David T. Hansen

Curriculum and the idea of a cosmopolitan inheritance

The ancient idea of cosmopolitanism is a topic of renewed interest today. Scholars and practitioners in many fields are examining what it means to conceive all human beings as linked by their membership in a shared cosmos. Some people focus on political cosmopolitanism, others on moral, cultural, or economic cosmopolitanism. This paper examines educational cosmopolitanism by elucidating the idea of curriculum as a cosmopolitan inheritance. It argues that curriculum can generate a cosmopolitan sensibility, by which one means an outlook that regards life experience as universally educational. It suggests that a cosmopolitan sensibility can assist people in working through some of the tensions that accompany global and local change in our time. It can position them to reconstruct creatively cultural and individual values rather than abandon them in the face of the ceaseless pressure of globalization. A cosmopolitan sensibility edifies human beings by helping them perceive why all persons, in principle, can be creative guardians and practitioners of creativity itself.

Education, Values, and Valuing in Cosmopolitan Perspective.

Abstract In this article we describe a cosmopolitan orientation toward the place of values in human life. We argue that a cosmopolitan outlook can assist people in engaging the challenges of being thrown together with others whose roots, traditions, and inheritances differ. We show that cosmopolitanism implies neither an elite nor an aloof posture toward human affairs. On the contrary, the concept illuminates how people everywhere can retain individual and cultural integrity while also keeping themselves open to the larger world. A cosmopolitan outlook positions people to consider not just the specific values they subscribe to, but also their ways of holding and enacting them. This move provides people valuable distance from values although not a break with them. It helps people consider the value of valuing as well as the value of reflecting upon values. We examine three arts, or artful methods, that can fuel this orientation. They are hope, memory, and dialogue: three familiar concepts that we accent in a distinctive way in light of the idea of cosmopolitanism. We show how these arts can be cultivated continuously through education.

The Moral Importance of the Teacher's Style.

The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity. (One is unable to notice something‐because it is always before ones eyes.). . .And this means: we fail to be struck by what, once seen, is most striking and most powerful. (Wittgenstein 1951/1979)

Dewey’s Conception of an Environment for Teaching and Learning

Abstract In this article, I examine the main contours of John Dewey’s conception of an environment for teaching and learning. I show how his conception derives from two components of his philosophical anthropology: (1) his understanding of the nature of a growing self, and (2) his view of how human beings influence one another. With this background in place, I examine why Dewey argues that an environment for teaching and learning should be what he calls “simplified, purified, balanced, and steadying.” I discuss how Dewey distinguishes an educative environment from what he calls “surroundings.” Finally, I address why he argues that teachers should not focus directly on learning, but rather on the environment that obtains in the classroom. Throughout the article, I try to show how timely and powerful Dewey’s conception of an environment remains—for teachers, teacher educators, and all who care about meaningful teaching and learning.

The Moral Environment in an Inner-City Boys' High School.

Abstract In this article, I characterize the moral environment in an inner-city high school that serves 300 African American boys. My focus is on how everyday patterns of interaction, and unusual, often dramatic events, combine to shape the schools ethos. The analysis discloses how daily conduct inside classrooms funds the larger environment of the institution. It spotlights the ways in which the schools adults strive to fashion a climate in which students can flourish morally and spiritually. In the face of numerous challenges and obstacles, many of which I touch upon, the people in the school succeed in making education something more than mere preparation for the future. Rather, their efforts render schooling into a formative experience in its own right.

