Download europe make sense – brain drops (third chapter)

EUROPE MAKE SENSE – BRAIN DROPS (THIRD CHAPTER)
(Robi Kroflič)
Wim Kratsborn writes in the chapter Welcome to the multiple society that past twenty years
form one of three important ‘turning points’ of history such as the birth of philosophies of life
in the 6th century BC and the renaissance in the 15th century; and second, that most of
developments in contemporary time are chaotic end even paradoxical, so to understand
cultural frames of our life, we have to develop a systematic thought in two dimensions. The
first one is a time dimension in which our position is viewed as a consequence of influential
events/decisions in the past (like holocaust or the fall of Berlin wall) and our plans for the
future or better say - visions of our desired values and aims. The second dimension connects
sphere of ideas and virtual spaces with real events of contemporary life like migrations, fast
climate changes and globalization. To think about young people and Europe today therefore
demands to be aware of all these dimensions that can be organized in The Field of View.
PICTURE 1
Old and new graffiti in Berlin
Photo by Robi Kroflič
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And what is so new today that we could speak about important turning point of contemporary
life that has a very strong impact especially to the life of youngsters? In this chapter we will
meet different answers to this question that can be combined in an idea of multiple choice
society and identity: about the time in which the only constant feature is that of fast changes
and multiple possibilities/choices. And about young people whose life courses are not
strongly socially defined anymore, so they became the cause of individual choice and
creation. This feature causes big changes in growing up, socialization and biographical
continuity – so important for building our identity (Ule 2008).
Multiple changes and choices have a big influence to all dimensions of our life. They are
forcing us to reevaluate our history, but also to be aware of problematic features of our aims
for the future. So it is not just a coincidence that many of most influential thinkers of
contemporary ethical concepts of responsibility and importance of the personal construction
of meaning of life like Emanuel Levinas and Viktor Frankl were victims of holocaust and this
tragic past experience enabled them for searching of productive ideas for the future. Multiple
changes and choices are also causing constant changes of material basis of our life, but also
questioning of great narratives/stories on which we have built our belief in progress of
western societies. For individual this means that she or he has to answer to many questions
about her or his life course that were in the near past taken for granted: who am I as a
man/woman? How am I defined with a mother tongue, parent’s religion, social class, birth
place, etc.?
In a way young people are enforced to think about different choices and take decisions about
important questions of their identity that were fifty years ago still socially determined.
Culturally prescribed and standardized rituals of life courses in the past helped young people
to transcend life crises, they gave them a sense of security and helped them to feel
connectedness with past and planning of the future. In modernity sociological explanations of
growing up were defined with general ideas of progress, passing from dependency to
independency, from immaturity to maturity, from not formed identities to structured
identities, but today this course is changing. Life courses are seen as much more ambivalent
(not only opening new opportunities, but also growing of loneliness, anxieties, narcissistic
pathologies etc.)! So as we see, time and space that opens individual choices and possibilities
for creation of our own identity and life style is far away from being a romantic time of fun
and pleasure.
Another dimension of multiple choice society and individual identity of young people is an
insight that many of multiple choices are urgent consequences of prolongation of schooling,
continuing living with parents and economical dependency. And second, that
individualization does not mean only growing of individual multiple choices and decisions,
but mostly changes in the society controlling mechanisms. Wide open opportunities of
schooling do not exclude the fact that school is still a strong controlling mechanism of
normalization of our identity. And prolongation of schooling which enables young people for
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longer searching of their identity and life course is also a pretty long period of dependency
and therefore vulnerability.
Third dimension of multiple choices that we should be aware of it is closeness of free market
economic ideology and consumerism on one side and free choice as one of the most important
values on the other side. Especially if we analyze economic advertizing we can see that values
of freedom, autonomy and multiple choices as a matter of individual responsibility became
enforced to young generations in ideological slogans like: We know you are an independent
being and you like freedom, but if you like to be free you have to buy our products… So
emphasizing multiple choices as societal value has in recent years became a technique of
liberal economics and government. Contemporary individuals are therefore not merely free to
choose, but obliged to be free, to understand and enact their lives in terms of choice (Rose
1999).
