Abstract
Moral madness is a symptom of the moral violence experienced by teachers who are expected to exercise responsibility for their students and their work, but whose moral voice is misrecognized as self-interest and whose moral agency is suppressed. I conduct a feminist ethical analysis of the figure of Cassandra to examine the ways in which teachers may be driven to moral madness.
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Notes
Sahlberg (2011).
Morgan (1987, 201–202).
Houston (1987); Morgan, 226.
Houston, 252.
Tessman (2005).
Diamond and Allcorn (2004, 28).
Diamond and Allcorn, 40–41.
Walker, 27.
Diamond and Allcorn.
Kumashiro (2012). See also Goldstein (2014), Kuhn (2014). Goldstein describes various education reforms as responding to “moral panics” about teachers. Kuhn documents public discourse that characterizes public school teachers as selfish, greedy and villainous. The teacher’s perspective on and analysis of the demand for rule-following can be found in Smith’s (2013).
Kumashiro, 32–33.
See Ahmed.
Santoro (2013).
Santoro (2016).
Noddings (1984).
Brault (2009, 197–220, p. 198).
Brault, p. 198.
Klein (1975, 294).
Morgan, 214.
The practice of anticipating teachers’ concerns about market-based reforms and inserting a moral imperative is ubiquitous. See Gottlieb (2015).
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One of my earliest research participants said that she felt like a Cassandra. Her words launched me into this writing, nearly a decade later.
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Santoro, D.A. Cassandra in the Classroom: Teaching and Moral Madness. Stud Philos Educ 36, 49–60 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-016-9544-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-016-9544-1