Rethinking Education And Emancipation

Since the end of the nineteenth century, traditional historiography has emphasized the similarities between Italy and Germany as “late nations”, including the parallel roles of “great men” such as Bismarck and Cavour. Rethinking the Age of Emancipation aims at a critical reassessment of the development of these two “late” nations from a new and transnational perspective. Essays by an international and interdisciplinary group of scholars examine the discursive relationships among nationalism, war, and emancipation as well as the ambiguous roles of historical protagonists with competing national, political, and religious loyalties.

Time and the Rhythms of Emancipatory Education argues that by rethinking the way we relate to time, we can fundamentally rethink the way we conceive education. Beyond the contemporary rhetoric of acceleration, speed, urgency or slowness, this book provides an epistemological, historical and theoretical framework that will serve as a comprehensive resource for critical reflection on the relationship between the experience of time and emancipatory education. Drawing upon time and rhythm studies, complexity theories and educational research, Alhadeff-Jones reflects upon the temporal and rhythmic dimensions of education in order to (re)theorize and address current societal and educational challenges. The book is divided into three parts. The first begins by discussing the specificities inherent to the study of time in educational sciences. The second contextualizes the evolution of temporal constraints that determine the ways education is institutionalized, organized, and experienced. The third and final part questions the meanings of emancipatory education in a context of temporal alienation. This is the first book to provide a broad overview of European and North-American theories that inform both the ideas of time and rhythm in educational sciences, from school instruction, curriculum design and arts education, to vocational training, lifelong learning and educational policies. It will be of key interest to academics, researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of philosophy of education, sociology of education, history of education, psychology, curriculum and learning theory, and adult education. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Rethinking Education in Light of Global Challenges discusses challenges to education in Scandinavian welfare states due to global trends like migration, neoliberal strategies, and the exploitation of nature. This anthology comprises case studies, theoretical articles, and reflective studies, grouped under the headings of Culture, Society, and the Anthropocene. This book directly addresses three interrelated global events and their implications for education as seen from Scandinavian perspectives: migration flows, increased cultural diversity, and (post)nationalism; the erosion of the welfare state and the global rise of neoliberalism; and the Anthropocene and environmental challenges arising in the wake of the global exploitation of natural ecosystems. In case studies, theoretical articles, and reflective studies, researchers from Nordic countries explore how education, education policy, and educational thinking in these countries are affected by these global trends, bringing to the fore the different roles education can play in addressing the various issues and different ways of reimagining education. This authoritative volume will be of great interest to researchers, academics, and students in the fields of sociology of education, migration and education, environmental education, and educational politics.

Mainstream economists and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs claim that unfettered capitalism and digital technology can unlock a future of unbounded prosperity, create endless high paying jobs, and solve the world’s vast social and ecological problems. Realizing this future of abundance purportedly rests in the transformation of human potential into innovative human capital through new 21st century forms of education. In this new book Alex Means challenges this view. Stagnating economic growth and runaway inequality have emerged as the ‘normal’ condition of advanced capitalism. Simultaneously, there has been a worldwide educational expansion and a growing surplus of college-educated workers relative to their demand in the world economy. This surplus is complicated by an emerging digital revolution driven by artificial intelligence and machine learning that generates worker displacing innovations and immaterial forms of labor and valorization. Learning to Save the Future argues that rather than fostering mass intellectuality, educational development is being constrained by a value structure subordinated to 21st century capitalism and technology. Human capabilities from creativity, design, engineering, to communication are conceived narrowly as human capital, valued in terms of economic productivity and growth. Similarly, global problems such as the erosion of employment and climate change are conceived as educational problems to be addressed through business solutions and the digitalization of education. This thought-provoking account provides a cognitive map of this condition, offering alternatives through critical analyses of education and political economy, technology and labor, creativity and value, power and ecology.

A Pedagogy of Equality in a Time of Unrest addresses education and teaching as fundamental democratic forms of equality. It offers an alternative route for democracy and education and shows how particular shifts in ways of thinking and practising can lead to an education in favour of a democratic life for all. The book identifies the distributive paradigm in education, and dismantles central aspects of such a paradigm. It revolves around the themes of equality, commitment, change, emancipation, freedom and ambiguity, all set in relation to the distinction between schooling and education. Drawing on a range of theorists such as Jacques Rancière and Judith Butler, as well as the early Sophists, the book develops strategies to counteract any attempts to close down opportunities of emancipation through education. This book will be of great interest to academics, researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of the philosophy of education, history of education, critical sociology of education and educational theory. It will also appeal to activists and those interested in emancipatory forms of education and pluralist democracy.

Empire is in a state of emergency. A global pandemic and an ongoing secular crisis of capitalism, ecological instability, racism and ethnic conflict, geopolitical tensions, and specters of war all haunt the global order. Education preforms a key role in producing the subjective capacities that nourish Empire within its current neoliberal form. Simultaneously, education and pedagogy contain creative elements, presenting an immanent surplus that always exceeds incorporation. Empire and Education builds on the influential work of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri to examine the role of education and pedagogy in the making and unmaking of Empire within our historical conjuncture. The essays included in the book, which include an interview with Michael Hardt, mobilize concepts of biopolitics, swarm intelligence, revolution, love, stupidity, the body, multitude, networked solidarity, and the common to imagine pedagogical possibilities for collective life beyond Empire. This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal Educational Philosophy and Theory.