Cosmopolitanism as Cultural Creativity: New Modes of Educational Practice in Globalizing Times

Cosmopolitanism is an ancient idea that is enjoying a critical renaissance today. Scholars across the humanities and social sciences have been examining the meanings and historical trajectories of the concept. They have addressed how the idea differs from multiculturalism and other notions of pluralism. A growing number of researchers are deploying the concept as a lens for interpreting how people in contemporary societies engage in cross-cultural interaction. Scholars are showing how the idea spotlights ways in which people can move beyond tolerance of difference, important as that is, to reimagining, appreciating, and learning with it. This special issue of Curriculum Inquiry presents results from several ongoing educational research projects that feature cosmopolitanism in their theoretical frameworks. The issue springs from a symposium we presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, held in Vancouver in April 2012. The energetic response from our audience, as well as our own interest in the topic, spurred us to convert the presentations into more full-blown offerings to the research community. The articles that follow are much-expanded or reconstructed versions of what their authors spoke about at the conference. I had the dual roles of organizer and discussant at the session, and serve here as guest editor. My purpose in this introductory essay is to characterize the background conception of cosmopolitanism that informs the studies. As we will see, this conception fuses notions of educational and cultural creativity. However, readers will discover that the contributors’ research, taken as a whole, is too nuanced and wide-ranging to be captured by any particular framing. bs_bs_banner

Dewey and Cosmopolitanism

Many people rightly consider John Dewey a distinctively American thinker. He was born into a time-honored New England culture. He was educated in American schools. He lived and worked virtually his entire life in the United States. He had a lifelong respect for American traditions in poetry, literature, philosophy, and more. He was active in political and cultural movements, ranging from the protection of free speech to the right of teachers to unionize. For over a century his educational philosophy has infl uenced educators across the fi ft y states. He has had a wide-ranging impact on several streams of American thought, among them pragmatism. If Ralph Waldo Emerson had written aft er rather than before Dewey, he might have called Dewey “A Representative Man,” embodying much that is original and hopeful about the American prospect.1 Th ere is at least one other Dewey, however, fused with his familiar American avatar. Th is Dewey expressed in his writing a deep and abiding interest in the world writ large. Th is Dewey enunciated ideas and points of view as a philosopher in and of the world: as if the provenance of his thought had no national or otherwise predetermined boundaries, and as if the meanings in his thought were not preshaped by wherever his desk and typewriter happened to be. Th is Dewey was cosmopolitan. In what follows I will sketch some aspects of this claim. Aft er providing a brief account of cosmopolitanism, I will focus upon Dewey’s philosophy of education where many of his cosmopolitan impulses come most generatively alive.

Bearing Witness to Teaching and Teachers.

Abstract In this article, the author elucidates the idea of bearing witness to teaching and teachers. The orientation derives from a philosophical and field-based inquiry pivoting around the questions What does it mean to be a person in the world today? and What does it mean to be a person in the role of teacher? From 2012 to 2014, the author interacted closely with 16 teachers from 8 different state-funded schools in a large, culturally diverse US city. The endeavor included extensive classroom visits, whole-group discussion meetings, and a systematic series of individual interviews. The article shows how the orientation of bearing witness calls fresh attention to the person who occupies the role of teacher. It illuminates the easy-to-overlook truth that it is persons, rather than roles as such, who educate. The author argues that bearing witness contributes importantly to remembrance of deep educational values.

The importance of cultivating democratic habits in schools: enduring lessons from Democracy and Education

In this article, we argue that democratic habits remain as vital for education and culture today as they were when Dewey published Democracy and Education in 1916. We take our point of departure from his treatment of habit and education in the book. Dewey dissolves the stereotypical notion that habits refer solely to mechanical, repetitive and mindless routines. He reconstructs the concept so that we can see why habits can be both stable and dynamic. They can evolve through action and reflection upon the consequences of action. We draw from his analysis a conception of democratic habits that educators today can cultivate across the curriculum and overall life of the school.

On the GL

Let π be a cuspidal, cohomological automorphic representation of GLn(A). Venkatesh has suggested that there should exist a natural action of the exterior algebra of a certain motivic cohomology group on the π-part of the Betti cohomology (with rational coefficients) of the GLn(Q)-arithmetic locally symmetric space. Venkatesh has given evidence for this conjecture by showing that its ‘l-adic realization’ is a consequence of the Taylor–Wiles formalism. We show that its ‘p-adic realization’ is related to the properties of eigenvarieties.