It is better to enlighten than merely to shine’ (Aquinas, 1920, II. II. 188.6; vol. 14, p. 278).

 

We are led to believe that the activity of thinking, along with truth and falsehood in relation to that thinking, begins only with the search for solutions… According to this infantile prejudice, the master sets a problem, our task is to solve it, and the result is accredited true or false by a powerful authority. It is also a social prejudice with the visible interest of maintaining us in an infantile state (Deleuze, 1994, p. 158).

 

Difficulties are what show men’s character (Epictetus, 2004, p. 46).

 

Let us be prepared for some kind of dilemma (St. Augustine, 1957, Book 3, 31, p. 73).

 

The dignity of the commandment is according to the dignity of the commanded (Bacon, 1950, p. 56).

 

Doctrine should be such as should make men in love with the lesson, and not with the teacher (Bacon, 1950, p. 154).

 

Learning brings pain (Aristotle, 1981, p. 462).

 

 

 

Introduction

 

In this module, doubt as education is going to be our main focus of attention. We are going to explore some of the issues raised when a teacher teaches students to doubt. Is the teacher justified in making students question everything? Is it right to teach students to doubt? Doesn’t it just undermine what they believe in? Isn’t it just a negative form of teaching, giving students little or nothing that is positive. How can one live one’s life if one doubts everything?

 

If you were with us in Power of the Teacher (and it doesn’t matter if you were not) we saw that some Marxist educators and theorists left us little hope that education could be anything other than an ideological bourgeois practice. We saw too how some postmodernists felt that teaching as a practice was too closely entwined with the Enlightenment project and suppressed those voices that lay outside this view of the world. In both cases the teacher was seen as part of the problem, and much less so the source of any solution.

 

We were left with a dilemma. Teachers who want to change society for the better inevitably seem to have to impose their vision of what is best onto the students in their classrooms and lecture rooms. Teaching for freedom seems to contradict and oppose that freedom. It seems impossible to put the theory of student-centred, or post-modern, or critical pedagogy into practice without each one contradicting itself. So, what is the teacher to do?

 

We now have to explore what the teacher can make of this dilemma – that education is counter-productive, or opposes itself; that it closes down education rather than opens it up. We have to see if anything else can be learned from these doubts about teaching. In part we will do this by looking at some teachers who have tried to teach their students to doubt but have also been aware of the contradictions that this creates for the teacher. We will try to understand what they make of having to work with contradictions.

 

You might think that it would surely be ‘natural’ now to try to ‘solve’ these dilemmas by showing how the contradictions can be overcome. But that is not what we are going to do. Instead we are going to try to understand them better. To quote a recent philosopher, Gillian Rose, who we will look at in the coming weeks, we are perhaps going to have to accept that ‘there may be no solutions to questions, only the clarification of their statement’ (1999: 42).

 

Thus, in this module we are no longer going to look at the claims of people who argue merely for different ways of teaching – more repetition of the same. Instead we are going to look at those theorists who try to learn something about teaching and education from these contradictory experiences. What can we learn now about the teacher and about the student from our experiences of the ways in which enlightenment, or teaching for independence, contradicts itself? What can we learn from the opposition of theory and practice?

 

We will see that we can begin to think about these contradictory or aporetic experiences as ‘dialectical’ and ‘negative’.

 

There is a reading pack, which will be available from my office. Week 1, in particular, has a number of different readings which you will need to read in advance, so it is important to pick up the pack if you can before the first lecture. If I’m not in my office, Jenny has a few copies.

 

 

Week 1           The aporia of theory and practice

8^th February

 

 

We start our reading with the Eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach from Marx. He raises the question for us of theory and practice. What use is theory if it doesn’t have any impact on our practice within the world? The other readings this week all concern responses to this question about theory and practice in one way or another.  There are five selections from Adorno. Each of these pieces is quite short but raises many important issues. In ‘Resignation’ Adorno is dealing with the charge that ‘intellectuals’ think about things but never actually do anything themselves, never dare to put their theory into action. He meets this charge by drawing an important distinction between those whose thinking capitulates to conformity, and those who can retain independence of thought and not be ‘terrorized into action’. The former he sees as resignation.

