SPRINGER BRIEFS IN EDUCATION KEY THINKERS IN EDUCATION Steven Hodge Martin Heidegger Challenge to Education 123 SpringerBriefs in Education Key Thinkers in Education Series editor Paul Gibbs, London, UK This briefs series publishes compact (50 to 125 pages) refereed monographs u nder the editorial supervision of the Advisory Editor, Professor Paul Gibbs, M iddlesex University, Nicosia, Cyprus. Each volume in the series provides a concise i ntroduction to the life and work of a key thinker in education and allows readers to get a cquainted with their major contributions to educational theory and/or practice in a fast and easy way. More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/10197 Steven Hodge Martin Heidegger Challenge to Education 1 3 Steven Hodge Griffith University Brisbane Australia ISSN 2211-1921 ISSN 2211-193X (electronic) SpringerBriefs in Education ISSN 2211-937X ISSN 2211-9388 (electronic) SpringerBriefs on Key Thinkers in Education ISBN 978-3-319-19805-7 ISBN 978-3-319-19806-4 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-19806-4 Library of Congress Control Number: 2015941144 Springer Cham Heidelberg New York Dordrecht London © The Author(s) 2015 This work is subject to copyright. 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Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. Printed on acid-free paper Springer International Publishing AG Switzerland is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com) This book is dedicated to my teacher Bob Jones, who introduced me to Heidegger many years ago. Contents 1 Heidegger’s Life and Early Philosophy .......................... 1 1.1 Early Philosophy ........................................ 4 1.2 Human Being ........................................... 7 1.3 Critical Thinking in the Early Heidegger ...................... 11 References .................................................. 14 2 Heidegger’s Later Philosophy ................................. 15 2.1 Truth .................................................. 16 2.2 Language .............................................. 17 2.3 Art and Poetry .......................................... 18 2.4 Thinking ............................................... 21 2.5 Critical Thinking in the Later Heidegger ...................... 22 2.6 Humanism ............................................. 23 2.7 Enframing .............................................. 25 References .................................................. 28 3 Education Enframed and ‘Real’ ............................... 31 3.1 Heidegger on Education ................................... 33 3.2 Heidegger and English-Language Education Scholarship: The First Wave .......................................... 36 3.3 Education and Enframing: The Second Wave .................. 37 3.4 ‘Real’ Education ......................................... 43 References .................................................. 45 4 The Meaning of Learning ..................................... 47 4.1 Learning and the Early Heidegger ........................... 48 4.2 Learning as Entanglement ................................. 49 4.3 Learning as Disentanglement ............................... 50 4.4 Learning and the Later Heidegger ........................... 51 4.5 Two Modes of Learning in Heidegger ........................ 52 4.6 Learning in Young Dasein ................................. 53 vii viii Contents 4.7 Heidegger and Learning Theory ............................. 54 4.8 Behaviourism ........................................... 54 4.9 Cognitive Learning Theory ................................ 56 4.10 Situated Learning Theory .................................. 57 4.11 Learning in Everyday Contents ............................. 58 4.12 Humanist Learning Theory ................................ 59 4.13 Conclusion ............................................. 60 References .................................................. 61 5 What Is Called Teaching? ..................................... 63 5.1 The Early Heidegger and Teaching .......................... 64 5.2 The Later Heidegger and Teaching .......................... 69 5.3 Heidegger the Teacher .................................... 77 5.4 Conclusion ............................................. 80 References .................................................. 82 6 The Question Concerning Curriculum .......................... 85 6.1 Curriculum Traditions .................................... 87 6.2 Reconceptualising Curriculum .............................. 94 6.3 Toward an Ontological Curriculum .......................... 98 References .................................................. 103 7 Heidegger’s Challenge to Education ............................ 105 7.1 Problematizing Education ................................. 106 7.2 Contributions to a ‘Real’ Education .......................... 109 References .................................................. 