Educating the Self: theorizing a philosophy of education curriculum.

A.C. (Tina) Besley & Michael A. Peters, University of Glasgow

Paper presented at the European Conference on Educational Research,

University of Crete, 22-25 September 2004

Abstract

This paper engages with the themes of the philosophy of the subject in Western cultures, the

modernist and postmodern curriculum and tasks for the new humanities. It begins to theorize

a philosophical curriculum in education as part of such an engagement and discusses a recent

curriculum innovation based on the theme of “Modern Educational Thought: Educating the

Self" which we developed and co-teach as an M.Ed. module of 30 hours, taught over fifteen

weeks at the University of Glasgow.1 The introduction is followed by a section on the

curriculum as a philosophy of the self, a discussion of the modernist notion of the curriculum

and ends with detail of the module.

1 We would like to acknowledge the University of Glasgow students of the M.Ed. module “Modern Educational Thought: Educating the Self” over the years 2000-2004. An earlier exploration of some aspects of this paper were presented by Michael A. Peters & A. C. (Tina) Besley, in Theorizing the Philosophical Curriculum in Education: Humanism, Phenomenology and (Post)structuralism at AERA 2003, Chicago.

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Introduction

At Masters level, we argue, there is a need to introduce students to the wider context of educational theory drawing particularly on the rich heritage of Kantian culture but tracing the different strands of European humanism and making explicit the assumptions of this heritage in contemporary educational theory and practice. Certainly, no discussion of postmodernism or of new methods of educational research based upon postmodernism (or indeed upon modernism) can successfully take place without at least a preliminary understanding of the main tenants and principles that emerged during the Enlightenment with the development of liberal culture. In our secularised and techno-scientific culture too often educational research is taught in a historical vacuum as though method and its underlying philosophy of science can be ripped from its cultural context and taught as ‘transferable skills’ applicable to all cases of inquiry. Many of the research courses and texts in education treat method and questions of methodology as radically ahistorical and acontextual. This trend has been encouraged by what we call the ‘ideology of useful knowledge’—a new pragmatism driven by government policy that demands ‘evidence-based’ inquiry and an emphasis on ‘what works’. The problem is that what counts as evidence is not straight forward and ‘data’-driven inquiry does not acknowledge strongly enough that method and methodology also have their histories tied strongly to a larger set of philosophical ideas and historical developments as anybody with a passing interest in philosophy of science would acknowledge.

Educational research has suffered from the same formalization as many other social sciences. Formalization or the mathematization of method—for example, the emergence of various forms of statistical analysis—has undoubtedly given us huge benefits in rigour and verification. At the same time, the institutionalisation of ‘method’ courses that began when the social sciences started to emulate the success of the natural sciences led to an emphasis that left out the question of the self or what Foucault calls the problematique of the subject (the problem set that emerges around questions of self-knowledge/ignorance, individual consciousness, agency). We can trace this development in analytic Anglo-American philosophy to the logicism of Frege and Russell when the philosophy of the self was written out in favour of the application of the ‘new logic’ to language and the development and refinement of logico-linguistic forms of analysis. On the Continent the traditional emphasis on the problem of the self or the problematique of the subject was preserved in forms of analysis deriving from hermeneutics, phenomenology, existentialism and, to a lesser extent, from structuralism and poststructuralism. (We say ‘to a lesser extent’ because structuralism per se was strongly influenced by the general intellectual movement of European formalism—a movement that originated in the abstraction from content to emphasise question of form or was driven to identify formal properties or elements of any system).

Also fundamental educational concepts that are deeply embedded in Western notions of the self—‘agency’, ‘intentionality’, ‘the person’, ‘the whole child’, ‘the whole school’—and associated notions in economics, politics and ethics that comprise liberal culture, often are assumed or so deeply held notions as the basis of our beliefs and institutions that they are simply taken for granted in curriculum decisions.

This, then, in part, comprises our rationale and justification for introducing a core course as part of a Masters of Education at the University of Glasgow. Perhaps,

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there is an additional irony in the fact that two scholars from New Zealand (part of the so-called ‘new world’) should come to Glasgow, a city that came to life as part of the Scottish Enlightenment, and the University of Glasgow in order to teach a course that sought, in part, to remind its contemporary students of a history and philosophy that had some of its origins in Scotland. The University of Glasgow is a venerable institution established as the fourth university in Britain in 1451 under a papal bull and had, as most people know, a strong role to play in the Scottish Enlightenment with the likes of Frances Hutcheson (1694-1746), Adam Smith (1723-1790), Thomas Reid (1710-1790), and John Millar (1735-1801).2 We could expand this point much further and it seems a double irony because Scotland itself was one of the most literate nations in Europe in the late eighteen century, with a strong educational tradition based on John Knox dating from The Book of Discipline during the Protestant Reformation in the early decades of the 1600s.3

In short, our rationale is to demonstrate how the philosophy of the self historically and philosophically underlies contemporary education and liberal culture, and how its central notions are presupposed by educational research and the current obsession with method. The object lesson is one about the importance of a philosophical understanding of concepts and an in-depth historical understanding of context that together provide a value base for a secular science-driven set of methods in educational research.