 

This issue is clearly spelled out in his second piece where Adorno describes a discussion between two doctors about the extent to which one’s practice is always compromised by the world in which one acts. Thirdly, we read two short pieces from Dialectic of Enlightenment (by Adorno and Horkheimer) which perhaps suggests a way in which our module might proceed in trying to better understand the contradictions of theory and practice in relation to the teacher. Then, his fourth and fifth pieces are from a book called Negative Dialectics. They highlight the way that consciousness is unable to unify contradictions.

 

 

Reading:

Marx, K. ‘Theses on Feuerbach’ no. 11, in Marx, K. (1974) Early Writings, Harmondsworth, Penguin, p 423.

Adorno, T.W. (1991) ‘Resignation’, in The Culture Industry, London, Routledge, ed. J. Bernstein, pp. 171-5 (also in Telos, 1978, vol. 35, pp 165-8).

Adorno. T.W and Horkheimer, M. (1979) Dialectic of Enlightenment, London, Verso, pp. 237-240.

Adorno. T.W and Horkheimer, M. (1979) Dialectic of Enlightenment, London, Verso, pp. xi-xvii.

Adorno, T.W. (1973) Negative Dialectics, London, RKP, pp. 17-18, and 151-3.

I have also included from Nietzsche his piece on The fanatic of mistrust and his warranty taken from The Wanderer and his Shadow (in Nietzsche, F. (1986) Human, all too human, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, p. 362). See what you think of this teaching of mistrust.

 

Further reading:

 

Adorno (1967) Prisms, Massachusetts, MIT Press.

Adorno TW (1976) The Positivist Dispute in German Sociology, Aldershot, Avebury.

Adorno. T.W and Horkheimer, M. (1979) Dialectic of Enlightenment, London, Verso (pp. 120-167).

Adorno, T.W. (1991) ‘Why Philosophy,’ in David Ingram and Julie Simon-Ingram, (eds.) Critical Theory: The Essential Readings, New York, Paragon House.

Arato A and Gebhardt E (1978) The Essential Frankfurt School Reader, Oxford, Blackwell.

Bernstein, J. M. (1991) The Culture Industry, London, Routledge.

Benjamin, W.  (1973) Illuminations, London, Fontana,  ‘The Storyteller’.

Bottomore T (1984) The Frankfurt School, London, Tavistock.

Bronner S E and Kellner D M (1989) Critical Theory and Society, London, Routledge.

Brunkhorst, H. (1999) Adorno and Critical Theory, Cardiff, University of Wales, try chapter 2.

Habermas (1985) The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, Cambridge, Polity  Press, chapter XI

Held D (1980) Introduction to Critical Theory, California, University of California Press.

Horkheimer (1947) Eclipse of Reason, New York, Continuum.

Horkheimer (1992) Critical Theory Selected Essays, , New York. Continuum.

Jarvis, S. (2002) Adorno, A Critical Introduction, Cambridge, Polity Press, pp. 52-71.

Lukacs (1963) Theory of the Novel, London, Martin Press.

Lukacs (1971) History and Class Consciousness, London, Martin Press, pp 83-110

Rose, G. (1978) The Melancholy Science, London, Macmillan, chapter 3.

Wiggershaus R (1994) The Frankfurt School, Cambridge, Polity.

 

If you weren’t in Power of the Teacher, you might try any of these:

 

Bauman Z (1992) Intimations of Postmodernity (London: Routledge) Introduction and Ch. 9.

Bauman, Z. (1997) Postmodernity and its Discontents, Cambridge: Polity.

Cherryholmes, C.H. (1988) Power and Criticism (New York: TCP) chapter 3

Critchley, S. and Schroeder, W.R. (1998) A Companion to Continental Philosophy, Oxford: Blackwell, chapter 52.