As recent research in the changes of value orientations among young people show, young
generations have passed three periods after Second World War. We can speak about three
generations: skeptical generation (50., 60.ies), narcissistic generation (80.ies), moralistic
generation and “rebellion of person” (today). Typical statements from 18 year olds in
Slovenia today are: I’m still searching for the meaning of life; center of my world is between
my friends; I’m not interested in politics; I have no role models – I live as I live… (Ule 2008)
These statements show that young people do care about meaning of life, they do care about
other persons and search for friends, they are accepting choosing of life courses as personal
responsibility, but they are still skeptical about established (trans)national politics. What we
don’t know from this research is how well young people are prepared for this tasks.
To be prepared to take a constructive and creative role in contemporary life, we need to
develop special skills, knowledge, wisdom, psychological security mechanisms and sense of
responsibility. With skills I mean mostly competencies for communication and learning in
real and virtual environment. As we will see later, we don’t need communication only to
fulfill our social needs, but also for the development of our self-identity which has a
dialogical character. With knowledge I mean our possibilities to evaluate past decisions and
understand basic characteristics of societal and psychological phenomena: to understand the
meaning of our history, but also contemporary phenomena like manipulation through
economic and political propaganda, causes of psychological threats of contemporary life like
anxiety and depression etc. With wisdom and psychological security I mean the development
of personal virtues and competencies which enable us to be active in everlasting process of
constructing personal meaning of life. And with new sense of responsibility I mean to be
aware of our duties concerning needs of relative beings, environment and taking care for the
meaning of our own life.
In this chapter we will meet with knowledge that can help us to deal successfully with
questions of identity and constructions of life meaning. A knowledge that is important for
every person living in the contemporary world, but most of all for young people and persons
who work on the broader field of education as teachers, parents, or facilitators of activities for
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young people. From a broad field of knowledge I have selected theoretical ideas that will help
us to understand better questions about:
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Self-identity (MCI – who am I?)
The world we are living in
Basic pedagogical concepts
The meaning of art in contemporary life and education.
Let’s introduce the basic ideas of this chapter.
Our self-identity is contained by a sense of our inner (authentic) nature and personal
biography, which is a combination of a sense of difference and uniqueness on one side, and
sense of belonging to authentic relations and activities on the other side. Building identity is a
life-long process, in which our engagement in authentic relations (love and friendship) and
activities (art as one of the most important authentic activities) is very important if we accept
so called dialogical concept of self. This means our self is always built through different
relations and activities in a social environment according to our basic need of safety and
belonging on one hand, and need for freedom on the other hand. To balance both of these
needs (for safety and free choices) we need a social environment rich with multiple (identity)
choices, that enables at the same time possibilities for us to belong and fulfill social needs for
safety, otherwise free choices turn to “anxiety pressures” and loose of “ontological security”.
The qualities of public space are of big importance for identity development. When we speak
about basic descriptions of present time, we have to be aware, that all social processes are
connected with political pressures toward assimilation of otherness (individuality) so
recognition of other as different and democratic negotiation become core values of our time.
And when we search for descriptions of optimal social environment we meet in theory several
new terms like glocalization (“think globally, act locally”), inclusiveness (care for often
marginalized persons to get an opportunity for optimal personal development and active
engagement in decisions making processes), and third places (like philosophical cafés and
squats as places that offer opportunities to confront personal statements in public space).
Without hope for a better future and trust that public institutions like schools will help young
people to develop consistent and promising life story, our freedom becomes a heavy burden
and threat to our basic sense of security.
A third important question of self-identity development is a question about basic personal
responsibilities. If in the west European history ethical responsibility was for centuries
oriented basically to ethical principles (of justice) and common social rules of culturally
homogeneous society, the social space of cultural differences (with different comprehension
of public values) demands a new prosocial orientation – where responsibility is primarily
understood as respectful attitude toward other (person), common society values, and natural
environment.
So the development of respectful mind prior to an ethical mind should be the orientation of
moral education in public schools and kindergartens. This orientation can be reached if we
understand and apply principles of relational pedagogy, pedagogy of listening, and inductive
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pedagogical approach. Important tasks of this pedagogical approach are: developing of child’s
abilities to step into different personal relations, reducing fear of differences, developing
prosocial emotions like compassion and emphatic guilt, and finally understanding and
acceptance of human rights as basic ethical orientation toward justice. This orientation should
be the core of essential learning in realistic pedagogical approach – a new pedagogical
concept we will discuss later.
