Paul Fairfield (editor) - Education, Dialogue and Hermeneutics

Education, Dialogue and Hermeneutics

Also available from Continuum

Philosophy of Education, Richard Pring

Theory and Practice of Education, David A. Turner

Education After Dewey, Paul Fairfield

Education, Dialogue and
Hermeneutics

Edited by
Paul Fairfield

Continuum International Publishing Group

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Paul Fairfield and contributors 2011

First edition Published 2011

Paperback edition Published 2012

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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-4411-7343-0

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Education, dialogue and hermeneutics / edited by Paul Fairfield.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN: 978-1-4411-8321-7 (hardcover)

1. Education--Philosophy. 2. Education--Research. 3. Communication in education. 4. Hermeneutics. I. Fairfield, Paul, 1966 II. Title.

LB14.7.E392 2010

370.1dc22

2010016142

For Gwyneth Fairfield

Contents

Notes on Contributors

Babette Babich is professor of philosophy at Fordham University and executive editor of New Nietzsche Studies. Her recent works include Words in Blood, Like Flowers (2006), Nietzsche, Habermas, and Critical Theory (edited volume, 2004), and numerous articles on Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Hlderlin.

Nicholas Davey is professor of philosophy at the University of Dundee. He is the author of Seeing Otherwise (forthcoming), Unquiet Understanding (2006), and numerous articles on hermeneutics, aesthetics, and Nietzsche.

Paul Fairfield is associate professor of philosophy at Queens University. His recent books include Philosophical Hermeneutics Reinterpreted (2011) and Education After Dewey (2009). He is former editor of Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy.

Shaun Gallagher is professor of philosophy and cognitive sciences at the University of Central Florida. He is editor of Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences and author of Brainstorming (2008), Hermeneutics and Education (1992), and numerous works in the philosophy of mind, phenomenology, and hermeneutics.

Jean Grondin is professor of philosophy at Universit de Montral and adjunct professor at the University of Ottawa. He is the author of several books on hermeneutics, including Hans-Georg Gadamer: A Biography (2003) and Introduction to Philosophical Hermeneutics (1997).

Graeme Nicholson is professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Toronto. He has authored numerous works in hermeneutics and ontology, including Justifying Our Existence (2009), Illustrations of Being (1997), and Hans-Georg Gadamer on Education, Poetry, and History (edited volume, 1992).

Ramsey Eric Ramsey is associate professor of social and behavioral sciences at Arizona State University. He is coauthor of Leaving Us to Wonder (2005) and author of The Long Path to Nearness (1987) and other works in the philosophy of science and communication.

Andrzej Wiercinski is president and founder of the International Institute for Hermeneutics. His edited volumes include Hermeneutics and the Art of Conversation (forthcoming), Phronetic Rationality (forthcoming), and Between Suspicion and Sympathy (2003).

Introduction

Education, Dialogue and Hermeneutics

Paul Fairfield

What is decisive in education may well be the most elusive to reflection. We turn to the theory of education in order to clarify and gain critical perspective on the practice, but when the practical business of teaching and learning is not only complex but exceedingly so, clarity can be far to seek, not least because the matter of which we are speaking is at once tangible and intangible. There are dimensions of education, we commonly believe, that are empirical, technical, and utilitarian. None would contest that in education we are imparting information and skills whose use-value in the world is unquestionable. Teachers are charged with the practical tasks of covering the material, instilling a curriculum, and preparing students for examinations, perhaps by means of a technique that is efficient and which can be expected to secure measurable outcomes. Rather often, however, educators have upheld an additional view that coexists uneasily with the first. This is that there is more to education than what can be spoken of within an empirical, technical, and utilitarian vocabulary, and perhaps a great deal more. When we are speaking of intangibles, a discourse that is tied too closely to the empirical can miss a good deal of the point of education and compress the whole business into a theoretical model that omits what is decisive. Educators in all disciplines and at all levels require some basic orientation that transcends the immediate business of transmitting knowledge, yet when one turns to the educational literature one finds an array of approaches, methods, and disciplinary vocabularies the relations between which are often as unclear as their relevance for practice. What follows, one might ask, from the latest findings in educational psychology in the real world of education? What difference does it make, one might also ask, whether we are critical theorists, progressives, or poststructuralists in the classroom? The relevance of theory to practice must be evident, but as anyone who has waded into this literature can attest, this is not always the case.

If the implications of educational theory for what actually happens, or might happen, in classrooms are not always clear, a further problem is that a good deal of our theorizing has a narrowing effect on how we think about education. Theoretical reflection in general aims to clarify its object, yet the clarity that we seek must not be purchased at the cost of oversimplification or any reduction in the complexity of the things themselves. When we insist that education, and educational research, be brought within a framework of utility and scientificity we run the risk of misunderstanding through oversimplification. If the practice of education is variable and intangible, at least in part and particularly in its higher reaches, our theorizing must reflect this fact and not insist that the phenomena be made to fit a model imported from the sciences. Without doubt, a good part of education lends itself to quantitative, empirical, and utilitarian analysis, yet a good part of it also does not.