TY - JOUR
T1 - Taste for democracy
T2 - A critique of the mechanical paradigm in education
AU - Hansen, Dion Rüsselbæk
AU - Phelan , Anne
PY - 2019/5
Y1 - 2019/5
N2 - In this article we argue for the need to rethink the crisis of democracy both within and beyond education (Toft and Rüsselbæk Hansen, 2017). This crisis can be explained variously, depending on how it is understood and on what basis. From our point of view, and with inspiration from thinkers as Nietzsche, Arendt, Agamben and Rancière, we argue that the crisis of democracy in today’s schools is related in part to the weak form of authority ascribed to certain individual and collective aesthetic experiences. The scientific experience has been assigned a strong form of ‘evidenced based authority’. As a result of a powerful belief that not all forms of experiences, for instance the aesthetical ones, which are not based on a mechanical logic, are worth paying attention to and are of value, scientific experience has gained hegemonic status. Illustrated by several examples, which stem from both Danish and Canadian educational contexts, we show how aesthetic experiences have the potential to revitalize democratic practices and undermine tyrannical regimes of technocracy in education. We recommend that the concept of Bildung (self-cultivation), which is orientated towards vertical (Apollonian) as well as horizontal (Dionysian) transcending processes, must be given renewed attention. Opportunities for students to play with and suspend the social order, even temporarily, are important if students are to experience themselves, others and the world in new ways. By engaging students’ aesthetic sensibilities in multiple ways, playful schools both produce and provoke the dominant social order thereby fostering students’ taste for democracy.
AB - In this article we argue for the need to rethink the crisis of democracy both within and beyond education (Toft and Rüsselbæk Hansen, 2017). This crisis can be explained variously, depending on how it is understood and on what basis. From our point of view, and with inspiration from thinkers as Nietzsche, Arendt, Agamben and Rancière, we argue that the crisis of democracy in today’s schools is related in part to the weak form of authority ascribed to certain individual and collective aesthetic experiences. The scientific experience has been assigned a strong form of ‘evidenced based authority’. As a result of a powerful belief that not all forms of experiences, for instance the aesthetical ones, which are not based on a mechanical logic, are worth paying attention to and are of value, scientific experience has gained hegemonic status. Illustrated by several examples, which stem from both Danish and Canadian educational contexts, we show how aesthetic experiences have the potential to revitalize democratic practices and undermine tyrannical regimes of technocracy in education. We recommend that the concept of Bildung (self-cultivation), which is orientated towards vertical (Apollonian) as well as horizontal (Dionysian) transcending processes, must be given renewed attention. Opportunities for students to play with and suspend the social order, even temporarily, are important if students are to experience themselves, others and the world in new ways. By engaging students’ aesthetic sensibilities in multiple ways, playful schools both produce and provoke the dominant social order thereby fostering students’ taste for democracy.
KW - Bildung
KW - Democracy
KW - aesthetics
KW - playful schools
KW - self-cultivation
U2 - 10.1177/0034523719836671
DO - 10.1177/0034523719836671
M3 - Journal article
SN - 0034-5237
VL - 103
SP - 34
EP - 48
JO - Research in Education
JF - Research in Education
IS - 1
ER -