Another emphasis we have to make is importance of artistic expression for human
development according to the thesis about art as one of the most authentic human activities.
Artistic imagination is of great importance for moral and identity development because it
stimulates our compassion toward the destiny of imaginary hero of the artistic story, it
deliberates us of possible stereotypes, and it gives us courage to create utopian “as if” worlds
of our promising future. That is why art and specially music can become a sense-opener and a
source of knowledge (for better understanding of existential questions and dilemmas), but also
a cross-over – a tool to build bridges across different cultural patterns and life-styles.
Although artistic expressions are important for people of all developmental phases, it is even
more important in early childhood period when child’s cognitive competencies are still weak
but she or he is already capable of using hundred languages of artistic expression.
MCI – who am I?
In a very influential study Modernity and Self-Identity (1991), Anthony Giddens wrote a
thesis that expanded possibilities for individual autonomy and at the same time increasing
anxiety and instability are attached to the very project of selfhood and identity development in
the time of late modernity. To understand this odd thesis we have to say something more
about multiple choices and understanding of basic principles of identity development, but also
about basic features of the “space and time” we are living in.
Today we speak about self-identity as previous generations have spoken about soul or spirit.
Spirit was a dimension of a person that gave her on one side a sense of connectedness to the
world/cosmos and on the other side a sense of wholeness concerning her body and soul
(something that binds together our body, mind, and soul). This double dimension of self
identity was later included in theoretical concepts of identity. So Zygmunt Bauman (2001)
claims that identity is a result of the interplay between individual and community, and a
serious game of seeking a balance between freedom and security. Men and women are always
looking for groups to which they can belong, certainly and forever, in a world in which all
else is moving and shifting, in which nothing else is certain. But on the other hand, identity
also means standing out: being different, and through that difference unique – and so the
search for identity cannot but divide and separate. It is possible to recognize certain
pathological signs of behavior as a result of the lack of a sense of security, feelings of
‘disconnection’ from a concrete community, and consecutive inability to develop our own
individuality, which confirms the ontological necessity of both – a sense of belonging and
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freedom of choice. Good example of this kind of insecurity is narcissistic orientation of
personality which acts like an individual as the centre of the world, insensitive for needs of
other persons, but still compulsory dependent on the recognition of her unique and central
position in social environment.
Similar statement about self-identity is proclaimed by Paul Ricoeur (1992), who speaks about
developing of authentic self as a knot of two important dimensions: what separates me from
other beings (the question about sameness), but also about selfhood that is developing and
self-recognizing in relations with different others. To create an image of selfhood, it means to
respond to the face of the other as different (and not only as our alter-ego, which is usually a
form of communication with another person as a result of projection); and the source of this
otherness is not only a fellow person (and identification with her) - it can be also imaginary
persons (my ancestors, heroes from novels...) and living/absent God (for the believers).
“Self is therefore a knot in the web of multiple intersecting relations; pull relations out of the
web, and you will find no self. We do not have relations, but relations have us.” This
statement creates a central thesis of the manifesto of relational pedagogy which confirms the
same concept of relational self-identity we have chosen as the basis of European Multiple
Choice Identity Project.
Let’s take a closer look to the processes of self-identity development through described
relational concept of the self.
PICTURE 2
Mirroring
Photo by Žiga Kroflič
Let’s take a look to this photo and ask ourselves:
Who am I as a result of reflection?
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What do I see in this reflection? Is this just me or me in a context of concrete natural
and social environment?
Who or what is enabling me a mirroring process?
Is this God, eros, libidinal tribe, accepted values, social rules, ethical normative
standards or principles, a care for a fulfilment of our social needs, existential care for
being in the truth of our essence, emphatic experience of needs/expectations of the
other being, a peak need to define sense of our life?
