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Negativity, Experience and Transformation: Educational Possibilities at the Margins of Experience — Insights from the German Traditions of Philosophy of Education

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Education and the Kyoto School of Philosophy

Part of the book series: Contemporary Philosophies and Theories in Education ((COPT,volume 1))

Abstract

The negativity of experience arises in our encounters with difference and otherness, and locates the moments in which we begin to learn from disillusionment, struggle and suffering. The questions that I ask in this paper relate to the difficulties and possibilities surrounding the relationship between self and other in education. How does the learner experience the world and learn to interact with other human beings? What is the teacher’s role in the learner’s process of experiencing and learning about the world? Can and should the teacher guide or even interrupt this process? Here, I seek to answer these questions by examining the educational meaning of ‘negativity’ as it plays a constitutive role in transformational encounters between the self and the other. To do this, I turn to the German tradition of philosophy of education. As I will seek to show, the discourse in German educational philosophy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and in its more recent developments provides fruitful grounds for furthering the conversation around cross-cultural concerns about education. In looking to the future of cross-cultural dialogue on this topic, I discuss the indispensable need for inquiry into how we might continue to theoretically and practically approach ‘negativity’ as a permanent blind spot that marks the human experience.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Waldenfels (1998), translation AE. Many of the German texts cited below were not available in English translation. In these cases, I have provided my own translation of the texts. In cases where a standard translation was available, I cite both the German and English versions of the texts and note when I have modified the original English translation. In certain instances, for longer citations, I have provided an English version in the body of the paper with the original German text in footnotes.

  2. 2.

    See Toshihiko and Izutsu’s (1981) analysis of the theory of Haiku, Chapter 4.

  3. 3.

    I am relying on English translations of Nishida’s and Tanabe’s works, and in the case of Kimura’s text, which is only available in Japanese, I am only citing Nishimura’s account of Kimura.

  4. 4.

    See Tanake (2008), Nishimura (2008), and Suzuki (2008b) and also the articles by these authors in this volume.

  5. 5.

    Compare Humboldt (1969a, b); on this concept see also Klafki (2001), Reichenbach (2002); on the connection to Bildsamkeit see Benner and Brüggen (2004); see also English (2009).

  6. 6.

    See also Herbart (1806/1956, 1902); on this point see Buck (1985); Herbart criticizes doctrines of fatalism and transcendental freedom on account of the fact that they cannot be consistent with the idea of Bildsamkeit, because they do not allow for an understanding of the historicity of the individual and therefore do not allow for discussion of how education influences the individual’s choices (1835, p. 2 and 1977, p. 2). On Herbart’s critique of Kant and its limits see Benner and Schmied-Kowarzik (1967) and Müssener (1986). Also, Saito examines Emersonian moral perfectionism as an ateleological concept in a way that I find connected to the idea of perfectibility I am discussing in this chapter (see Saito 2004).

  7. 7.

    Herbart (1802/1965, p. 131) and Herbart (1896, p. 27f), translation modified AE.

  8. 8.

    From the original German: ‘Umlernen aber, das ist nicht nur die Korrektur dieser und jener Vorstellungen, die man sich über etwas gemacht hat; es bedeutet auch einen Wandel der ‘Einstellung’, d.h. des ganzen Horizontes der Erfahrung. Wer umlernt, wird mit sich selbst konfrontiert; er kommt zur Besinnung. Nicht nur gewisse Vorstellungen wandeln sich, sondern der Lernende selbst wandelt sich. Kraft dieser prinzipiellen Negativität ist das Geschehen des Lernens die Geschichte des Lernenden selbst’ (Buck 1969, p. 44, translation AE). Buck recognizes Dewey had a place for negativity as doubt and uncertainty in his concept of experience, but he criticizes Dewey for not fully grasping the transformative significance of negativity as a break with oneself, see e.g. (1969, p. 70f). I analyze Dewey’s notions of negativity in experience (2005a, see also 2005b) and a comparative analysis of moral meaning of negativity in Herbart and Dewey’s works, (English 2007).

  9. 9.

    See also Benner (2003), Benner and English (2004), Mitgutsch (2008), Rumpf (2008), and see also my discussion (English 2009) of this concept in the context of connections between the German tradition and the work of education philosopher Richard S. Peters.

  10. 10.

    On this point see Waldenfels (1971, 2002). See Oser (2005) on negativity in moral learning.

  11. 11.

    Wright (1989), From Black Boy by Richard Wright. Copyright, 1937, 1942, 1944, 1945 by

    Richard Wright; renewed (c) 1973 by Ellen Wright. By Permission of HarperCollins Publishers, p. 29.

  12. 12.

    On this point see also Müssener (1986), p. 200f.

  13. 13.

    McCourt 2005, p. 84.

  14. 14.

    On the twofold negativity of teachers’ experiences see Benner (2003); Benner and English (2004).

  15. 15.

    From the original German, ‘In einen an sich stetigen Ablauf bricht ein unstetiges Moment. Und das macht wiederum deutlich, dass die Nichtplanbarkeit des Taktes in einer doppelten Weise gesehen werden muss: Nichtplanbar ist jenes unstetige Moment, das in den Handlungsablauf der Schule einbricht und ihn durchkreuzt; nichtplanbar ist aber auch das Handeln des Lehrers in dieser Situation, die schnelles Beurteilen und Entscheiden fordert’ (Muth 1967, p. 77, translation AE).

  16. 16.

    On this point, see Muth (1967); see also Van Manen (1991).

  17. 17.

    On this point, see Blake et al. (2000) for a critique of Reynold’s ‘Highly Reliable Schools’.

  18. 18.

    On the connection between pedagogical tact and the latin tactile or touch, see Van Manen (1991) and Suzuki (2008a).

  19. 19.

    For example, in April 2009 The New York Times reported that the US Secretary of Education was to give $44 billion to improve each state’s schools, due to the prospect of embarrassing findings that states were lowering their testing standards to increase students’ scores and teacher evaluation scores, see Dillon (2009).

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Mount Saint Vincent University for an internal grant that has helped to support the research on this project.

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  1. Faculty of Education, Mount Saint Vincent University, 166 Bedford Highway, Halifax, NS, B3M 2J6, Canada

    Andrea English

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  1. Inst. Education, Dept. Educational Foundations &, University of London, Bedford Way 20, London, WC1H 0AL, United Kingdom

    Paul Standish

  2. Graduate School of Education, Kyoto University, Yoshida-Honmachi, Kyoto, 606-8501, Japan

    Naoko Saito

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English, A. (2012). Negativity, Experience and Transformation: Educational Possibilities at the Margins of Experience — Insights from the German Traditions of Philosophy of Education. In: Standish, P., Saito, N. (eds) Education and the Kyoto School of Philosophy. Contemporary Philosophies and Theories in Education, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4047-1_15

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