Emmanuel Levinàs and Matthew Lipman: Towards a Critique of a Totalizing Tendency in Formal Education
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Abstract
In this article, I argue that education should neither function simply as a social apparatus that “grooms” individuals for their future societal roles nor merely supply the need of the global labor market. Rather, borrowing from Levinàs’ ethics, education must ultimately respond to the call of justice that springs from the proper recognition of the alterity of the other, and the responsibility that goes along with it. I further argue that a totalizing tendency of Formal Education occurs on two-level interactions: a.) the basic interaction between all the participants in the education system, and b.) the interaction of the students with the school curricula. It is in this context that I introduce Matthew Lipman’s version of the Community of Inquiry, which, I propose, is one of the many effective pedagogical practices that respond to the call for an ethically driven Formal Education.
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