Alice Miller (1995) describes an important part of identity development in early childhood
with a concept of “mirror stadium”. The first image of our identity is one that arises from
mother’s eyes. In this concept it is important to stress out that mother’s eyes are not a simple
mechanical mirror, but a sense organ which express an image of her desires about the child
and not a realistic picture of child’s concrete personal features. In modern culture we usually
look to another person as our alter ego, as a subject of the same culture and rationality, or as a
subject, that is objectivated in a social role, which is a kind of extension of our deepest
unfulfilled desires. When a parent or a teacher are mirroring the child, they usually look at
him under their concept of childhood (to be a sinful and egocentric being, a tabula rasa or a
lovely being who will develop full capacities for creativity if we let him to be what he is in
full spontaneity) and imagined picture of a personality they want to their child to develop.
Parents very often want their children to accomplish goals in their life that parents didn’t
succeed for themselves. So when a child looks for her or his image in the eyes of important
adults, he or she is not seeing herself as she is but as her mother want her to be, which causes
an unrealistic image of the self that is contaminated with social expectations of the
environment. To avoid this very early social pressure which can cause serious emotional
problems, and the only way for a child to reach a realistic and authentic self-image, is to
enable her or him respectful mirroring through the other’s view, that sees him as unique
person and therefore different from us. The same ethical commandment we will find in the
concept of recognition, which we will discuss later.
As we saw in the last paragraph, the ethical responsibility of adults who enable a child or a
young person processes of mirroring of their identity, is very important, but we share as well
the same responsibility regarding desirous media representation of youth and their culture
(role models from Hollywood movie production, fashion industry, popular music etc.). To
enable healthy interrelations that are important for the development of self-identity, we have
to define in details the core of responsibility we have as educators, but also responsibility we
need to develop in youngsters as a core of their self-identity.
Responsibility and ethical consciousness in modernity
Responsibility is a key term of all thinking about development of humanity in spite of
theoretical, political or religious orientation. So any concept of morality or political concept of
respect for human rights has to define circumstances under which person will accept her/his
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responsibility to defend basic human interests and needs of fellow persons. Even more, in
philosophy of the twentieth century we find a strong notion on the need of responsibility for
our own authentic being/identity, and if we don’t respect this existential task, it inevitably
causes dangerous psychical traumas or even mental diseases. So as Charles Taylor writes in
extensive study Sources of the Self. The Making of the Modern Identity (1989), responsibility
for selected good is through personal subjective resonance strongly connected with processes
of identity building.
In the enlightenment period, when the basic ideas of modern humanistic sciences were born,
the idea of ethical responsibility was strongly connected with the notion of a person as
autonomous subject, who as a rational being is capable of moral reasoning and acting
according to the duty toward rational principle of morality (Kant’s categorical imperative).
This basic principle of morality was a combination of two traditional ethical standards: basic
principle of justice (known as the golden rule: “Treat others only as you consent to being
treated in the same situation.") and principle of human respect toward every individual ("Act
in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of
any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end."), although in
practice for Kant and his followers to be moral simply meant to follow only universal ethical
principle of justice, without being personally engaged in relation with fellow person and
regardless to concrete social expectations or special subjective needs of fellow person. Simply
said, moral person in a conflict situation had to think what she or he would like from other
person to be done to her or him in a similar situation, and then act to other according to this
desire.
This concept of ethical agency was possible to achieve by education which succeeded to end
with a child’s ‘wild freedom’ as a form of spontaneous acting according to biological
principle of comfort (this part of education was reduced to discipline practices) and motivated
a child for a rational humanity, according to which he first followed society rules and
regulations (Lawrence Kohlberg’s conventional stage of moral reasoning), and finally
recognized rationality as the only criteria and motive of ethical behavior (Kohlberg’s postconventional stage of moral reasoning).
For accomplishing this task of moral education, enlightenment teachers had to be consistent
and just (autonomous) beings as objects of symbolic identification (role models). Second,
they had to motivate children for ethical rational reasoning according to society norms and
ethical principles through educational subjects like civic education, and later for democratic
negotiation in the processes of producing normative system of a school. And when somebody
violated normative order, they had to sanction problematic behavior, because they believed
that total subordination of the child toward concrete societal rules is the only path to the
construction of autonomous morality.