The M.Ed. module called ‘Modern Educational Thought: Educating the Self’ considers the content, skills, and processes that will be involved in achieving the curriculum aims – the what, why, how and who questions. The module aims are:

to introduce students to important concepts and theories in education concerning questions of self and identity;

to introduce students to important theoretical debates and discourses in educational theory;

to discuss recent developments in educational theory.

In theoretical terms the underlying argument or general sweep of the course emphasises that the philosophy of the subject is a movement away from the abstract, disembodied individual subject characteristic of the Enlightenment (the Kantian ethical subject and liberal political economy – i.e., homo economicus) toward a relational, gendered subject both situated and embodied and understood in all its socio-cultural complexity. Hence, the module begins with Kant and ends with Foucault and some reference to ‘postmodern culture’. Along the way, students are

2 The "Scottish Enlightenment" stretched roughly from 1740 to 1790. Hutcheson, Smith, Reid and Millar were all professors at the University of Glasgow while Adam Ferguson, Dugald Stewart and William Robertson were at the University of Edinburgh. This is not to mention Lord kames, Sir James Stewart, James Anderson and, of course, David Hume, all of whom while outside the academy strongly influenced the course of Scottish philosophy. Scottish moral philosophy and political economy exercised a strong direction on the philosophy of self on the one hand inquiring whether ‘the acquisitive ethics of capitalism could be made compatible with traditional virtues of sociability, sympathy and justice’ and on the other, providing a strong formulation of homo economicus with the underlying assumptions of individuality, rationality and self interest. See http://cepa.newschool.edu/het/schools/scottish.htm#reid. 3 John Know was among a group of ministers commissioned by the Kirk of Scotland to draft “in a volume the policy and discipline of the kirk.” The First Book is notable for “its visionary program for Christian education”. See the Publisher’s Introduction the The First and Second Books of Discipline at http://www.swrb.com/newslett/actualNLs/bod_ch00.htm.

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introduced to understandings of liberalism, the feminist critique of the liberal subject, forms of neoliberalism, notions of modernism/modernity, postmodernism/postmodernity, poststructuralism, and changing notions of the self and identity, especially in relation to youth culture.

We have explored the relation between the philosophy of the subject and the curriculum in two ways: first, though the critique of humanism via Heidegger and Foucault, and second, through exploring postmodern perspectives (see de Alba et al, 2000). Briefly, we develop a view of the curriculum that rests on our understanding of postmodernism as revealed in Table 1 (attached) which highlights: anti-foundationalism; post-epistemological viewpoint; anti-naive realism; anti-essentialism and the self; analysis of power/knowledge; boundary crossings. We demonstrate the central role of philosophy of the self in terms of:

the critique of the metaphysics of presence; questioning of the problematic of the humanist subject; substitution of genealogical narratives for ontology; the cultural construction of subjectivity; the discursive production of the self; analysis of technologies of self.

In the remainder of this paper we focus on the underlying rationale for the course, the curriculum as a philosophy of self, Enlightenment humanism and the ‘Modernist’ notion of curriculum, and end with the structure of the module itself. The emphasis here is on a philosophical narrative that attempts to tease out our interpretation of the philosophy of the subject as it informs the module ‘Educating the Self’. The curriculum as a philosophy of the self

From its ancient Greek beginnings with the two key principles, ‘care of the self’ and the Delphic maxim, ‘know thyself’ for personal and social conduct (both of which Foucault, 1988, discusses in his seminar, “Technologies of the Self” and which are briefly discussed later), Western philosophy has devoted itself to investigating the self and its associated problems of self-knowledge/ignorance and self-governance. This traditional emphasis became the basis of European humanism from the period of the Florentine renaissance onwards. European humanism that presaged both rights and equality, consisted in a curriculum and philosophy of education primarily concerned with character formation and the assertion of moral values.

Western analytic philosophy based on the movement of logicism initiated by Frege and Russell represent a strong break with this tradition that no longer allows us to focus on the self as an indispensable part of what is a defining characteristic of the Western tradition. Continental philosophy–in phenomenology, hermeneutics and existentialism–by contrast, provide a set of links to the rich humanist tradition. Both structuralism and poststructuralism that have developed in reaction to various forms of humanism entertain a more problematic relation. The well-known structuralist motif ‘decentring of the self’ and the continuation of this line of thinking by poststructuralists we argue does not necessarily represent a negation or liquidation of the subject or of agency, but rather a social, linguistic and historicizing re-contextualisation of the subject.

The first and most famous statement of the Enlightenment self, as is well known, was René Descartes “cogito”, an “I think”, the self as the thinking subject,

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given its formulation in the well known “Cogito ergo sum” (“I think therefore I am”) in the Discours. Much of modern philosophy of the self is the history of trying to overcome Descartes’ conception of self. It is the individual knowing self, fully transparent to itself, which serves as the basis for a foundation for all knowledge, for certainty, for indubitability – even an omniscient demon cannot lead us to doubt the proposition “Cogito ergo sum”. This notion is ‘consolidated’, so to speak, in Kant’s view of the rational, autonomous knower.

