Abstract
This chapter makes the case that we live our lives in practices—that we engage with other people, other species, and the world in practices. After introductory remarks expressing my profound thanks to the contributors to this volume, the first section of the chapter makes the case that we engage with the world in practices. It does so by describing intersubjective space: the ‘three-dimensional’ medium in which we encounter one another and the world. The next section argues that practices adapt and evolve in relation to practice architectures—arrangements in intersubjective space that enable and constrain how practices unfold. These practice architectures are also conditions that make practices possible. Against the background of the theory of practice architectures, the next section introduces a view of education, not as a process for the distribution of knowledge, but as a process for the distribution of practices. It offers a theory of education which complements the theory of practice architectures, and shows how education has a double purpose of pursuing the good for each person and the good for humankind. The next section sketches a few implications of this view of education for educational research, in relation to curriculum (a curriculum not of knowledge, but of practices), for pedagogy, and for assessment. The chapter concludes by suggesting that, in our time, education has the urgent purpose of distributing practices of sustainable living across the planet.
Based on a keynote address for a seminar ‘Education, fatherland and humanity’ held on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the foundation of the Finnish Institute for Educational Research, University of Jyväskylä, June 2018.
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Notes
- 1.
In the interview with Keay (1987, pp. 29–30), Mrs. Thatcher in fact said ‘I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people have been given to understand “I have a problem, it is the Government job to cope with it!” or “I have a problem, I will go and get a grant to cope with it!” “I am homeless, the Government must house me!” and so they are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then also to help look after our neighbour and life is a reciprocal business and people have got the entitlements too much in mind without the obligations, because there is no such thing as an entitlement unless someone has first met an obligation…’. A statement clarifying this comment was issued by 10 Downing Street to The Times, published on July 10, 1988 in its Atticus column: ‘All too often the ills of this country are passed off as those of society. Similarly, when action is required, society is called upon to act. But society as such does not exist except as a concept. Society is made up of people. It is people who have duties and beliefs and resolve. It is people who get things done. [Mrs. Thatcher] prefers to think in terms of the acts of individuals and families as the real sinews of society rather than of society as an abstract concept. Her approach to society reflects her fundamental belief in personal responsibility and choice. To leave things to ‘society’ is to run away from the real decisions, practical responsibility and effective action ’.
- 2.
In the last line of his (1928/1965) poem ‘Among School Children’.
- 3.
Young (1990, Chap. 2) describes five faces of oppression: exploitation, marginalisation, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence.
- 4.
Most of this paragraph and the next are adapted from Kemmis and Edwards-Groves (2018), p. 17–18.
- 5.
By ‘reason’ here, I do not mean a narrow rationalistic view of knowledge , but also the reason of the heart. As the French philosopher Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) put it [in his Pensées (Meditations), 1670/1995, p. 127], ‘The heart has its reasons, of which reason knows nothing’. On this view, we should include reasonableness and reason-giving as part of what is meant by ‘a culture based on reason’.
- 6.
‘Formal education knowledge can be considered to be realized through three message systems: curriculum, pedagogy, and evaluation. Curriculum defines what counts as a valid pedagogy defines what counts as a valid transmission of knowledge , and evaluation defines what knowledge , counts as a valid realization of this knowledge …’ (Bernstein, 1975, p. 85).
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Kemmis, S. (2018). Life in Practices: Challenges for Education and Educational Research. In: Edwards-Groves, C., Grootenboer, P., Wilkinson, J. (eds) Education in an Era of Schooling. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2053-8_16
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