Although this view on ethical obligation to limit our egocentric desires according to our duty
to follow the order of recognized moral rules and human rights looks very logical, the analysis
of many historical events showed that this rational morality doesn’t help us to understand the
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whole scale of prosocial motives. Even more, it looks that this orientation to follow
humanistic standards is not an efficient way to prevent people from brutal denial of basic
human rights of fellow persons. Among historical research I would like to present studies
about causes of the anti-Semite politics of Holocaust during the Second World War, but also
about brave people in Nazi Germany who helped Jewish people to survive Hitler’s genocide
politics.
An analysis of selfless aid given to Jews during World War II convincingly shows that many
simple people were rescuing Jews from the Nazi genocide by means of non-reflected goodwill
without thinking about the rational value of their own altruism. We can call such a type of
moral stand a spontaneous savior whose moral conduct is led by substantial engagement or
non-reflected faith in the constitutive values which are not deepened through critical
reflection. This simply means that Kantian rational reflection is not a constitutive virtue
without which moral conduct is impossible (Callan 1998). Or as Noddings and Slote (2003),
studying the significance of virtues and caring attitude for the formation of a moral
personality, stress out: turning to an ethical principle when natural (spontaneous) caring is
already operating (or could be operating) is indeed having one thought too many.
This case establishes an important hypothesis that the Enlightenment’s concept of autonomy
cannot be considered as the only goal of moral education as it does not establish the
personality competence that is fundamental/constitutive for the moral operation and formation
of the human ethos. Even more: possibility of the split between ethical consciousness and
respectful dialog that was characteristic for Enlightenment concept of morality, was one of the
main causes that enabled Nazi technology of holocaust.
In study Modernity and Holocaust (1989) Zygmunt Bauman convincingly shows that Nazi
crimes against Jews were not done by “human monsters”, but by ordinary people who hadn’t
need to change their personal values and ethical standards to become the executors of massive
killing in concentration camps – in private life they remained loving husbands, wives and
loyal friends. The condition to cause split between ethical consciousness and respectful
human relation toward victim in the minds of ordinary people, was for engineers of Nazi
propaganda connected with the task to separate German citizens from their Jewish neighbors.
During the crystal night when SS detachments started with violence under Jewish people who
lived next-door to Germans, ordinary Germans didn’t approve this action. After accepting
national laws that treated Jews as an abstract category, deportations to ghetto’s, and
“dehumanization processes” in concentration camps, Germans started to support Nazi politics
in fearfully big number. Bauman finishes his profound analysis of the politics of Holocaust
with even more serious warning: after Stanley Milgram’s experiments in seventies in USA
and similar Zimbardo’s experiments with human readiness to accept social roles even when
they are obviously in contradiction with our moral standards, we know that human
catastrophe like holocaust can happen again regardless of principled acceptance of human
rights orders. And unfortunately this warning became truth in Srebrenica during the Balkan
war in nineties of the twentieth century in the heart of civilized Europe!
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How to explain this thesis with conceptual tools for analysis of responsibility? When we
prevent people from “authentic engaged” human relations (face to face), the other’s suffering
doesn’t evoke anymore their responsibility to respectful and caring attitude! They can still
remain bearers of high ethical standards and values, but they usually use this standards and
values a-posteriori of bad acting to “wash bad consciousness” and not as criteria and
motivation for prosocial behavior. The well known Slovene psychologist Vid Pečjak (1999)
described this kind moral apology with following sentence: “I know that I could act more
sensitive and moral, but I’m aware of my fault, which proves that I’m still a good person!” To
make our moral consciousness more efficient, he proposed that education should be focused
on developing capabilities for autonomous moral reasoning, but also for empathy that usually
evokes our respectful attitude.
New theoretical answers to a question of authentic prosocial motives and ethical
responsibility
My personal motivation for searching of new basis of ethical responsibility came from an
insight into extremely noble reaction of Saša, six years old girl in kindergarten Nova Gorica
in Slovenia. Let’s take a closer look to a description of this extraordinary event:
An ethnographical note: A change of a playing corner
“Since children no longer play with dolls, we decided that we will change the babies
corner it into a beauty parlour. When I told them that (‘motivation to act’), Saša reacted:
‘Leave the babies corner as it is, Marija plays there every day. She loves babies, she loves
them so much she’ll have nine of her own when she grows up.” (Marija is a handicapped
child!) We left the nook as it was, and arranged a beauty parlour elsewhere.”
