Stefan Ramaekers

The claims of parenting : reasons, responsibility and society

Acknowledgements.- Introduction.- 1. The languages of psychology and the science of parenting.- 2. The priority of the particular and the first person.- 3. The intuitive, caring mother.- 4. Good enough parenting?- 5. Rights, needs and duties.- 6. Existential anxiety, responsibility and the political aspects of the family.- References.- Index.

Parents as ‘educators’: languages of education, pedagogy and ‘parenting’

In this article, we explore to what extent parents should be ‘educators’ of their children. In the course of this exploration, we offer some examples of these practices and ways of speaking and thinking, indicate some of the problems and limitations they import into our understanding of the parent–child relationship, and make some tentative suggestions towards an alternative way of thinking about this relationship.

The terror of explicitness: philosophical remarks on the idea of a parenting contract

The new idea of a ‘parenting contract’, explicitly taking as its point of reference the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, is meant primarily to protect childrens rights, and specifically the right to a proper upbringing. The nature of the parent–child relationship is thus drawn into the discourse of rights and duties. Although there is much to be said for parents explicitly attending to their childrens upbringing, something of the uniqueness of the parent–child relationship seems to be occluded by the language of rights and duties as that relationship becomes narrowed down to the confines of a contractual agreement. What comes to be foregrounded in the parent–child relationship is a defence of the various parties’—the parents’ and the childs—interests. By drawing on the work of Annette Baier, we argue that this has considerable consequences in terms of trust and distrust, and parental engagement. It is questioned whether the concept of the parenting contract brings about the positive climate of engagement which it is meant to promote.

The Limits of "Blackboard" Are the Limits of My World: On the Changing Concepts of the University and Its Students

This article focuses on the changing concepts of the university student and teacher, of learning and teaching, and of the university as such because of the use and integration of electronic learning environments. This mode of digital learning implies important changes in established practices in which students and teachers inevitably take part. Hitherto familiar practices are at stake. The way we understand these changing practices suggests that the implementation of the digital learning environment encompasses more than just a mere instrumental change in the processes of teaching and learning. What at first sight only seems to be a simple material intervention puts a number of familiar concepts and noble intentions under stress. Without wanting to decline the use of information and communications technology in higher education, the authors argue that it is far from self-evident to accept an electronic learning environment as effectively supporting a students self-tuition, or as stimulating learning as a critical and sustained activity.

Postmodernism: a ‘Sceptical’ Challenge in Educational Theory

Recently several educational theorists have argued for the incorporation of a scepticism of a postmodern kind into educational theory and into educational research more specifically. Their understanding of postmodernism in terms of scepticism harbours much potential, but to avoid confusion and misunderstanding it is of importance that the ‘scepticism’ associated with postmodernism is distinguished from traditional philosophical scepticism, be it as part of the very process of theoretical scrutiny or as a challenge towards its results. In this paper it will be argued that the interest of postmodernist ‘scepticism’ lies not in a quest for ever more certainty but rather in the way it moves beyond both foundationalism and philosophical scepticism. This will be elaborated from the point of view of a Wittgensteinian understanding of theoretical scrutiny (as found in On Certainty). This opens up the possibility of shedding light on postmodernist ‘scepticism’ in educational theory in terms of an aesthetic distance towards what is reflected upon.

‘Parents need to become independent problem solvers’: a critical reading of the current parenting culture through the case of Triple P

This paper aims to contribute to recent critical work on the current parenting culture. It does so by a critical reading of the individual words/parts of the sentence ‘Parents need to become independent problem solvers’ – a characteristic phrase of ‘Triple P’, a parenting programme that has recently been implemented as a form of parenting support in a number of countries. The paper aims (1) to bring out and expose some of the worrying features of the current parenting culture, (2) criticise its narrow conceptions of what a parent is and what childrearing is, (3) by doing so give a sense of the oddness of implementing Triple P as a form of parenting support and, finally, (4) tentatively suggest alternative routes of thinking for and about childrearing as well as ‘grafting points’ to start reconstructing parenting support practices.

Teaching to lie and obey: Nietzsche on education

To understand Nietzsches view of education requires us to grasp the importance Nietzsche attaches to being embedded in a particular historical and cultural frame. Education is, at least in the early stages, a matter of teaching the child to see and to value particular things or, in Nietzsches way of putting this, teaching the child to lie. Here I develop an interpretation contrary to those who emphasise Nietzsches radical individualism and thus view his Overman in subjectivistic terms. I argue that Nietzsches most important lesson is not that we are to create anything radically new, but rather that we are to take up a serious engagement with respect to what we stand for.

