This paper explores the concept of time in education. It argues that the neoliberal capitalist construct of time as a resource to be deployed in service of labour—ever-accelerating—has permeated education, with implications for curriculum, teaching, and learning. To slow the effects of neoliberal capitalism in schools requires a reconsideration of time that permits both different understandings of how time is encountered and different values orienting how one spends one’s time. Using Hägglund’s argument for finitude and Levinas’ idea of time as (...) a gift, the paper articulates the philosophical rationale and pedagogical implications for making the most of one’s educational time. (shrink)

Amidst a steady clamor about “learning loss” during the pandemic, a minority of educators have cautioned we must, in the words of Donna Haraway, “stay with the trouble,” giving children space to grieve, explore, and make sense of a new reality. In this paper I interrogate what it means to stay with trouble and specifically call for what I refer to as wander time to stay with trouble in schools. With the phrase wander time, I reference the 40 years the (...) Ancient Israelites spent wandering the desert after they left Egypt as slaves and before they founded a nation in Israel. Taking a phenomenological approach, I then illustrate the practical implications and the potential of wander time through a study of my then preschool-age son’s yearlong self-directed and adult supported multimedia exploration of Transformers (vehicles in popular culture that transform into robots with human-like personalities). I document how through this exploration, my son articulated fears, stayed with, and made sense of troubles. I close by analyzing the pedagogy of wander time to suggest practical implications for schools. (shrink)