David Lewin

Behold: Silence and Attention in Education

Educators continually ask about the best means to engage students and how best to capture attention. These concerns often make the problematic assumption that students can directly govern their own attention. In order to address the role and limits of attention in education, some theorists have sought to recover the significance of silence or mindfulness in schools, but I argue that these approaches are too simplistic. A more fundamental examination of our conceptions of identity and agency reveals a Cartesian and Kantian foundationalism. This assumed subjectivity establishes too simplistic a conception of the agency of students in directing attention. I critically engage with these conceptions by drawing on a range of diverse sources, primarily modern Continental philosophy and Christian mystical theology.

Who's afraid of secularisation? Reframing the debate between Gearon and Jackson

ABSTRACT This paper examines the debate between Liam Gearon and Robert Jackson concerning the politicisation of religious education. The debate concerns the extent to which secularisation frames religious education by inculcating politically motivated commitments to tolerance, respect and human rights. Gearon is critical of a supposed ‘counter-secularisation’ narrative that, he argues, underpins the REDCo project (Religion in Education. A Contribution to Dialogue or a Factor of Conflict in Transforming Societies of European Countries), suggesting that the politicising assumptions behind REDCo in fact extend rather than counter secularisation. Although Jackson’s rejoinder to Gearon is robust and largely accurate, I suggest that it misses the basic challenge that religious education serves political ends. I argue that both Gearon and Jackson are enframed at a more fundamental level by a particular view of religion. The problem of pluralism is not, as Gearon supposes, a consequence of the secular framing of religion in terms of tolerance and respect, but predicated on a propositional view of religion that places competing truth claims in opposition. Nothing less than a transformed view of religion itself is the presupposition and the aim of religious education.

The leap of learning

This article seeks to elaborate the step of epistemological affirmation that exists within every movement of learning. My epistemological method is rooted in philosophical hermeneutics in contrast to empirical or rationalist traditions. I argue that any movement of learning is based upon an entry into a hermeneutical circle: one is thrown into, or leaps into, an interpretation which in some sense has to be temporarily affirmed or adopted in order to be either absorbed and integrated, or overcome and rejected. I illustrate this process through a retrieval of the concept of submission in pedagogy, particularly with reference to submission in Eastern traditions, as well as pre-modern Christian thought. These other traditions are introduced to contrast with the modern liberal Western perspective in which the role of submission has been almost entirely lost.

Heidegger East and West: Philosophy as Educative Contemplation

Resonances between Heideggers philosophy and Eastern religious traditions have been widely discussed by scholars. The significance of Heideggers thinking for education has also become increasingly clear over recent years. In this article I argue that an important aspect of Heideggers work, the relevance of which to education is relatively undeveloped, relates to his desire to overcome Western metaphysics, a project that invites an exploration of his connections with Eastern thought. I argue that Heideggers desire to deconstruct the West implies the deconstruction of conventional views of learning because both aim to undercut the representational nature of thinking in order to recover thinking as a form of contemplation. Consequently, education should not be conceived as the acquisition of a more or less correct mental picture, but suggests the opposite: the relinquishing of all images in a contemplative aporia.

(Dis-) Locating the transformative dimension of global citizenship education

Abstract Despite a groundswell of evidence for transformative education, manifestos for ‘transformative pedagogy for global citizenship’ remain under-theorized and pay limited attention to implications for practice. This paper connects theory and practice through analyzing a curriculum development project that sought to produce a framework for ‘engaged global citizens’. It considers the political and philosophical framings of the self and other, citizen and world, that underlie this empirical work, especially with reference to reflexivity, hermeneutics, democratic engagement and co-production. The resultant pedagogical framework, based upon concepts of transformative learning, attempted to undercut the homogenizing tendencies within global citizenship education (GCE). This discussion highlights the tensions and reifying effects of educational frameworks such as the Teaching Excellence Framework in the UK and the proposed framework for ‘global competence’ in the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment. Evidence is presented that frameworks which attempt to make explicit educational phenomena and processes are overdetermined by efficacy and metrics that become perverse ends in themselves. While the anticipated project output here was the framework itself, the substantive output was, in fact, practical: namely the ongoing deliberation and reflection upon the discourses that both do and undo the task of locating the transformative dimension of GCE.