Donald, J. (1992) Sentimental Education, London: Verso, chapter 5 (on vampires!!)

Hogan, P. (1995) The Custody and Courtship of Experience: western education in philosophical perspective, Blackrock: The Columba Press, pp. 109-113.

Jennings, L.E. and Graham, A.P. (1996) ‘Postmodern Perspectives and action Research: reflecting on the possibilities’ in Educational Action Research, vol. 4, no. 2.

Lyotard, J.F. (1992) The Postmodern Explained to Children, London: Turnaround.

Marshall, J.D. (ed.) (2004) Poststructuralism, Philosophy and Pedagogy, (Dordrecht: Kluwer), try introduction and chapter 2.

Peters, M. (ed.) (1995) Education and the Postmodern Condition (Connecticut: Bergin and Harvey)

Peters, M. (2001) Poststructuralism, Marxism and Neoliberalism: Between Theory and Politics, Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, pp. 49-53 (p/c available from me).

Solomon, R.C. and Sherman, D. (eds.) (2003) The Blackwell Guide to Continental Philosophy, Oxford, Blackwell, chapter 13.

Usher, R. and Edwards, R. (1994) Postmodernism and Education, London: Routledge, chapter 8.

Parker S (1997) Reflective Teaching in the Postmodern World (Milton Keynes: Open University Press) chapter 5 (but chapters 6-8 will also give you much that is useful in thinking about postmodern thinking in education.

Vanderstraeten, R. and Biesta, G.J.J. (2001) ‘How is education possible? Preliminary investigations for a theory of education’, Educational Philosophy and Theory, Vol. 33, No. 1, pp. 7-21 (read in columns!!).

 

 

 

Week 2           What is doubt?

15^th February

 

This week we are going to be challenged by the idea that perhaps the thought that experiences the contradiction and the loss of the true (which we looked at last week), has its own truth, its own universality. We noted last week that Adorno and Horkheimer said that enlightenment or thinking must continue to examine itself. Despite the negativity of doing so, they are clear we must keep thinking, and keep trying to understand even if doing so appears hopeless. The philosopher Hegel treats this problem in a very interesting way. As we will see today, he challenges us to think about the possibility that thinking, even negative thinking, has its own truth. He suggests that in our critical thinking there is something to be learned about the nature of thinking itself, something that will force us to reassess our notion of truth. Perhaps a philosophical experience can teach us something about our ordinary experiences, and particularly those which seem most ‘negative.’

 

This is a difficult reading, but it should bear fruit later on. It would be helpful if you concentrated your reading on three paragraphs in particular, and in this order: 78, 80, and 74.

 

What you need to try to understand from them is that doubt renders knowledge uncertain (78); that doubt always unsettles thinking (80); and that the idea that doubt cannot be true may be just a prejudice (74).

 

 

Reading:

Hegel, G.W.F. (1977) Phenomenology of Spirit, Oxford University Press, pp. 46-57. (It’s a difficult read, and probably unlike anything many of you have read before!!).

 

 

Further reading:

 

Caygill, H. (1998) The Colour of Experience, London: Routledge, chapter 1

Tubbs, N. (1997) Contradiction of Enlightenment, Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 101-106.

Tubbs, N. (2004) Philosophy’s Higher Education, Dordrecht: Kluwer, chapter 2.

Tubbs, N. (2005) Philosophy of the Teacher, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 9-11 & Chapter 6.

Tubbs, N. (2008) Education in Hegel, London: Continuum.

Gadamer, H.G. (1979) Truth and Method, London, Sheed and Ward, pp. 317-18.

Solomon, R.C. and Sherman, D. (eds.) (2003) The Blackwell Guide to Continental Philosophy, Oxford, Blackwell, chapter 1.

