Obstinate Education: Reconnecting School and Society(72 Educational Futures)

What should the relationship between school and society be? Obstinate Education: Reconnecting School and Society argues that education is not just there to give individuals, groups and societies what they want from it, but that education has a duty to resist. Education needs to be obstinate, not for the sake of being difficult, but in order to make sure that it can contribute to emancipation and democratisation. This requires that education always brings in the question whether what is desired from it is going to help with living life well, individually and collectively, on a planet that has a limited capacity for giving everything that is desired from it.

This book argues that education should not just be responsive but should keep its own responsibility; should not just focus on empowerment but also on emancipation; and, through this, should help students to become ‘world-wise.’ It argues that critical thinking and classroom philosophy should retain a political orientation and not be reduced to useful thinking skills, and shows the importance of hesitation in educational relationships. This text makes a strong case for the connection between education and democracy, both in the context of schools, colleges and universities and in the work of public pedagogy.

Table of Contents:
Preface Acknowledgements Note on the Author Introduction: The Duty to Resist 1 Responsive or Responsible? Democratic Education for the Global Networked Society  Introduction  The Global Networked Society: Fact or Fiction?  Education for the Global Networked Society: Responsive or Responsible?  Democratic Education for the Global Networked Society?  Conclusion 2 How General Can Bildung Be? Reflections on the Future of a Modern Educational Ideal  Introduction  A Brief History of Bildung  Bildung Lost, Bildung Regained  How General Can Bildung Be?  The Epistemological Interpretation: The General as the Universal  The Interpretation from the Sociology of Knowledge: The General as a Social Construction  A Critical Theory of Bildung and Critical Pedagogy  The Network Approach: The General as the Asymmetrical Expansion of the Local  Concluding Remarks 3 Becoming World-Wise: An Educational Perspective on the Rhetorical Curriculum  Introduction  Education, Paideia and Bildung  Becoming ‘Symbol-Wise’ or Becoming ‘World-Wise’?  Empowerment or Emancipation?  The Challenge 4 Critical Thinking and the Question of Critique: Some Lessons from Deconstruction  Philosophy, Critique, and Modern Education  Critical Thinking and the Question of Critique  Critical Dogmatism  Transcendental Critique  Deconstruction  From Critique to Deconstruction  Conclusion 5 Philosophy, Exposure, and Children: How to Resist the Instrumentalisation of Philosophy in Education  What Might Philosophy Achieve?  Philosophical Enquiry or Scientific Enquiry?  A Performative Contradiction  The Trouble with Humanism, Particularly in Education  A Post-Humanist Theory of Education: Action, Uniqueness and Exposure  Conclusion: A Different Philosophy for Different Children 6 No Education without Hesitation: Exploring the Limits of Educational Relations  Introduction  The Multiple Meanings of ‘Education’  ‘Mind the Gap!’  ‘Being Addressed’  ‘You Must Change Your Life’  Concluding Remarks 7 Transclusion: Overcoming the Tension between Inclusion and Exclusion in the Discourse on Democracy and Democratisation  Introduction  Inclusion and Democracy  Making Democracy More Inclusive: The Deliberative Turn  Entry Conditions and Democratic Exclusions  Overcoming Internal Exclusion: Making Democracy More Welcoming  Can Democracy Reach as State of Total Inclusions? And Should It?  From Democracy to Democratisation  Discussion: Marking the Difference between Inclusion and Transclusion 8 Education and Democracy Revisited: Dewey’s Democratic Deficit  Introduction  Connecting Democracy and Education: The Moral Argument  Education as Bildung  From the Ethics of Democracy to Democracy and Education  A Democratic Deficit?  From Absolutism to Experimentalism  Overcoming the ‘Crisis in Culture’  Concluding Comments: The Missing Link Revisited 9 Making Pedagogy Public: For the Public, of the Public, or in the Interest of Publicness?  Introduction  The Decline of the Public Sphere  Arendt on Action, Plurality, and Freedom  “The Space Where Freedom Can Appear”  For the Public, of the Public, or in the Interest of Publicness?  Conclusion Conclusion: Looking Back and Looking Forward Appendix: From Experimentalism to Existentialism: Writing in the Margins of Philosophy of Education References Index

About the Author :
Gert Biesta, PhD (1992), Leiden University, is Professor of Public Education at Maynooth University, Ireland and Professor for Education at the University of Humanistic Studies, the Netherlands. He writes about educational theory and policy and the philosophy of social research.

Review :
Check out the book being discussed on the New Books Network podcast here.

"With Obstinate Education, Biesta wrote an intellectually heeft Biesta een intellectueel, uitdagend boek geschreven. Het boek daagt uit ‘door’ te ‘denken’, niet alleen de pedagogische kwesties die Biesta in zijn boek aansnijdt en de pedago[1]giek die hij daarbij voor het voetlicht brengt, maar ook kwesties die niet besproken worden, maar er wel nauw mee samenhangen. Ik denk hier bijvoorbeeld aan de relatie tussen overheid en onderwijs [...] Ik raad het boek van harte aan."