Multicultural education: embeddedness, voice and change

This article is a discussion of a dominant (and mostly taken-for-granted) discourse of multicultural education (the phrase ‘intercultural education’ is sometimes used). My aim is, simply, to highlight two issues which, I think, are insufficiently dealt with in relation to multicultural education: the observation that differences can be irreconcilable and the idea of change. In the first part of this article, I try to sketch this discourse by giving some examples in which some characteristic markers of this discourse are illustrated (such as the idea of initiation in a variety of perspectives, of inclusion of a diversity of viewpoints, hearing multiple voices, of enrichment of our own way of looking at the world, etc.). In the second part of this article, I will rehearse some familiar concepts regarding what it means to be initiated into socio-historical and cultural practices, drawing mainly on Cavell. The point here is to bring out a sense of a human beings embeddedness in a form of life that at the same time cuts very deep (i.e. affectively, even physically, anchored) and is incomplete (i.e. there is an irreducible, though unidentifiable lack), for the purpose of addressing the two issues mentioned (irreconcilable differences and change). Here the theme of voice (and what is involved in owning a voice) will be briefly developed, again by drawing on Cavell. In the final part of this article, I will try to draw some implications for multicultural education.

The question of 'parenting'

Parents, parenting and the perceived breakdown in family relationships make headlines on an almost daily basis. Recent years have seen an unprecedented burgeoning of policy initiatives designed to address such problems as lack of discipline amongst children, a rise in teenage pregnancies, worrying levels of drug and alcohol abuse amongst teenagers and children, eating disorders, childhood depression, and so on – and increasingly, it is parents and families that are at the centre of such policies. Whether through parenting support classes, ‘parenting orders’, proposals for ‘home–school agreements’ or an ‘upbringing pledge’ or ‘civil birth vow’, there seems to be a growing consensus amongst policy makers that accumulative evidence has indicated the undisputed role of early parenting patterns on children’s social, emotional and intellectual development, and that to abstain from intervening in family life in order to disseminate this evidence and optimize outcomes accordingly would amount to a moral and political failure. Yet while there is no shortage of literature on the significance of particular models and patterns of parent–child interaction and their policy implications, we feel that the normative assumptions and conceptual distinctions implicit in a great deal of this study have not received sufficient attention from philosophers. At the same time, we recognise that philosophy does not hold a monopoly on ethical and conceptual arguments, and that, indeed, when addressing an area as rich as this, it is often impossible to separate out the empirical and the descriptive from the conceptual and the normative. With this in mind, then, we have brought together a group of academics whose research interests converge on issues at the heart of the nature and role of parenting, family life and upbringing. The group met three times over a period of 6 months for a series of seminars, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK) Research Networks and Workshops Scheme. Our initial intention was to look more closely at some of the language(s) characteristic of current policy and popular literature on parenting in Western European states. We hoped, in doing so, to offer an overview of the way in which the current ways of thinking and speaking about the parent–child relationship may represent a shift in our understanding of this relationship and its role within the wider social discourse, and to explore the cultural, historical and political aspects of this shift. At the same time, we wished to suggest – or possibly to recover – different conceptual frameworks that would allow us to explore alternative ways of thinking and speaking about the parent–child relationship, thus potentially broadening out the public debate about parenting and contributing to policy initiatives in this area. Many of the contributors share an unease about the predominance of a certain language of ‘parenting’ that seems unduly focused on a narrow, possibly overly prescriptive account of the roles and duties of parents. Some objections to this

Infants, childhood and language in Agamben and Cavell: Education as transformation

In this paper we explore a new way to deal with social inequality and injustice in an educational way. We do so by offering a particular reading of a scene taken from Minnellis film The Band Wagon which is often regarded as overly western-centred and racist. We argue, however, that the way in which words and movements in this scene function are expressive of an event that can be read as a new beginning and that it is for this reason in and of itself educational. By drawing on Agambens and Cavells insights on childhood and what it means to acquire a language, we argue that in this scene a form of childhood is displayed which denotes a general condition for education to take place in children and grown-ups alike. Hence, education can be understood as a (temporary) interruption of existing power structures and as a transformation of ones existence.