Many poststructuralist French philosophers, especially its post WW II, have viewed the self as an increasingly concrete specification in its socio-cultural complexity. In particular, poststructuralist thinkers have specified the subject in terms of its temporality and finitude—we come into the world and we depart. There is a limited time horizon for human beings and temporality is a mode of being as Heidegger or Bergson might say. These thinkers also, following phenomenologists like Mearleau-Ponty, empahsised corporeality (embodiedness) and spatial location (situatedness). The emphasis on temporality and the body—on the embodiedness of a thinking creature—has open up new philosophical vistas and research possibilities. Much of this development can also be traced to the subjective turn by Descartes and increasingly philosophers and educational theorists have turned to questions of subjectivity, intersubjectivity, gendered subjectivity and sexuality with a recognition of libidinal forces and emotionality in constituting the human subject. More recently, scholasr following this line of thinking have recognised the importance of processes of cultural and ethical self-constitution and they have often linked these questions to patterns of production and consumption and the importance of self-constitution and positioning in discourse. Contrary to some assessments of poststructuralist currents of thought, French theorists did not liquidate the subject but rather rehabilitated it, multiplied it and reinvented it in all its theoretical and practical depth. This is certainly true of Foucault who returns to the ethical subject and the question of ethical self-constitution in his later work.

Foucault argued that the Delphic moral principle, ‘know thyself’ (gnothi sauton) became dominant, taking precedence over another ancient principle and set of practices, ‘to take care of yourself’, or to be concerned with oneself (epimelēsthai sautou) (Foucault, 1988). According to Foucault, ‘care of the self’ formed one of the main rules for personal and social conduct and for the art of life in ancient Greek cities. The two principles were interconnected and it was actually from the principle of care of the self that the Delphic principle was brought into operation as a form of technical advice or rules to be followed when the oracle was consulted. Foucault accepted that the ancient Greek notion of care of the self was an inclusive one that involved care for others and precluded the possibility of tyranny because a tyrant did not, by definition, take care of the self since he4 did not take care of others. Foucault stated that care for others became an explicit ethic later on and should not be put before care of the self (see Foucault, 1984; 1997).

In contemporary Western culture the two moral principles have been transformed such that care of the self is often viewed as immoral, narcissistic and selfish, even an escape from rules. This has occurred because know thyself was the principle that Plato privileged and which subsequently became hugely influential in 4 The pronoun ‘he’ was used because these discussions about ancient Greek society only referred to free males, not slaves nor women as citizens.

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philosophy precisely because Descartes privileged the cogito or thinking subject and knowledge of the self. Yet Foucault argued for the return of the ancient maxim of care of the self because the since the Enlightenment the Delphic maxim had become over-riding and linked inextricably with constituting subjects who are able to be governed.

Foucault pointed out that for the ancient Greeks the ethical principle of self consisted of self-mastery, but by comparison, it shifted to become self-renunciation in the Christian era (Foucault, 1988). Thus the crucial difference revolved around two quite different ethical notions. Self-mastery implied both a control of the passions and a moderation in all things, but also a worldliness that involved being in and part of the world of the free citizen in a democratic society. Self-renunciation as a form of Christian asceticism involved a set of two interlinked truths obligations: one set surrounded “the faith, the book, the dogma” and another “the self, the soul the heart” (Foucault, 1981, cited in Foucault, 2001: 139). The tasks involved in the latter, include first a “clearing up all the illusions, temptations, and seductions which can occur in the mind, and discovering the reality of what is going on within ourselves” and second getting free from attachment to the self, “not because the self is an illusion, but because the self is much too real” (Foucault, 1981, cited in Foucault, 2001: 139). These tasks implied self-negation and a withdrawal from the world, in what forms a “spiral of truth formulation and reality renouncement which is at the heart of Christian techniques of the self” (Foucault, 1981, cited in Foucault, 2001: 139). Confessional practices form a technology of the self – speaking, reading and writing the self -- that shifted from the religious world to medical then to therapeutic and pedagogical models in secular contemporary societies (Foucault, 1988; Peters, 2000). Foucault concluded his seminar on technologies of the self with the highly significant point that the verbalization techniques of confession have been important for the development of the human sciences into which they have been transposed and inserted and where they are now used “without renunciation of the self but to constitute, positively, a new self. To use these techniques without renouncing oneself constitutes a decisive break” (Foucault, 1988: 49).

Enlightenment Humanism and the ‘Modernist’ Notion of the Curriculum

To question the most basic principles of modernity redefines the meaning of schooling, and also calls into question the very basis of our history, our cultural criticism, and our manifestations and expressions of public life. In effect, to challenge modernism is to redraw and remap the very nature of our social, political and cultural geography. It is for this reason alone that the challenge currently being posed by various postmodern discourses needs to be taken up and examined critically by educators (Aronowitz & Giroux, 1991: 58).

Modern Western traditions of pedagogy and education were inaugurated and shaped by Renaissance humanism, not only in terms of its adoption of the model of Latin letters, the revival of classical literature and the reproduction of its literary forms as the basis for the “new learning”, but also, in a more deeply cultural sense, in terms of the underlying philosophical assumptions constituting notions of human nature and human inquiry, and the relations of human beings to the natural world. Indeed, as Robert Proctor (1998: ix-x) argues "within the crucible of the Renaissance's re-

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appropriation of classical culture, the humanities emerged as a response to a new 'modern' experience of the self -- our self". He suggests that in the act of recovering classical culture the Renaissance humanists transformed it, thus preserving the ideal of a liberal arts education but in a psychological and epistemological context we can describe as “modern” rather than “ancient.”