 

 

 

Week 3           Doubtful practice

22^rd February

 

Something a bit different this week and which is much more approachable than Hegel last week. Gillian Rose has produced two wonderful books about her life as a philosopher. One of these, Paradiso, contains a brief account of her meeting with two consultants where she is able to comment upon the different ways in which they mediated their authority over her. There is much from here that we can learn about the relationship between teachers and their relationships to their students. In addition, your first essay question asks you to try to relate this account of the doctors’ practice to the idea of philosophy that we explored last week. In Rose’s account, we will see an example of a doctor who finds the difficulty of the relation of theory and practice to be a way of working, or, we might say following last week, a philosophical way of working. Note also Rose’s own definition of a philosopher!

 

In addition, you might like to read the final chapter of another of her books, Love’s Work. Here she comments upon the way that philosophy embodies life’s struggles and helps to educate us about them. I will come back to this chapter in ES3213 Know Thyself at level 3 next year.

 

Reading:

Rose, G. (1999) Paradiso, London: Menard Press, pp. 42-7.

Rose, G. (1995) Love’s Work, London, Chatto and Windus, pp. 113-115.

 

 

Further reading:

 

Augustine, (1938) Concerning the Teacher, New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts Inc, chapters X – XIV. This is in the library in Augustine, (1953) Augustine : earlier writings translated by John H.S.Burleigh at 270.2/AUG

Rose, G. (1995) Love’s Work, London: Chatto and Windus, chapter 8.

The first six essays in Women: a cultural review, Spring 1998, vol. 9, no. 1.

Tubbs, N. (2000) ‘Mind the Gap: The Philosophy of Gillian Rose’, Thesis Eleven, no. 60.

Rose, G. (1996) Mourning Becomes the Law, Cambridge University Press, introduction and chapter 1.

(There aren’t as yet that many works available about Rose, but there is a full bibliography at http://www2.gsu.edu/~phlvwl/rose-bibliography.htm).

 

 

 

Week 4           Negative education – Socrates and Kierkegaard

1^st March

 

Some of you will already be quite familiar with the story of Socrates, but he is a central figure in any module about the philosophy of the teacher. Read the story of his trial, and try a few of the dialogues that Plato recorded of Socrates’ teaching in Athens. Some of the most important are Protagoras, Meno, and Theaetetus. The famous death scene can be found in Phaedo, which is also reprinted in the Grube collection (see below). What we are looking out for this week are clues which will help us to understand the nature of Socrates’ negative education and the ‘negative pedagogy’ of midwifery that he practised. Did Socrates really mean it when he said that he knew nothing and that he was never a teacher? These questions will provide us with concepts that we can then use in later weeks in thinking about the experience of being a teacher and his relationship with the students.

 

In addition, I have included some of the comments that Kierkegaard made about Socrates in his book The Concept of Irony. We will talk about these in the session.

 

 

Reading: Plato, (1987) The Trial and Death of Socrates, Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, trans. G.M.A. Grube. There are about 10 copies of this in the library. In particular read The Apology which is an account of Socrates’ trial. The Apology can be found in other similar collections of Plato’s work in the same area of the library. In addition, The Apology can be read on line by following Plato at

http://classics.mit.edu/Browse/index.html

 

Kierkegaard, S. (1989) The Concept of Irony, Princeton, Princeton University Press, pp. 34-6, 175-8.

 

 

Further reading

 

There are many accounts of Socrates’ trial. It doesn’t matter which you read, but it might be interesting always to ask if the commentator has done ‘justice’ to the educational substance of this great teacher. You might also like to have a go at reading Kierkegaard’s Philosophical Fragments. It is a difficult read, but explores how we might move ‘beyond’ Socratic scepticism, and the implications of doing so for the teacher.

Abbs, P. (1993) Socratic Education, University of Hull.

Abbs, P. (2003) Against the Flow, London: RoutledgeFalmer, pp. 72-9.

Blake, N. et al, (2000) Education in an Age of Nihilism, London: RoutledgeFalmer, chapter 12.

Fine, G.  (1999) Plato 1: metaphysics and epistemology, Oxford University Press, chapters 1 and 2.

Hogan, P. (2003) ‘Teaching and Learning as a Way of Life,’ in Journal of Philosophy of Education, Vol. 37, No. 2, pp 207-223 (in library).

