Public education is not just a way to organise and fund education. It is also the expression of a particular ideal about education and of a particular way to conceive of the relationship between education and society. The ideal of public education sees education as an important dimension of the common good and as an important institution in securing the common good. The common good is never what individuals or particular groups want or desire, but always reaches beyond such particular (...) desires towards that which societies as a whole should consider as desirable. This does, of course, put the common good in tension with the desires of individuals and groups. Neo-liberal modes of governance have, over the past decades, put this particular educational set up under pressure and have, according to some, eroded the very idea of the common good. This set of contributions reflects on this state of affairs, partly through an exploration of the idea of publicness itself – how it can be rearticulated and regained – and partly through reflections on the current state of education in the ‘north’ and the ‘south.’. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss some conditions forunderstanding teaching as an act ofresponsibility towards an other, rather than asan instrumental act identified throughepistemology. I first put the latter intocontext through a critical reading of teachingas it is inscribed in humanistic discourses oneducation. Within these discourses, I explorehow students are treated as objects ofknowledge that reinforce the teacher's ego. Icontend that the taking up of this positionmakes not only an ethical relation to thestudent impossible, but also disqualifies anytype of meaningful social (...) relation. Therefore Iargue that teachers have to give up theirposition on the safe side of knowledge andparticipate in the time of risk when meetingthe other means to take responsibility for thatother from a position of vulnerability.Moreover, it is precisely because of this riskthat teaching as an ethical relation becomespossible and where it begins to resound withpoetry. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

In this paper I discuss the possibility of the idea of emancipation within an educational philosophy that does not accept schooling as its first premise. The first part of the paper will take Sweden as an example of an educational state defined through educational policies such as life long learning, accountability and evidence-based research, and argue that these words are only meaningful within the myth of schooling and not in a language of education/emancipation. The second part of the paper discusses (...) different but related conceptions of emancipation by exploring its ambiguous nature. In the third part of the paper I specify the role and place of emancipation within a philosophy of education that seeks to articulate its social value. (shrink)

In this article I discuss the role of the immigrant in Swedish society and especially how such a role is construed through what I call the myth of schooling, that is, the normalization of an arbitrary distribution of wealth and power. I relate this myth to the idea of consensual democracy as it is expressed through an implicit idea of what it means to be Swedish. I not only critique the processes through which immigrants are discriminated against or excluded from (...) Swedish society but also try to shift the understanding of the conditions under which such exclusion is possible in the first place. Being Swedish is that which the immigrant is not. What I argue and give examples of is that the ‘no name’ immigrant becomes a possibility for democracy to happen when he or she claims his or her presence in the demos, in such a way as to make evident a split in the self‐understanding of a purely consensual Swedish democracy. In the article I argue that what is needed in order to go beyond the myth of schooling, is a pedagogy of dissensus contesting the normalizing of an unequal social order by making it contingent. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

In this text I discuss two events in which I learned something important about life and about education in order to formulate in a precise manner two propositions for my pedagogical creed. In focus for both are the interrelatedness of theory and life. The stories are told through the lenses of Emmanuel Levinas’s and Jacques Rancière’s thinking, but the stories also are shown to be essential in my understanding of their thinking. The first story is about learning ethics as a (...) consequence of meeting an old man on a remote island and the second story is about teaching, when a young girl in a situation of war taught me something important about political life. In a final section I discuss briefly what those theoretical/practical experiences and memories bring to my understanding of education. (shrink)

This article will examine the consequences of highlighting ‘subject and difference’ in one of the curriculum theories that has been inspired by postmodernism. The term postmodernism is here first and foremost meant to signify the attempt to combine politics and morality with epistemology in accordance with Levinas, Lyotard and Bauman. The article will highlight some themes that need to be developed further for a postmodernism-inspired curriculum theory. A starting-point is a critique of the type of curriculum theory which has its (...) base in the new sociology of education . From this critique, focused on universal claims, the Habermasian-inspired universalism is quickly and critically dropped and left behind, and another form of reasoning is embarked upon. The latter is inspired by a ‘minotarian politics’ concept and tries to dissolve universalism as a prerequisite for critical conversations. With this background and with the help of Levinas, the article sets out to talk about ‘difference’ without reduction to the Same and finally suggest a direction for a postmodern curriculum theory with a ‘normative’ focus on knowledge. (shrink)

In this article I address education beyond individualism, elitism and instrumentalism and instead understand education as central for a democratic way of life. I discuss the role of education in the making of democratic forms of life in the university, in the school as well as in other contexts outside institutions. I argue for the importance of defending the “free time” of the university and school against a “time of production” as a defining characteristic of university and school. I will (...) show how a time of production undermine the very possibility of education, and which therefore also tends to negate pluralist democracy. (shrink)

This article explores the erosion of public education as a project of democratization. It locates this erosion in the neoliberal world order that has redefined our understanding of schooling the democratic citizen in terms of developing market assets. In it, Carl Anders Säfström investigates specifically how this shift is apparent in the ways in which schooling operates and demonstrates how education itself stands in stark contrast to this view of schooling's function. The need to revitalize education and teaching as means (...) to further equality in society derives from the inequality that neoliberal schooling produces and that is undermining the democratic character of reputedly democratic orders. Teaching liveable life, Säfström concludes, means to verify equality in situations otherwise defined by inequality and, by this means, to expand who can be seen as belonging to democratic public life. His critique of political instrumentalism shows how late capitalism's neoliberal market ideology is systematically linked with schooling and results in the institutionalization of this ideology. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction The Myth of Schooling A National Curriculum The Disease of Consensus The Immigrant Who Has no Proper Name A Pedagogy of Dissensus Conclusion Note References.