It is significant for our argument that humanism was expressed first and foremost as a curriculum the aim of which was to shape, mould and develop the individual’s moral character and personality and in this sense not only represented a curricular technology of the self – an attempt to remake Man in the image of the classical era – but also a renewal of Western metaphysics. The humanists fundamentally changed what it meant to do philosophy. The nature of philosophical conversation changed with the introduction of new genres such as the essay, the dialogue and the letter – pedagogical forms of philosophy that still are still pervasive in the modern school and university. Rhetoric was the dominant element of the studia humanitatis and while this meant attention to the skills of argument (and thus also logic) ethics was the most consistent interest. Petrarch, Salutati, Bruni and the early humanists prepared ethical treatises, often as teaching manuals, for guiding the ethical formation of youth to develop an educated ruling class for the Italian courts and city states. Humanism, thus, as a curriculum was an ethical technology of the self, one that rested on a prior notion of the ethical subject based on an eclectic mix of Stoicism, Aristotelian virtue ethics, etiquette, ‘morals manners’ and questions of lifestyle. One of the conclusions we draw from this background is that the question of curriculum, both historically and philosophically, can be construed as a deliberate attempt at the construction of the self – the curriculum as a technology of the self, in Foucault’s sense. Remarkably, it is only in the post-war period that this received view of the humanism of the Western metaphysical tradition is put in question by Martin Heidegger.

In the “Letter on Humanism” Heidegger responds to a letter from Jean Beaufret written in 1946, who translated much of his work into French for the first time. Beaufret posed the question: how to restore meaning to the term "humanism" ("Comment redonner un sens au mot 'Humanisme'?”). Heidegger begins by questioning whether it is necessary to retain the word given the damage it has caused. He questions what it means for "Man" to become "human" and suggests humanitas remains the concern of an originary thinking: "For this is humanism: meditating and caring, that man be human and not inhumane, "inhuman", that is, outside his essence. But in what does the humanity of man consist? It lies in his essence" (p. 224). Heidegger then takes us through a brief genealogy of the concept "humanism" beginning with the first humanism that is in essence Roman “which emerges from the encounter of Roman civilization with the culture of late Greek civilization” (Heidegger, 1996: 224).

He argues that if we understand humanism in general as a concern for freedom, then humanism will differ according to the conception of ‘freedom’ and ‘nature’ of man on embraces. In this sense there have been many such conceptions. Heidegger mentions in this respect Marx’s humanism of the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, Sartre’s existentialism, and Christianity. However different they might be in purpose and in principle, they all agree “the humanitas of homo humanus is determined with regard to an already established interpretation of

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nature, history, world, and the ground of the world, that is, of beings as a whole” (Heidegger, 1996: 225). Thus, according to Heidegger, as already quoted above “Every humanism is either grounded in a metaphysics or is itself made to be the ground of one”. In other words, every humanism to emerge since the first Roman humanism has presupposed the universal essence of man as animal rationale, which while not a false definition is still metaphysical, and metaphysics, so argues Heidegger, is unable to ask or answer the question of the truth of Being itself.

Heidegger then deals with the inevitable misinterpretations that arise when one tries to think Man more primordially outside metaphysics and the metaphysical tradition. These misinterpretations are important for they clearly indicate what Heidegger's 'humanism' is not. He writes in a series of sentences that we have abbreviated only to retain the reiterated form:

Because we are speaking against 'humanism' people fear a defense of the inhuman and a glorification of barbaric brutality…Because we are speaking against 'logic' people believe we are demanding that the rigor of thinking be renounced and in its place the arbitrariness of drives and feelings be installed and thus that 'irrationalism' be proclaimed true…Because we are speaking against 'values' people are horrified at a philosophy that ostensibly dares to despise humanities' best qualities…Because we say that the Being of man consists in 'being-in-the-world' people find that man is downgraded to a merely terrestrial being…Because we refer to the word of Nietzsche on the 'death of God' people regard such a gesture as atheism … Because in all respects mentioned we everywhere speak against all that humanity deems high and holy our philosophy teaches an irresponsible and destructive 'nihilism' (Heidegger, 1996: 249).

Jean-Paul Sartre5 developed a subjectivist phenomenology based on Heidegger’s work, yet Sartre seems unaware of Heidegger’s anti-Cartesian and anti-subjectivist turn. Sartre (1973) in Existentialism and Humanism, a lecture delivered in Paris in 1945, distinguishes between Christian [Jaspers and Marcel] and atheistic existentialists -- tracing his own lineage to Heidegger. Both versions share the belief or first principle of existentialism -- "subjectivism" -- that existence precedes essence (Sartre, 1973: 26). Starting from the cogito -- I think, therefore I am -- Sartre provides an "intersubjective" reading of Descartes that, he believes, assures human purpose the structure of universal value. He also proclaims, "existentialism is a humanism" (p. 54), distinguishing two meanings of humanism: humanism as a "theory which upholds man as the end-in-itself and as the supreme value" (p. 54) and humanism as a theory of "self-surpassing" Man, at "the heart and centre of his own transcendence" which constitutes what Sartre calls "existential humanism" (p. 55).