Kraut, R. (1984) Socrates and the State, Princeton University Press.

Jaeger, W. (1986) Paideia Volume II, Oxford University Press, chapter 2.

Nietzsche, F. (1968) The Birth of Tragedy (Kaufmann translation in Basic Writings of Nietzsche) New York: The Modern Library, sections 12-16.

Nietzsche, F. (1982) ‘Twilight of the Idols’ (Kaufmann translation in The Portable Nietzsche) New York: The Viking Press, pp 473-9.

Nussbaum, M. (1997) Cultivating Humanity, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, pp. 15-28.

Rorty, E.O. (1998) Philosophers on Education, London, Routledge, chapter 2.

Scott, G.A. (ed.) (2002) Does Socrates Have a Method? Pennsylvania, The Pennsylvania State University Press.

Stone, I.F. (1988) The Trial of Socrates, London, Picador.

Taylor, C.C.W. (1998) Socrates, Oxford University Press.

Vlastos, G. (1991) Socrates; ironist and moral philosopher, Cambridge University Press.

Welbourne, M. (2001) Knowledge, Acumen, Bucks, chapters 1 and 2.

(Other  books on Socrates are to be found at 183.2 in the library)

 

 

Week 5           Wisdom - Plato and Berlin

8^th March

 

 

Back, now, to Plato’s Republic for a deeper understanding of how his own theory of enlightenment (the cave) includes negative and dialectical elements, and of their significance for justice and for the teacher.

 

Reading; Plato, (1992) The Republic, London: Everyman, the sections on the Cave, the Line and the Sun, and on the relationship between the soul and the city. Any translations will do, but use the index to find the relevant sections. Remember also that The Republic can be read on line at http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.html. We will also remind ourselves of Berlin’s criticisms of Plato (and the other comments from Jaeger and Hogan) that we saw in Education: Social and Political Thought 1, last semester.

 

 

 

Further reading:

 

Annas, J. (1981) An Introduction to  Plato's Republic, Oxford; Clarendon Press.

Craig, L.H. (1996) The War Lover, A study of Plato's Republic, University of Toronto Press.

Fine, G.  (1999) Plato 1: metaphysics and epistemology, Oxford University Press.

Fukuyama, F. (1992) The End of History and the Last Man, London: Penguin, p. 337.

Grube, G.M.A. (1980) Plato's Thought, London: Athlone Press.

Heidegger. M. (1998) ‘Plato’s Doctrine of Truth’ in M. Heidegger, (1998) Pathmarks, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp. 155-172; don’t be put off by the greek!!

Irigaray, L. (1985) Speculum of the Other Woman, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, pp. 243-256; again, difficult stuff.

Jaeger, W. (1986) Paideia Volume II, Oxford University Press.

Newman, J. (1997) Inauthentic Culture and its Philosophical Critics, Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press, Chapter 4.

Pappas, N. (1995) Plato and the Republic, London: Routledge.

Rosenow, E. ‘Plato, Dewey and the Problem of the Teacher’s Authority, Journal of Philosophy of Education, vol. 27, no. 2, 1993, pp. 209-221.

Sayers, S. (1999) Plato’s Republic: An Introduction, Edinburgh University Press

Tubbs, N. (2003) ‘The Return of the Teacher’, Educational Philosophy and Theory, 35: 1.

(The relevant section in the library is 184)

For fun, try reading Peter Ackroyd’s book, The Plato Papers (1999, Vintage) and see if you can work out who is actually in the cave!

 

 

 

 

 

Week 6           Authority - Augustine and Hegel and Rousseau

15^th March

 

 

We return to Hegel this week to see how he tried to understand negative education, and how he based his whole philosophical system on it. His philosophy is always difficult and controversial, but for us it provides some challenging insights into the experience of being a teacher and the relationship with the pupil. In this week’s reading we will look at a letter he wrote whilst he was head teacher of a grammar school in Nuremberg. It turns his notion of experience which we looked at in week 2 into an educational experience, and explores some of the contradictions facing the teacher who tries to teach for this experience. One of the key questions we will have to address this week is what the implications are for the teacher if he really possesses the ‘treasures’ that the students must come to know for themselves.  We will look at this issue through Augustine as well, and at the passage in Emile where Rousseau loses his authority over his pupil.