(quoted from Kroflič 2000)
From the standpoint of ethical and psychological paradigms that were developed from
Enlightenment paradigm of deontological ethics (ethics of justice and theory of development
of moral reasoning), we can ask ourselves, what thinking and what views were the basis for
Saša’s reflection on the moral responsibility to protect the particular interests of a
handicapped girl? Response to this theoretical dilemma is simple: acting according
pretentious cognitive principles of Rawls’s “concept of justice” or Kohlberg’s “postconventional morality” is too ambitious goal for six years old child! So if we want to
understand the possibility of even pre-school child to act evidently prosocial, we have to find
other theoretical arguments.
Not only the fact that we can find very competent moral behavior even at the pre-school
period, but also the fact that some of most brave moral acts of adult persons are evidently not
the result of complex moral reasoning, leads us to the searching of new ethical theories that
could explain described cases.
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Among philosophers who have tried to strengthen our sensibility for ethical dilemmas behind
Kant’s concept of autonomous moral reasoning, we have to emphasis work of Emanuel
Levinas. Surviving politics of Holocaust Levinas developed one of the most original
explanations of the sources of human morality.
According to him, human morality can be described as authentic subjectivity that is evoked by
the face of the other and responsibility as respect for the other and the whole world, that is not
the result (of accepting ethical standards), but the condition of ethics. Origin of our moral
response to the needs of other is engagement in a relationship and is constituted by a
relationship that is older than the ego, prior to principles. This means that we come into
presence through responding to fellow persons, what can be proved by observing the very
young children’s sensitivity to emotional expressions of their parents.
If morality is evoked with the face of other being in a dialog, Levinas (2006) emphasizes that
this kind of a dialog is not enabled by knowing other and constructing common language that
presupposes common understanding of the meaning of moral norms and values. For Levinas
other as Other is not only our alter ego; the Other is what I myself am not. He is “infinitely
unknowable”, but anyway respect to absolute difference defines how we relate to each other.
Although it looks strange to plead for a dialog/conversation about ethical dilemmas without
having established common understanding of ethical norms and values, let’s explain this
possibility on examples of ethical and political conflicts that arose from cultural conflicts
between Muslims and representatives of moral and political standards of secular Europe about
prohibition of wearing head scarf in public schools in France, and about publishing
caricatures of Mohamed in Danish newspaper. Both symbols are in Europe usually described
as an attack on basic human rights. The wearing of head scarves has been seen as a symbol of
the subordinate status of women in Islamic cultures and the denial of equal rights between the
sexes, and the protest against caricatures of Mohammed in a Danish newspaper has been seen
as a symbol of the denial of the right of free speech or the expression of personal opinions.
Defenders of these kinds of judgments usually forget that in at least some Islamic cultures
many women deliberately wear the head scarf as a way to protect themselves from being
viewed as mere sexual objects. And profound analysis of first expulsions of Muslim girls
from secondary schools (Benhabib 2008) showed that girls haven’t come from traditional
Islamic families and that they decided to wear head scarf deliberately to express their Islamic
identity, but their voices weren’t heard during the trial.
Concerning protests of the proponents of Islamic culture against caricatures of Mohamed we
usually forget that even in European cultures we condemn hate speech as an example of
verbal attack following Locke’s argument of limiting the principle of tolerance when an
intolerant person attacks a tolerant one in spite of the tolerant person’s willingness to be open
to different arguments. However, in the West, we don’t usually consider comical caricatures
of the Christian God as an assault on Western religion, so through Eurocentric view comical
caricatures of Mohamed were not seen as an example of the assault (or hate speech) which
could be accused.
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The analysis of both cases shows that cultural conflicts arouse from different meaning of
basic values, and what is more important, from denial of Levinasean “pre-ethical principle” of
being respectful toward the difference of the other person. Possible gap between concrete
understanding of profound meaning of ethical standards and prescribed respectful attitude
shows the importance of Howard Gardner’s (2008) notion on the importance of two separate
sets of competencies, respectful and ethical mind for the future of mankind. But when we
follow Levinas concepts we have to admit the priority of respectful attitude before negotiation
about the meaning of ethical standards. This is the core of Levinas thesis about respect for the
other that is not the result, but the condition of ethics.