Significantly, Heidegger’s questioning of humanism rejected the Enlightenment self -- the Cartesian-Kantian subject – opening the way for a critique of the ideology of individualism, of mind/body dualism, and the privileging of the mind, especially in education. It also retrospectively validated Marx’s critique of the Enlightenment

5 Sartre studied Husserl and Heidegger during his study visit to Berlin in 1932 and later visited and met with Heidegger.

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subject and led to criticisms of ‘rationality’ and ‘autonomy’ as aspects of Enlightenment humanism.

The Enlightenment self characteristically is given expression philosophically in terms of what philosophers call the “philosophy of consciousness” or the “philosophy of the subject” (where the subject=self). The first and most famous statement of the Enlightenment self was René Descartes “cogito”, an “I think”, the self as the thinking subject, given its formulation in the well known “Cogito ergo sum” (“I think therefore I am”) in the Discours. Much of modern philosophy of the self is the history of trying to overcome Descartes’ conception of self. It is the individual knowing self, fully transparent to itself, which serves as the basis for a foundation for all knowledge, for certainty, for indubitability – even an omniscient demon cannot lead us to doubt the proposition “Cogito ergo sum”. This notion is ‘consolidated’, so to speak, in Kant’s view of the rational, autonomous knower.

Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one's understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another. Sapere Aude! [dare to know] "Have courage to use your own understanding!"--that is the motto of enlightenment. “An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?” (Kant: 1784)

Enlightenment humanism6, which has a different character to Renaissance humanism, nevertheless preserves many of its essential features, while expanding, adding and revising its underlying philosophies both politically and epistemologically. We might see this gradual evolution of the Western notion of the self (or competing notions of the self) as not necessarily a continuous historical development but rather in terms of a genealogy in the manner Foucault develops out of Nietzsche’s The Genealogy of Morals. There are important embellishments and innovations, especially with the new science of knowledge and the emphasis on a form of natural reason that defines the rational and autonomous self. Still the notion of an essential human nature that can be investigated applies in both periods. The self is seen as possessing a stable core, which is both coherent and knowable. This kind of conception underlies the Kantian ethical subject with an emphasis on the self as a conscious, rational and autonomous chooser. There are many overlaps then between forms of humanism, beginning with the Florentine Renaissance and the mergence of a recognizable modern self that increasingly came to underlie modernism and modern institutions such as literary culture per se, the notion of the author and authorship, individuality, individuality as expression, and the Romantic emphasis on the uniqueness of the individuality as a source of expression, and notions of originality and authenticity.

It is not difficult to see the application this analysis to ‘modernist’ conceptions of the curriculum. What emerges from this brief analysis is the continuing emphasis on the self–writing and picturing the self–with its emphasis on experimenting and exploring all the dimensions of subjectivity, reflexivity and self-consciousness in terms of form, design, composition, narrative technique and the status of the production of the work,

6 We might complicate matters by admitting that there was no one Enlightenment but that there were several – German, Scottish, Italian, Spanish and French – and these multiple enlightenments require different historical narratives together with their counter-enlightenment stories.

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itself. These literary ‘techniques’, forms and genres—the diary, the confession, the biography, the autobiography, the mergence of the modern novel—had its parallels in other artistic forms, such as the portrait, the self-portrait in both its religious and secular forms, and later, of course, the emphasis on photographic portraits in the early nineteenth century and the twentieth century emphasis on ‘the face’ (for women) and ‘the body beautiful’. In other words, it preserves the emphasis on the self and reflects in its own ways the endless self-reflexivity of the subject.

Clearly, while we cannot equate, conflate or collapse Renaissance humanism, Enlightenment humanism and modernism, we might tease out some general philosophical features that enable us to talk generally about an underlying mainstream account of the self that underlies the modern curriculum. Curriculum theorists such as Bill Pinar (Pinar, 1994; Pinar, Reynolds, Slattery, & Taubman, 1995) and Bill Doll (Doll, 1993; Doll & Gough, 2002) have demonstrated how modernism is manifest in theories of knowledge, learning and curriculum. They, among others, have shown the limitations of assumptions underlying an account of learning that is said to occur in innate and universal linear developmental stages and questioned the privileging of theory over practice. Others have claimed that modernism was informed by theories of industrial efficiency and scientific management (e.g. Taylor, 1911/1947). This rationalist and instrumentalist approach is captured in Cubberly’s (1916 p.338) early statement: ‘Our schools are in a sense factories in which raw products (children) are to be shaped and fashioned into products to meet the various demands of life’. Scientific management also had significant organisation effects in terms of discrete age-grade units and the regulation of the school day through separate time units. The curriculum itself was organised into sequential steps and was regarded as cumulative, “a series of contingent units, covered, mastered and accumulated” (Doll,1993, p 38). Early curriculum theorists, adopting principals of scientific management focused on remediation drills or rational techniques directed towards ends and their evaluation (e.g., Bobbitt 1994; Tyler, 1949). This rationalist emphasis in modernity also privileged certain ‘rigorous’ disciplines based on the Newtonian ideal while relegating others.