113 Introduction At the same time Plato seeks to avoid false interpretations; he wants to show that the essence of παιδεία [paidiea] does not consist in merely pouring knowledge into the unpre- pared soul as if it were some container held out empty and waiting. On the contrary real education lays hold of the soul itself and transforms it in its entirety by first of all leading us to the place of our essential being and accustoming us to it. (Heidegger 1998, p. 167) True. Teaching is even more difficult than learning. We know that; but we rarely think about it. And why is teaching more difficult than learning? Not because the teacher must have a larger store of information, and have it always ready. Teaching is more difficult than learning because what teaching calls for is this: to let learn. The real teacher, in fact, lets nothing else be learned than—learning. (Heidegger 1968, p. 15) If the pose of teacherly omniscience and the authority that this pose articulates are disincentives to learn, then the question of education is the question not of how to transmit knowledge but of how to suspend it. The concrete teacher is one who temporarily stages the scene of resourcelessness. Education is not a passing on of knowledge and skills either in the medieval paradigm of master/apprentices or in the modern of seller/consumer. Rather call it a withholding, a delaying of articulation, in order that the student may attain an answer. (Heidegger 2002, p. 41) What is education? Where has it come from, how is it changing and what is it becoming? By the middle of the twentieth century, the philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) could see that modern education was in the grips of a business ‘paradigm’ and argued that it needed to be more than an institution of knowledge transmission. Heidegger has been dead nearly forty years, but his insights continue to be relevant—maybe even more relevant?—to education. In the meantime education really has become a big business. Education is surely more of a commercial venture than ever, with learning, teaching and curriculum each engaged in a brisk trade in skills and knowledge. Heidegger called for an education that radically disrupts the traditional prac- tices of transmission that continue to dominate the institutions of the West. His call emerges from a quest to reconceptualise philosophy from the ground up. This effort produced insights into human being, history, the social world, science, and the arts that have been celebrated, critiqued and taken up in diverse fields. Some have argued that Heidegger was interested in reforming humans as well as phi- losophy. According to Ehrmantraught (2010), for example, Heidegger’s whole ix x Introduction philosophy can be understood as a pedagogy. But Heidegger never created a sys- tematic philosophy of education, although his philosophy is replete with impli- cations. It is the contention of this book that the implications of Heidegger’s philosophy amount to a potent challenge to contemporary education. Heidegger’s long academic career revolved around a single question: the ques- tion of the meaning of ‘Being’. He was interested in what we assume when we say simple things like (to use his examples) ‘the sky is blue’ or ‘I am happy’ (2010, p. 3). What do I really mean when I say something or someone or I ‘exist’? A more traditional and puzzling way to put this question is to ask ‘Why is there something rather than nothing at all?’ For Heidegger, these questions and our responses to them are very revealing. They are revealing because the ability to ask them says some- thing special about humans, that we have an inbuilt sense of Being. In Heidegger’s philosophy the investigation of this special sense leads to a rich new way of under- standing human being that was especially influential on ‘existentialists’ like Jean- Paul Sartre. The question of Being is also revealing because the answers we offer consistently reflect traditional understandings of the world. For example, if we think the answer to the question has something to do with an ultimate creator, or if we think the answer is simply that ‘Being’ is the most general concept of all, it can be shown we are unconsciously channelling age-old metaphysical assumptions. The question is also revealing because of the very fact that we easily forget that it is an extraordinary question in our busy lives. This ‘forgetfulness of Being’ is an impor- tant feature of human experience in Heidegger’s eyes, and on close examination points to a troubling attitude modern humans have to the world and to themselves. Heidegger never answers his big question as such, but along the way he gen- erated startling insights, many of which are significant for education. Heidegger himself sketches some of the implications when, for example, he touched on the history and power of education or on the nature of teaching. Many scholars and researchers have joined in the task of drawing out the implications of Heidegger’s philosophy, either directly—e.g. Michael Peters or Iain Thomson—or more indi- rectly—e.g. Maxine Greene or Bill Pinar. The purpose of this book is to trace major implications by surveying Heidegger’s explicit remarks on education and reviewing the work of education scholars who have built on Heidegger’s ideas in different ways. I will also try to fill some gaps to help clarify implications. The goal of this work is to make clear the ways in which Heidegger’s philosophy pre- sents a challenge to education. It should be noted that the book suggests impli- cations without first subjecting Heidegger’s thought to systematic criticism, a limitation dictated by the book’s modest scope. Readers are encouraged to bear in mind that powerful criticisms of Heidegger’s philosophy have been offered. If this book stimulates interest in Heidegger and the implications of his ideas for educa- tion, it is hoped that criticisms are considered such as those by Carnap (1978), Ayer (1984), Scruton (1984), Adorno (1973a, b), Lukács (1973) and Bourdieu (1991). While not all of these criticisms are necessarily valid, they need to be taken into account by any serious student of Heidegger’s thought. The book opens with two background chapters devoted to Heidegger’s life and philosophy. Heidegger was a controversial German academic who, apart from