214-9767 (electronic)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019936166

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

6 Towards Immanence in Education: From Emancipation to

It has become a cliché in much contemporary philosophy of education to start an

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 1

Of course, taking such a path might be called simply naive. Nevertheless, as we

To do so, we deem it necessary to develop a strong account of teaching, meaning

account makes sense depends on its level of recognisability by the reader. As

The affirmative account of teaching we develop in this book is predicated upon a

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 11

1 The Specificity of Education

2 The School as a Unique and Contingent Arrangement

matrimony arrangement is about closing off change in view of a stable society,

3 The Household, the Political and the School

More importantly, bestowing political responsibilities upon pupils and students

4  rom Student-Centeredness to a Thing-Centered

Toujours ici en expectative. J’ai déjà vu la plus grande partie des

Nos craintes se sont, hélas ! réalisées. Notre voyage est

Encore huit jours de patience et nous allons revoir la patrie, nos

Paris. — Imp. Ve P. Larousse et Cie, rue Montparnasse, 19.

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6 Towards Immanence in Education: From Emancipation to

1 The Specificity of Education

2 The School as a Unique and Contingent Arrangement

3 The Household, the Political and the School

4 rom Student-Centeredness to a Thing-Centered