Yet to conflate modernism with humanism or to emphasise the instrumental and technical rationality characteristic of modernity with modernism itself is to confuse the issues. Clearly, modernism is primarily an aesthetic term applying more to literature and the visual arts than to science and technology, which are better explained by reference to the concept of modernity. As the Australian art critic Bernard Smith (1998: 12) perceptively remarks:

Modernisms are critiques of Modernity. They draw upon the archaic, the classic, the exotic and the ‘primitive’ to develop their critiques. Modernism does not feel at home in Modernity. Its creative drive is constructed from components drawn from an idealised past or a utopian future, not from Modernity’s present, which it finds banal or life-threatening. Yet each modernist critique of Modernity invariably fails. During its creative avant-garde moment it seeks to make Modernity endurable, liveable. As its energy wanes it traces may be discerned in Modernity. For Modernism’s critique is not sustained; it folds over into a celebration of Modernity. It begins with Picassos and ends with its Warhols tirelessly repeating themselves. Then, hopefully, but not inevitably, a renewed avant-garde may appear again,

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perhaps as the strange child of cultural imperialism, and in another part of the globe.

If Smith is in general terms correct we might expect to see both tendencies – modernity and its manifold critique in modernism – reflected in the curriculum, perhaps, even as a tension inherent in the organisation of the curriculum versus the content of its arts and humanities-oriented disciplines, a process/content contradiction. It would certainly give grounds for seeing the curriculum as, in part, a series of historically sedimented layers of concepts, preserved in part or whole, as well as a cultural construction that emulates a set of metanarratives and counter-narratives embedded deeply within Western culture to the point of being hegemonic. We might also recognise the way in which modernisms (in the plural – at once, literary, art historical, and architectural) based upon inherited conceptions of the self through a variety of expressive techniques examine and interrogate the subject in terms of a life-threatening and anxious-making Modernity. Hence our M.Ed. module chooses the terms ‘modernity’ and ‘postmodernity.’

Of this debate, if there is one thing that Habermas and Foucault, Derrida and other poststructuralist thinkers can agree on, it is the idea that the tradition of the philosophy of consciousness–of what Habermas calls “subject-centred reason”–is now exhausted. Habermas (1987) seeks to resurrect the philosophical discourse of modernity by suggesting that the paradigm of the philosophy of the subject be replaced by the paradigm of mutual understanding between subjects capable of speech and action. Only by replacing the paradigm of the subject–“of the relation-to-self of a subject knowing and acting in isolation”–with that of mutual understanding is it possible once again to take up the counter-discourse inherent in modernity and to lead it away from both the Hegelian and Nietzschean paths which he asserts have been proven to lead us nowhere. The paradigm of mutual understanding in Habermas’ conception emphasises an intersubjectivity inscribed in ordinary communication, where so-called validity claims are said to be discursively redeemed at the level of discourse.

French philosophers, by contrast, particularly those inspired by Nietzsche and Heidegger, disagree with Habermas, suggesting that his ‘intersubjective self’ is still based upon unexamined assumptions of Enlightenment humanism and tends to repeats its mistakes, especially when it comes to Habermas’ universalist formulation. By contrast, the history of twentieth century French philosophy, especially its post WW II phase, can be understood, as we argued above, as an increasingly concrete specification of the self in its socio-cultural complexity in terms of its:

temporality and finitude; corporeality (embodiedness) and spatial location (situatedness); intersubjectivity; gendered subjectivity; sexuality; libidinal forces and emotionality; cultural and ethical self-constitution; patterns of production and consumption; constitution and positioning in discourse.

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Contrary to some assessments of poststructuralist thought, we argue that French theorists did not liquidate the subject but rather rehabilitated it, multiplied it and reinvented it in all its theoretical and practical depth. This is certainly true of Foucault who returns to the ethical subject and the question of ethical self-constitution in his later work. It is also true of Derrida who states: “I believe that at a certain level both of experience and of philosophical and scientific discourse, one cannot get along without the notion of the subject. It is a question of knowing where it comes from and how it functions” (Derrida, 1970: 271).

The M.Ed module: Modern Educational Thought: Educating the SelfIt is these broad historical and philosophical trends and their examination in

terms of education that lead to the development of the Master of Education module ‘Modern Educational Thought: Educating the Self’. The module is structured in two-hour slots, once a week over 15 weeks (30 hours), following a largely chronological sequence that frequently revisits ideas presented earlier. Since it began in 2000 it has been revised annually and now takes the following form:

Prophets of ModernityCourse Introduction: Conceptions of Modernity and the Self (MAP)Kant, Education and the Enlightenment (MAP)Kant - Writing Workshop: The Review Essay (MAP)Liberalism, Neoliberalism and Education (MAP)Century of the Self: 1 & 2 (ACB) Century of the Self: 3 & 4 (ACB) Neoliberalism, Education and the Entrepreneurial Self (MAP)Philosophers of Postmodernity?Conceptions of Modernity/Postmodernity (MAP)Education & Postmodern Selves (MAP/ACB) Feminist Perspectives on the Self (MAP/ACB)Education, Social Constructionism and the Self (ACB)‘Psychologised’ Adolescence and ‘Sociologised’ Youth (ACB)Foucault, self and disciplinary societies (ACB)Foucault: Technologies of the Self (ACB) Education, the Internet and the Virtual Self (MAP)