The Middle Voice in Eckhart and Modern Continental Philosophy

Abstract The recurring narrative of the relinquishment of human will animates the spiritual discourses of almost every mystical tradition. But contemporary discussions of spirituality gravitate towards exasperation when acknowledging the radical impotence of human agents, while much modern philosophy has found itself unable to think beyond the aporia of freedom and determinism. The ability to mediate between total subjective autonomy and radical dissolution in God is vital if we are to avoid the dualism that Meister Eckhart subverts with his conception of detachment (Gelassenheit). Heidegger takes up the terminology of Eckhart here, but provides a more philosophically astute sense of releasement. This article argues that both Heidegger and Eckhart draw upon the middle voice, an ancient linguistic mode that places agency between activity and passivity. By uncovering traces of the middle voice, I propose that philosophy and theology bear with a grammatical cleavage that constitutes our experience of the world.

The hermeneutics of religious understanding in a postsecular age

Abstract The argument of this article assumes that religious literacy is urgently needed in the present geopolitical context. Its urgency increases the more religion is viewed in opposition to criticality, as though religion entails an irrational and inviolable commitment, or leap of faith. This narrow view of religion is reinforced by certain rather dogmatic secular framings of religion, which require any and all forms of religious expression to be excluded from public life. Excluding religion from the public has the unfortunate effect that religiosity can take extreme forms with little social mediation through political deliberative cultures. Such approaches do not support religious literacy, but tend to generate increasingly polarized and fractured debates about the place of religion in society and education. In contrast to the attitude that seeks to privatize religion, I argue that religions are fundamentally public facing, not least because they act as social institutions that bind communities together. I argue that it is the hermeneutical traditions immanent to religions themselves that must inform the ways that religions can appropriately inform public life.

‘They Know not What They Do’: The Spiritual Meaning of Technological Progress

This article considers the spiritual trajectory of modern technology. The concern that technology brings about a profound disengagement with reality through an environment constituted by disburdening devices must be taken seriously. It would seem that the drive towards technological availability—increased utility or productivity—produces pathologies on the basis of the concealment of teleology. I argue that it is unclear whether that imperative towards greater availability expresses itself in the pathological pursuit of means or whether it will necessarily re-orient itself towards a more fully projected good. In other words, is the drive to availability a dialectical process? I present an argument to affirm our negative capability based on the possibility of recognizing that we know not what we do.

What's the use of ethical philosophy? : the role of ethical theory in special educational needs

This article examines the relevance of modern moral philosophy to education, with particular reference to special educational needs. Where moral philosophers explore the tension between utilitarian and deontological reasoning, they often consider the balance between the rights of the individual and the benefits or costs for the majority. I argue that the debate is predicated on a false dichotomy between minority and majority which is best overcome by a return to virtue ethics. In exploring this ethical debate, I draw on a case study from Australia of a student excluded from mainstream education on the basis that inclusion will not serve the greater good of the majority of students. My intention here is not to offer practical guidance in the complex day-to-day deliberations of educators dealing with issues of inclusion, but to elaborate the structure of the present thinking about inclusion. It is hoped that an appreciation of the deeper basis of ethical reasoning will itself lead to a greater recognition of the need for exploring the ethical grounds of teaching and learning. I will argue that any dichotomy between the utilitarian happiness of the many and the deontological commitment to the rights of the individual is based on a misconception of human identity. The false choice between the many and the one rests upon the assumption that morality is fundamentally about restricting personal preferences in favour of the good of the majority, that there exists a fundamental conflict between what is good for the individual and what is good for society as a whole. This will lead me to argue that we need to reinterpret human identity as constituted by its social relations and that this reorientation is best achieved by reference to virtue ethics.

Eastern Philosophies of Education: Buddhist, Hindu, Daoist, and Confucian Readings of Plato’s Cave

This chapter provides readers with an understanding of some basic principles of selected Eastern traditions and their relation to philosophy of education. The attempt to characterize such diverse traditions and understandings of education raises numerous hermeneutical issues which can only be addressed through a pedagogical reduction as a vehicle for understanding. In this case, we have employed Plato’s cave allegory as that methodological and pedagogical vehicle. We explore aspects of the ontology, epistemology, and ethics of Buddhist, Hindu (focused on classical yoga), Daoist, and Confucian traditions, interpreting elements from Plato’s allegory in order to throw light onto the educational ideas and implications of those Eastern traditions. The chapter begins with an account of Plato’s cave and its general themes that are relevant to interpreting educational theories. We then move into an examination of the particular ideas and practices that reveal pedagogical concerns within the four traditions, attempting to show how these ideas can be interpreted with (and against) Plato’s cave. We conclude the chapter by pointing to some themes and commonalities that might merit the term ‘Eastern philosophy of education’. We ask whether the cave is suggestive of a state of illusion or ignorance and whether what is at stake is both epistemological and ontological. We suggest that the analytical distinction between knowing and being becomes questionable, even untenable, as the ethical and philosophical concerns are interwoven by Eastern traditions in rich and complex ways.