Pagès Anna

The bureaucratic dimension of teaching has increased. Because contemporary education prioritizes goal-orientated learning, teaching has been reduced to a homogenized and statistical model of social practice (a sort of socio-mania). But what is at stake in teaching today? Can it count as an exceptional human experience rather than a mere performative action? In this paper, I draw on an introductory reading of Jacques Lacan’s texts to reveal a crucial dimension of teaching (whether at the primary, secondary, or university level): the relationship between truth, knowledge, and the Real. With the help of two contemporary French philosophers, Alain Badiou and Jean-Pierre Cléro, I develop the hypothesis that teaching as a human experience embodies an articulation of truth and knowledge, claiming that the Real is something that cannot be completely said. In this sense, teaching is an action crisscrossed by an act—it is something we do at the unconscious level (without really knowing what it is that we know), and which needs an interpretation. Thus, education is an act beyond the action. An act disrupts the action: its purpose, direction, and self-regulation. An action can be the object of a feedback, whereas there is no feedback available in the act when it occurs. In this article, I defend the idea that there exist teachers who are subjected to their acts but at the same time aware of how these acts may impact their students. Teaching is symptomatic: as a constant working out of the unconscious, it disturbs the effectiveness of a self-regulated action.

This volume traces the history of Western philosophy of education in the contemporary landscape. The volume covers the Cuban Revolution in 1959, the events of May 1968 in Paris, the Zapatista Revolution in 1994, and the Arab Spring revolutions from 2010 to 2012. It also covers the two World Wars, the Cold War, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the triumph of science and technology until the hegemony of post-liberal societies. The philosophical problems covered include justice, freedom, critical thought, equity, philosophy for children, decolonialism, liberal education, feminism, and plurality. These problems are discussed in relation to the key philosophers and pedagogues of the period including Jacques Derrida, Paulo Freire, Simone De Beauvoir, Judith Butler, R.S. Peters, bell hooks, Martha Nussbaum, Matthew Lipman, Giorgio Agamben, Maxine Greene, and Simone Weil, among others. About A History of Western Philosophy of Education:An essential resource for researchers, scholars, and students of education, this five-volume set that traces the development of philosophy of education through Western culture and history. Focusing on philosophers who have theorized education and its implementation, the series constitutes a fresh, dynamic, and developing view of educational philosophy. It expands our educational possibilities by reinvigorating philosophy's vibrant critical tradition, connecting old and new perspectives, and identifying the continuity of critique and reconstruction. It also includes a timeline showing major historical events, including educational initiatives and the publication of noteworthy philosophical works.