The Storm from Paradise

Co-Edited by Guillemette Johnston, this online journal put out by the Society for the Philosophical Study of Education (SPSE) aims to publish papers that approach the field of education from a philosophical perspective, in the broadest sense of the term. Some of the papers considered for publication may be selected from works presented at the annual meeting of the Society for the Philosophical Study of Education by members of that organization, after these papers undergo peer review and revision. However, this journal does not limit its content to works pertaining to the annual conference; it strongly invites outside submissions from any interested party, providing that such submissions fit the guidelines of the journal. This volume includes works by Professor Babette Babich of Fordham University, editor of New Nietzsche Studies and author of several books on Nietzsche and other topics, and Professor Eduardo Duarte of Hofstra University, whose scholarly publications include studies of Hannah Arendt and Heidegger, among others. Papers on Nietzsche, Heidegger, Rousseau, Kieran Egan, and Gary Snyder, among other topics, are featured. JPSE will consider papers, book reviews, interviews, and other documents with emphases in history, psychology, religion, pedagogy, and other areas if they portend to the general ideal of philosophical speculation on the meaning, purpose, and/or nature of education. To encourage diffusion, we are posting abstracts of the contributions. Contact the editors at gjohnsto@depaul.edu, ajohnst2@depaul.edu, and/or ajohnston@colum.edu

Routledge eBooks, 2020

2018

Teaching Magical Thinking: Notes towards a Burroughsian Pedagogy 184 Allan Johnston * * * "We don't need no education," Pink Floyd famously sings in the rock opera The Wall; "We don't need no thought control." The themes implied in these lines -issues concerning the role of the professor or teacher, the value of freedom in education, the importance of the concept of the individual, the treatment of education as a commodity -recur in the essays and articles collected in this volume. Thus we read of the representation of the authoritative voice in the fictional education of Harry Potter, the attempt to establish a language that allows inclusion of the non-human world in human communication, the evolution of the concept of the autonomous individual in representative democracies, and the search for the mythic, the magical, and the transcendent in educational systems. Discussions of the role of freedom and entertainment in education also come to the fore. Representations and misrepresentations and the political positions that underlie them are featured. These articles, then, explore a range of subjects, moving from the Age of Reason to concepts and beliefs of the New Age. If the mix seems eclectic, it is; yet throughout these essays the power of education to "educe," in the sense both of bringing out the latent and of inferring, recurs. As a guide, the educator does not provide information, but assists the student in finding his or her own knowledge and insight. Communication is key, no matter what the discipline. The educator, our writers continually stress, must lead students to discovery, to finding their own meanings, be it through the authority of the voice (as, Babich contends, is the case for the character Severus Snape of the Harry Potter movies, played by Alan Rickman), or through attention to the boundaries of freedom in the classroom, as viii the papers by Wenneborg and by Miller and Bourgeois suggest. Or perhaps discovery occurs in the structural formation of the child in ways that encourages integration or integrality through the inclusion of the mythic and the magical as valid realms of experience, areas that are explored in the studies by Mitchell, Falk, and A. Johnston. Approaches that surpass direct focus on the anthropocentric are central to the critique of Humanism in the paper by Börebäck and Schwieler, while the papers by Bulle and G. Johnston look to the Enlightenment either to trace the evolution of the concept of the individual (Bulle) or to explore how the writings of one of the key figures of the Age of Reason, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, are understood, and too often misunderstood, in the context of a cultural matrix that tries to assert its dominant, politicized worldview. Thus in the movement from New Age or magical to hegemonic cultural forces, questions arise such as, 'What role does the character of the teacher play in the child's education?' 'What degree of educational freedom should be granted to the pupil?' 'How can we interact with the world in ways that do not automatically implicate us in anthropomorphism or focus exclusively on rationalism, excluding both nature and the underlying processes that define the realms of myth and magic?' 'Should these realms be re-examined?' Such questions circulate in these works, and give us a "handle" on ways to approach education. We hope that considering today's extraverted, goal-oriented world, the essays presented here will lead you to reflect even more on the purpose, fate, and future of education, and on its need to foster in both the student and the educator a universal recognition of the basic skills that encourage communication and accuracy in learning and understanding, not solely as a means to or a goal of production, but as a way of encouraging constant discovery and recognition of the state of being of the individual and of the collective self as both work to enhance and inform each other. The variety of topics addressed in the essays included in this issue of JPSE reflects the quality and diversity of the approaches we would like to consider in future volumes. Should you have any questions or be

Co-Edited by Guillemette Johnston and Allan Johnston, this online journal put out by the Society for the Philosophical Study of Education (SPSE) aims to publish papers that approach the field of education from a philosophical perspective, in the broadest sense of the term. Some of the papers considered for publication may be selected from works presented at the annual meeting of the Society for the Philosophical Study of Education by members of that organization, after these papers undergo peer review and revision. However, this journal does not limit its content to works pertaining to the annual conference; it strongly invites outside submissions from any interested party, providing that such submissions fit the guidelines of the journal. This volume includes works by Professor Babette Babich of Fordham University, editor of New Nietzsche Studies and author of several books on Nietzsche and other topics, and Professor Eduardo Duarte of Hofstra University, whose scholarly publications include studies of Hannah Arendt and Heidegger, among others. Papers on Nietzsche, Heidegger, Rousseau, Kieran Egan, and Gary Snyder, among other topics, are featured. JPSE will consider papers, book reviews, interviews, and other documents with emphases in history, psychology, religion, pedagogy, and other areas if they portend to the general ideal of philosophical speculation on the meaning, purpose, and/or nature of education. To encourage diffusion, we are posting abstracts of the contributions. Contact the editors at gjohnsto@depaul.edu, ajohnst2@depaul.edu, and/or ajohnston@colum.edu

Volume III of JPSE, co-edited with Guillemette Johnston, wth support from Pr. Babette Babich