 

Reading:

Butler, C. and Seiler, C. (1984) Hegel: The Letters, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp. 275-282

Augustine, (1942) Divine Providence and the Problem of Evil (De Ordine), New York: Cosmopolitan Science and Art Service Co., Inc, pp. 119-125.

Rousseau, (2000) Emile, London: Everyman, pp. 333-348.

 

 

 

Further reading

 

George, M. and Vincent, A. (1986) The Philosophical Propaedeutic, Oxford: Blackwell, xiii-xxi.

Hegel, G.W.F. (1975) Shorter Logic, Oxford University Press, pp. 113-121.

Tubbs, N. (1996) ‘Hegel’s Educational Theory and Practice’, British Journal of Educational Studies, vol. 44, no. 2, pp 181-199.

Luqueer, F.L. (1967) Hegel as Educator, New York: AMS Press.

Mackenzie, M. (1909) Hegel’s  Educational Theory and Practice, London: Swan Sonnenschein

Trifonas, P. (2000) ‘Jacques Derrida as a Philosopher of Education’, Educational Philosophy and Theory, vol. 32, no. 3, especially pp. 276-281.

 

 

Further (more difficult) reading:

 

Browning, G. (ed.) (1997) Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit: A Reappraisal, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, all of it, but chapter 12 if pushed for time!.

Harris, H.S. (1995) Hegel: Phenomenology and System, Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co.

Hyppolite, J. (1974) Genesis and Structure of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, pp. 172-177.

Kojeve, A. (1969) Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, pp. 45-53.

Rose, G. (1996) Mourning Becomes the Law, Cambridge University Press, chapter 3.

Tubbs, N. (1997) Contradiction of Enlightenment; Hegel and the Broken Middle, Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 218-228.

Marx, W. (1988) Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, University of Chicago Press.

Norman, R. (1976) Hegel's Phenomenology, Sussex University Press.

Rockmore, T. (1992) Before and After Hegel, University of California Press, pp. 103-107.

 

 

 

 

 

Week 7           Buber’s Inclusive Teacher

22^nd  March

 

 

Martin Buber was a Jewish philosopher whose work I and Thou has been influential in a number of different fields, including education. There are two readings for this week. The first, ‘Dialogues,’ is a summary of some of the main ideas in I and Thou. It provides useful background material then to the second reading which is much more focussed on education. There is also a very good commentary on Buber by Murphy (see below). Chapter 4 is very readable and very helpful (parts of it are reproduced in the pack), and I will refer to it in the lecture.

 

Reading

Buber, M. ‘Dialogue’, pp. 17-47, but more importantly, pp. 109-131, both in Buber, M. (1979) Between Man and Man, London: Fount.

Buber, M. (1997) Israel and the World, New York: Syracuse University Press, pp. 149-50.

Buber, M. (1987) I and Thou, New York: Collier Books, pp. 3-17.

 

Further reading:

 

Buber, M. (1947) Between Man and Man, London: Fount.

Buber, M. (1963) Israel and the World, New York: Schocken Books.

Buber, M. (1987) I and Thou, New York: Macmillan Books.

Buber, M. (1998) The Knowledge of Man: selected essays, New York, Humanity Books, particularly the conversation between Buber and Carl Rogers, pp. 156-174.

McHenry, H.D. ‘Education as Encounter: Buber’s Pragmatic Ontology,’ Educational Studies, vol. 47, no. 3, Summer 1997, pp. 341-357.

Murphy, D. (1988) Martin Buber’s Philosophy of Education, Blackrock: Irish Academic Press.

Tubbs, N. (2005) Philosophy of the Teacher, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 111-120.

