Abstract
This paper, paraphrasing Wittgenstein’s dictum that the limits of my language are the limits of my world, traces the impossibility to envisage contemporary school beyond the confines of an all-embracing consumerist society. It analyses the main traits of a school saturated by consumerist spirit, such as innovation, cultivation of interest, living empathetic experiences, experimenting in alternativity, and an absolute commitment to science and technology. Then it tries to focus on the bulimic attitude towards the environment which is systematically taught in schools by such postmodern activities as Innovative Projects, where pupils are carefully indoctrinated to transcend the limits of human nature and power by feeding their ravenous ambition that they are able to symbolically and practically colonize every aspect of the world without feeling any moral commitment other than their pleasure. Lastly this paper calls for a prudent, though imagined, school education which could lead to the diet of such a precarious, transcendent intelligence.
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Smyrnaios, A.L. (2016). Some Thoughts on the Impossibility to Imagine Contemporary School Beyond Its Consumerist Mentality. In: Montgomery, A., Kehoe, I. (eds) Reimagining the Purpose of Schools and Educational Organisations. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24699-4_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24699-4_3
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