Class Notes

Historical Foundations of Education — fourth meeting

I lectured for three hours straight. Sure, there were questions, a comment or four, and I showed two short YouTube clips, but the class was a full three hours, non-stop.

Once again, this class keeps exceeding my expectations. Not so much in terms of their own work, which varies in quality thusfar, but of myself and my teaching stamina. Like a good coach: they seem to push me a bit further than I thought I could go before.

We took an extended look at the religious politics and political theologies that created Whig identity and motivated their proposals for a common school in the middle of the 19th century. The duo of Enlightenment Liberalism and Protestant (read: Calvinist) Puritanism proved key. 

The class also read a paper of mine that compares compulsory schooling to preventative war to discuss the notion of “tragic hope” and raise the possibility that there are limits to justice, the metaphysical horizon of both political Liberalism and the theological Calvinism. This led us to present possibilities for radical politics and critiques of schooling. I used Noam Chomsky and JohnTaylor Gatto as indicative of two salient critiques from outer edges of Left and Right, respectively.

Nothing too crazy happened otherwise, but it was a very good class and no one fell asleep or walked out.