 

Also

Hodes, A. (1972) Encounter with Martin Buber, Harmondsworth: Penguin, chapter on ‘The Teacher’ (I have a p/c).

 

EASTER BREAK

 

 

Week 8           Weil’s Attentive Teacher

26^th April

 

 

Simone Weil was a French writer and teacher. We will look at the way her life and her views on teaching combine to produce a very spiritual pedagogy. Again, as with all our selected philosophers, we will see that the negative plays an important part in trying to understand the experience of the teacher, and the ways in which teachers try to remain true to that experience, both in their dealings with their pupils, and in their thinking about themselves. The reading is long but very informative about her life. I suggest however that you also try to read some of Weil’s own writing which has a style and beauty all its own. Perhaps for our purposes, one of the most important is the essay ‘Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies With a View to the Love of God,’ written in 1942 (and reprinted in Waiting on God). I have included this in the pack, as well as excerpts from her book Gravity and Grace on contradiction, attention and the will.

 

Reading

Miles, S. (1986) Simone Weil: an anthology, London: Virago, the

Introduction, pp. 16-43.

Weil, S. (1977) ‘Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies With a View to the Love of God,’ in Waiting on God, London: Fount.

Weil, S. (1987) Gravity and Grace, London: Routledge, pp. 89-93 and 105-111

 

Further Reading:

 

Bell, R.H. (1998) Simone Weil; the way of justice as compassion, Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield.

du Plessix Gray, F. (2001) Simone Weil, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.

Frost, C. and Bell-Metereau, (1998) Simone Weil: On Politics, Religion and Society, London: Sage.

McLellan, D. (1989) Simone Weil: Utopian Pessimist, Basingstoke: Macmillan.

McLellan, D. (1993) Unto Caesar: the political relevance of Christianity, Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, chapter 2.

Miles, S. (1986) Simone Weil: An Anthology, London: Virago.

Tomlin, E.W.F, (1984) Simone Weil, Cambridge: Bowers and Bowers.

Tubbs, N. (2005) Philosophy of the Teacher, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 120-129.

Weil, S. (1977) Waiting on God: Letters and Essays, London: Fount.

Weil, S. (1987) Gravity and Grace, London: Routledge. (I have included two sections from this in the reading pack, one on contradiction and one on attention).

Weil, S. (1995) The Need for Roots; Prelude to a Declaration of Duties towards Mankind, London: Routledge.

 

 

 

Week 9           BANK HOLIDAY

3^rd  May

 

 

Week 10         Heidegger’s spiritual teacher

10th May

 

 

Our last philosopher is one of the most important yet controversial in twentieth century Europe. Martin Heidegger has changed much of the way philosophy thinks about itself, and has influenced many subsequent thinkers. His influence in educational theory has been very limited, although as we will see today there are many similarities between his own educational philosophy and that of Plato. We will read the famous speech he made as Rector of Freiburg which outlines his proposed educational programme. But we must also put this speech in the context of Heidegger’s sympathies for the Nazi movement and for Hitler. This will alert us to the some of the intrinsic dangers that are inherent in any spiritual philosophy of the teacher. We will also read a brief piece from his essay ‘What Calls for Thinking’ as it contains some very pertinent comments about the philosophy of the teacher. (I have also included a few pages from books that deal with Heidegger’s Nazism—Farias (1989), and Wolin (1993) For a rebuttal of the ‘journalistic skill’ in Farias and his lack of philosophical understanding, try pp. 1-3 of Wood, D (ed.) (1993) Of Derrida, Heidegger, and Spirit, Illinois: Northwestern University Press. The rest of the Introduction gives summaries of the chapters that follow it.)

 

Reading

Heidegger, M. ‘The Self-Assertion of the German University’, in Wolin, (1993), The Heidegger Controversy, MIT Press.  

Heidegger, M (1993) ‘What Calls for Thinking,’ in Krell, D.F. Basic Writings, London: Routledge, pp. 378-381.

Farias, V. (1989) Heidegger and Nazism, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, pp. 138-9, 144-7.

