Pedgagogy as an undisputed social tool?

Some thoughts…

Some “thoughts” on pedagogy

• How ‘we’ use it– Pretentiousness

• Theory & Practice• Education as social good = philanthropic fad?• What’s it got to do with Heidegger?

1. Get others to do it for you

“If you have 3 minutes, would you do me a favour, and write down the first thing that comes into your head when asked: “what is pedagogy, how do you use the term in your research/ work/ life”. Just vomit it into the email and press send. Anything, just a few sentences, a small paragraph. Anything from the profound to the profane… gobbledegook as welcome as a well-thought out definition. More welcome, since a well-thought out definition, unless your brain is a dictionary, isn’t really stormy.”

Answer 1“It’s interfering with children.”

“ ”

Answer 2“Here’s my pedagogical puke: I always think of this book as it’s one I really enjoy looking at and am still intrigued by: Paul Klee’s Pedagogical sketchbook – illustrated step by step it takes you through the meaning of the markings in his work in a very scientific way, its bizarre! I always

struggle with how to pronounce it!”

Pedagogical Sketchbook“Condensed out of a large body of MSS to form a primer for his students at the Bauhaus, it serves us now, like the Student’s Notebook of Hokusai, as an astonishing window into the creative mind of its author.”

Teaching… “Paul Klee the painter could not help becoming a teacher in the original meaning of the term. The word ‘to teach’ derives from the Gothic ‘taiku-sign (our word token). It is the mission of the teacher to observe what goes unnoticed by the multitude. He is an interpreter of signs. When Walter Gropius developed the curriculum of his German Bauhaus, he gave back to the word teacher its basic significance.”

Without pompousness“Each of the four divisions of the Sketchbook has one key-sentence, strewn almost casually - without the pompousness of a theorem - among specific observations.”

Answer 3“It means education but in my latest book one author says the term actually applies to children's learning and adult learning is andragogy or something like that! I sometimes think its a word that we use in learning technology when we want to impress someone! I don't like it very much in all honesty!”

Answer 4“I try to avoid using the word because I'm still not sure if it's pedagoggy or pedagodjy.  I've yet to compose a sentence that could not easily be recast to use "teaching" instead.  And I am slightly fearful using it will draw a

baying mob of semi-literate Sun readers to

string me up outside a Portsmouth boozer.”

Answer 5“I use pedagogy to mean "teaching, and facilitating learning". And I probably extend that definition in use to mean "teaching, and facilitating learning, effectively". I suppose it really means "the study of teaching and learning" but I seldom use it in that context. However I dislike the use of it as a countable noun - I would never talk about "pedagogies" when I mean ‘approaches’.”

EM Forster“As long as learning is connected with earning, as long as certain jobs can only be reached through exams, so long must we take the examination system seriously. If another ladder to employment was contrived, much so-called education would disappear, and no one be a penny the stupider.”

Aspects of the Novel, 1927

Agatha Christie“Of course there’s a fashion in these things, just like there is in clothes. (My dear, have you seen what Christian Dior is trying to make us wear in the way of skirts?) Where was I? Oh yes, Fashion. Well, there’s fashion in philanthropy too. It used to be education in Gulbrandsen’s day. But that’s out of date now. The State has stepped in. Everyone expects education as a matter of right – and doesn’t think much of it when they get it. Juvenile Delinquency – that’s what is the rage nowadays…”

They do it with mirrors, 1952

What’s it to do with Heidegger?

Heidegger“Whoever does not have the courage and perseverance of thought required to become involved in Nietzsche’s own writings, need not read anything about him either.”(Nietzsche I, 1936)

“Aristotle was born, worked, and died. Now let’s turn to his work.”(according to Arendt or Gadamer, can’t quite remember where now)

Seneca

Latrunculis ludimus. In supervacuis subtilitasteritur: non faciunt bonos ista sed doctos. Apertior

res est sapere, immo simplicior: paucis <satis> est ad mentem bonam uti litteris, sed nos ut

cetera in supervacuum diffundimus, ita philosophiam ipsam. Quemadmodum omnium rerum, sic

litterarum quoque intemperantia laboramus: non vitae sed scholae discimus

“We play games. We blunt our thinking with superfluous problems, & such idle analyses don’t help us to live well, but at the most they make us sound scholarly. Real wisdom is much more accessible than academic wisdom, it would be so much better if our education taught us common sense! But we waste everything, and we waste our highest good, namely philosophy, with superfluous questions. We are hopelessly addicted to everything, and that includes an insatiable hunger for scholarliness: we don’t learn for life, we learn for the sake of the School.”