The module introduces students to the importance of philosophies of the self and identity in educational theory and practice and to important theoretical debates and discourses. It discusses recent developments in educational theory and the effects of broader intellectual movements on educational thought. Hence it examines the challenges to Enlightenment viewpoints and the notions of modernity and postmodernity and the views of some modern and postmodern philosophers’ on the self and identity for understanding educational theory and practice. Students discuss not only the self/identities of their students as objects, but also consider their own identities, both personally and professionally. They are expected to consider how/what education has come to view the self and why it has come to accept the prevalent Enlightenment self as 'truth'.  Unfortunately the time constraints of in a brief 15 week module and the stated focus on ‘modern educational thought’ prevent any engagement with philosophers prior to Kant. Consequently the module deliberately moves from modernist to postmodernist so that students become more closely

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engaged with contemporary rather than past philosophical debates. Students are expected demonstrate their knowledge of the views of some modern (and postmodern) philosophers and leading educational theorists on the significance of notions of the self and identity through writing two pieces of work: first, a review essay of about 1000 words based upon a structured workshop on Kant's famous essay "What is Enlightenment?" and second, a critical essay, which presents an argument of 2000-2500 words. The first assignment is designed as something of a diagnostic tool to see how well the students can express ideas prior to undertaking the major assignment. It therefore allows the opportunity for re-submission as students to learn from their mistakes.

The module begins with Kant for two reasons. Kant's essay 'What is Enlightenment?' provides a vehicle for analysing and discussing the relation between freedom and the use of public reason as the basis for education in the culture of liberalism. Even though Kant is a late Enlightenment figure his brief essay captures what is in essence the faith in reason--the rationalism-- that is characteristic of the liberal culture of modernity, and this concept of self as a rational, autonomous individual provides a basis for comparison with earlier thinkers (Hobbes and Locke) and also for contemporary critique of a notion of self that is regarded as separate from and logically prior to society.

The postmodern notion of self that the module considers is not a selfish, individualistic, narcissistic notion, rather is one that encompasses the Other, along the lines of the ancient Greek principle of care of the self that incorporated care of others. As Aronowitz and Giroux (1991: 71) state, “postmodernism has provided a theoretical foundation for engaging the Other not only as a deterritorialized object of domination, but also as a source of struggle, collective resistance, and historical affirmation.” Thus it incorporates notions of gender, ethnicity as it endorses questioning and re-thinking our ideas about our subjectivity, relationships, power relations, cultural practices, social constructions, meaning and our place in the world. Thus “the self is constructed as a terrain of conflict and struggle, and subjectivity is seen as the site of both liberation and subjugation” (p. 76).

Apart from using lectures and round-table discussions, one course innovation is the use of a series of four videos, “The Century of the Self” that were shown on BBC in 2001. The videos examine the notion of self in the 20 th century. They mainly focus on the USA, briefly covering the impact of Sigmund Freud’s work on the desiring self and the initial dominance psychoanalysis to understandings of the self, then subsequent challenges to this dominance in the human potential movements subsequent to the 1960s (Wilhelm Reich, encounter groups, EST and various other humanist existentialist with their associated therapies aimed at improving the self) and by sociologists that challenged the rampant individualism. Another key element of the videos is the influence and power of Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays, the founder of public relations, who unashamedly used Freudian notions to manage and control human desire in advertising, propaganda and political campaigns. The videos highlight the way psychometrics have analysed the self and categorised people and how these have been used in setting up focus groups by political parties in the USA and UK (Reagan, Thatcher, Major, Clinton, Blair).

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The module has proven to be very challenging for most students since few have any background in philosophy whatsoever. Nevertheless most student evaluations indicate that it is a most stimulating module because it enables them to think about the assumptions that underpin most educational policies and practices - things they have never had the luxury to explore beforehand. Students from scientific backgrounds have found it particularly interesting and refreshing to be able to toss around ideas and to venture into new worlds with different ways of thinking. For most students, their initial teacher education degrees focus on the mechanics of being a teacher rather than delving into broader understandings about education let alone philosophy. Only a few have undertaken teacher training after completing first degrees in the arts or sciences, so only one or two are likely to have studied philosophy. Therefore the module provides an introduction to philosophy of education and because it is a Masters level module, students are expected to extend from a basic level to one of increased depth of understanding by the end of the module.

Through discussion, students are able to consider not only the self/identities of their students as objects, but also to consider their own identities, both personally and professionally. They are expected to consider how/what education has come to view the self and why it has come to accept the prevalent Enlightenment self as 'truth'.  They are invited to question the construction and influence of such narratives on educational narratives and orthodoxies and their effect on the type of person (pupil and teacher) that schools aim to produce via their practices and curricula. In the process the general shift from notions of the self to identity to subjectivity are explored as are relations with the Other, with power-knowledge, and technologies of discipline and of the self. It addresses aspects of education that are not only taken-for-granted, but also are largely hidden and which often have the effect of inadvertently marginalizing and excluding many pupils from the laudable ostensible pedagogic aims of enabling, empowering and liberating pupils to reach their full potential.  In presenting modernist and postmodern theorists the module encourages students to deepen and extend their engagement with and questioning of the metanarratives of modernist humanist notions that permeate educational theory and practices.