Wolin, R. (1993) The Heidegger Controversy, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, pp. 44-7.                             

 

Further reading

 

Arendt, H. (1996) Love and St Augustine, Chicago; University of Chicago Press; see the essay at the end of the book written by the editors, pp. 178-184.

Bauman, Z. (1989) Modernity and the Holocaust, Cambridge; Polity Press

Derrida, J. (1989) Of Spirit, Chicago, Chicago University Press; this is Derrida’s interpretation of spirit in Heidegger.

Farias, V. (1989) Heidegger and Nazism, Philadelphia: Temple University Press

Heidegger, M. (1969) Identity and Difference, New York: Harper Torchbooks

Heidegger, M. (1992) Being and Time, Oxford: Blackwell

Heidegger, M. (1996) Basic Writings, London: Routledge

Hodge, J. (1995) Heidegger and Ethics, London: Routledge, try pages 192-3.

Marx, W. (1971) Heidegger and the Tradition, Evanston: Northwestern University Press

Nash, A. S. (1944) The University and the Modern World, New York: Macmillan, Chapter IV.

Ott, H. (1994) Martin Heidegger: A Political Life, London: Fontana

Peters, M, (ed.) (2002) Heidegger, Education and Modernity, Lanham, Rowman and Littlefield.

Rose, G. (1984) Dialectic of Nihilism, Oxford: Blackwell.

Solomon, R.C. and Sherman, D. (eds.) (2003) The Blackwell Guide to Continental Philosophy, Oxford, Blackwell, chapter 7.

Standish, P. ‘Heidegger and the Technology of Further Education,’ Journal of Philosophy of Education, vol. 31, no. 3, November 1997.

Steiner, G. (1978) Heidegger, Sussex, Harvester Press, pp. 111-121.

Tubbs, (2004) Philosophy’s Higher Education, Dordrecht: Kluwer, chapter 3.

Tubbs, N. (2005) Philosophy of the Teacher, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 129-137.

Wolin, R. (1993), The Heidegger Controversy, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press

 

 

 

 

Week 11         A Philosophical Teacher?

17^th May

 

 

At the end of the module, are we able now to talk of a philosophy of the teacher? What does such a phrase mean? And if there is a philosophy of the teacher, what does it involve and most importantly what difference does it make to a teacher? These are difficult questions, but perhaps the last weeks have shown us examples of people who have tried to work with the truth of the difficulties that accompany being a teacher. Perhaps we have seen examples of people who are prepared to learn from their experiences that the difficulties are formative of who they are and how they might teach.

 

 

Week 12         Essay Surgery

24^th May

 

 

 

 

Assessments.

 

Essay 1: 25%. This is a short piece asking you to synthesise the readings in weeks 1, 2 and 3. Doing this properly and sorting out how to use the concepts early on will pay dividends both with the rest of the module and in writing the longer final essay.

                             

Title: Describe Dr Grove’s practice using Hegel’s notions of doubt and uncertainty (no more than 1250 words). Deadline: Monday, week 4, (1^st March) to Jenny in the Ed Studies office before 3.30. Returned: Monday week 7.

 

Essay 2: 75%. This is a longer essay that asks for research on the theorists looked at in the module as a whole, although of course you are able to select who you concentrate on.

 

Title: Describe models of the teacher/student relationship that are grounded in doubt.

(No more than 2250 words.  Deadline: Wednesday week 12, (26^th May) to Jenny, before 3.30pm) Returned: week 15.

 

 

Nigel

January 2010

 

 

References

 

Aquinas, T. (1920) Summa Theologica, London, Burns, Oates and Washbourne Ltd, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province.

Aristotle, (1981) The Politics, London: Penguin.

Bacon, F. (1950) Advancement of Learning, Heron Books.

St. Augustine, (1957) Against the Academicians, Wisconsin, Marquette University Press.

Deleuze, G. (1994) Difference and Repetition, London, Continuum.

Epictetus, (2004) Discourses, New York, Dover Publications.