ReferencesAlba, A. de, and Gonzales, E., Lankshear, C. and Peters, M.A., (2000). Curriculum in

the Postmodern Condition, New York: Peter Lang.Allen, M. R. (1999). “Humanism”, in R. H. Popkin (Ed.). The Pimlico History of

Western Philosophy. London: Pimlico, pp. 292-302.Aronowitz, S. & Giroux, H. (1991) Postmodern Education: Politics, Culture and

Social Criticism. Minneapolis & London: University of Minnesota Press.Bobbitt, J. F. (1924). How to Make a Curriculum. Boston: Houghton Miflin.Derrida, J. (1970) from the discussion following "Structure, Sign and Play in the

Discourses of the Human Sciences", trans., Richard Macksey in The Structuralist Controversy, Richard Macksey and Eugenio Donato (Eds.), Baltimore, John Hopkins University Press.

Doll, W. (1993). A Post-modern Perspective on Curriculum. New York: Teachers College Press.

Doll, W., & Gough, N. (Eds.). (2002). Curriculum Visions. New York: Peter Lang.Foucault, M. (1984). Space, knowledge and power. In P. Rabinow (ed.) The Foucault

Reader. New York: Pantheon Books: 239-256.

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Foucault, M. (1988). Technologies of the self, in L.H. Martin, H. Gutman, & P.H. Hutton (eds.) Technologies of the Self: A seminar with Michel Foucault. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press: 16-49.

Foucault, M. (1997). The ethics of the concern for self as a practice of freedom, trans. Robert Hurley and others, in P. Rabinow (ed.) Michel Foucault: Ethics, Subjectivity and Truth, The Essential Works of Michel Foucault 1954-1984, Vol 1. London: The Penguin Press: 281-301.

Foucault, M. (2001). Fearless Speech, J. Pearson (Ed.). Los Angeles, CA: Semiotext(e). [<www.repb.net>]

Habermas, J. (1987). The Philosophical Discourse Of Modernity : Twelve Lectures. Cambridge, Polity Press.

Heidegger, Martin (1996) Letter on Humanism, in Basic Writings, edited by David Farrell Krell, London, Routledge: 217-265.

Kallendorf, C. (2003). “Humanism”, in R. Curren (Ed.) A Companion to the Philosophy of Education. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing: 62-72.

Kant, (1784)“An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?” Nietzsche, F. (1956) The Birth of Tragedy & The Genealogy of Morals, trans. F. Golffing,

New York, Doubleday.Peters, M. (1995) Education and the Postmodern Condition, Westport, CT & London: Bergin

& Garvey.Peters, M. (1996) Poststructuralism, Politics and Education, Westport, CT & London,

Bergin & Garvey.Peters, M.A. (1999). “(Posts-) Modernism and Structuralism: Affinities and

Theoretical Innovations”, Sociological Research Online, 3 (4), September; http://www.socresonline.org.uk

Peters, M. (2001) Poststructuralism, Marxism & Neoliberalism: Between Theory and Politics. Lanham, MD.: Rowman & Littlefield.

Pinar, W. (1994). Autobiography, Politics and Sexuality. Essays in Curriculum Theory 1972 - 1992. New York: Peter Lang.

Pinar, W. F., Reynolds, W. M., Slattery, P., & Taubman, P. M. (1995). Understanding Curriculum: An introduction to the study of historical and contemporary curriculum discourses (Vol. 17). New York: Peter Lang.

Proctor, Robert, E., (1998) Defining the Humanities, 2nd Edt., Bloomington & Indianapolis, Indiana University Press.

Sartre, J-P. (1973). Existentialism and Humanism, trans. Philip Mairet, London, Methuen.

Smith, B. (1998). Modernism’s History. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press.

Taylor, F. W. (1911/1947). Scientific Management. New York: Harper & Brothers.Tyler, R. (1949). Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction. Chicago: University

of Chicago Press.

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Table 1The Cluster Concepts of Postmodern Philosophy

Anti-foundationalism Suspicion of transcendental arguments and viewpoints

Suspicion of metanarratives

Rejection of canonical descriptions and final vocabularies

Perspectivism and multiplicity

Post-epistemological standpoint Rejection of the picture of knowledge as accurate representation

Rejection of truth as correspondence to reality

Standpoint, nonfoundational, or “ecological” epistemology

Anti-naive realism Anti-realism about meaning and reference

The non referentiality of language

The naturalizing tendency in language

The diagnosis and critique of binarism

Anti-essentialism and the self The critique of the metaphysics of presence

Questioning of the problematic of the humanist subject

Substitution of genealogical narratives for ontology

The cultural construction of subjectivity

The discursive production of the self

Analysis of technologies of self

Analysis of power/knowledge Exposure of technologies of domination

Power is productive, dispersed, and related to knowledge

Power is often exercised through control of the body

Panopticum and the institutional “gaze”

“Modern” institutions as spaces of enclosure

The open network and “the surveillance society”

Boundary crossings Erasure of boundaries between literature and philosophy

Interdisciplinarity and multidisciplinarity

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