If respectful attitude toward the other opens the possibility of a sensible and engaged dialog
between people with different cultural habits and value orientations, Alexander Sidorkin
(2002) shows how Levinas notion of a dialog with other as different and infinitely
unknowable should be used in educational setting of multicultural environment enabling the
development of student’s cultural identities.
Teachers should not be in awe of differences and afraid to misunderstand, misinterpret, or
corrupt someone else’s culture. They have to develop a respectful but inquisitive stance
toward it. Education is only possible as dialogue, where different voices intensely interact,
change, but never merge. A teacher should keep in mind that his or her task is neither to
reduce diversity, nor to stand still watching diversity grows. Students obviously do not
discover their diverse identities on their own. We need to be a part of dialogue about who the
students are. An Asian student, for instance, cannot figure out what it means to be an Asian in
America without her or his White, Black, and Hispanic teachers. The point is not to know
about someone else’s culture, but to help construct an individual understanding of it. An
Asian student may have all the important conversations about her or his identity at home or in
church, or with friends. Yet if she or he does not discuss that identity at school, the identity
does not exist at school. When teachers only listen and not talk back on the issues of identity,
they deny the student an important part of their identity. Diversity makes sense when it
involves engagement. Knowing about other cultures is an impossible task and a culture can
never explain a person, but a person can explain a culture. When your student is explaining
his or her culture to you, you must talk back, emphasizing your cultural standpoint and trying
to be open to the arguments of her different cultural position..
If we want to summarize new insights to Levinasean concept of responsibility as a part of our
identity, we see that responsibility grows from engaged relations and not from cold objective
moral reasoning from impersonal distance; and second, that the ultimate source of moral
reasoning is not an ethical code but face of the other person as a sort of pre-ethical condition
that is best described with a principle of respectful relation, or as Gardner denoted it in his
book Five minds for the future, with respectful mind. This quality of relation is of crucial
importance for teachers to help to develop a sense of personal identity of the student –
especially if she or he is from different culture than we are – but recognition of other as
different is also becoming one of most important values of time and space we are living now –
in Europe of postmodernity.
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As we will explain later in more details, recognition of other as different does not mean
primarily to understand other but to listen to her or him carefully and to respond to her or his
thoughts or acts with cheer (Sasha’s generous act) or with full disapproval (mass murders in
Nazi concentration camps or in Srebrenica), although we will never fully understand the
ultimate causes of this kind of extreme (anti)moral acting.
The world we are living in…
Today we are living in a world, where absolute truth, aesthetics criteria of beauty, or criteria
of moral obligation doesn’t exist; a world that is disconnected with enlightenment optimism
on the possibility of educating responsibility of autonomous subject (Kant) living in a social
space that tends to rich absolute knowledge (Hegel); a world where security of stable selfidentity is vanishing.
There are several reasons why to confirm Lyotard (1984) basic thesis about postmodernity as
“incredulity toward metanarratives” of philosophy, science, and art, constant changing and
existing of the world of multiple choices and almost no certainty about truthful and rightful
orientation of the individual and society. In a way it seems that this thesis is tightly connected
with Beck’s thesis about contemporary society as risk society and Giddens thesis about the
necessity of every individual for everlasting reflection on the choices I am making and the self
I am creating. But the reason why Beck and Giddens reject the term “postmodernity” is that
all these processes have already began in early modernity and are now – in late modernity just more fastening, because traditional sources of security like family, church, and
institutions of the state are not stable anymore and modernization with increasing
individualism has produced erosion of institutional authority and social anomie. With the fall
of feudalistic privileges choices of individual became wide open and together with them also
our possibility and responsibility for building sensible, respectful and responsible attitude
toward ourselves, relative persons, wider society, and natural environment.
There are at least three ideas how to debate postmodern conditions in the field of humanities
(Burbules and Rice 1991). First is the rejection of all absolutes, so there can be no single
rationality, no single morality, and no ruling theoretical framework for the analysis of social
and political events. Or as Bauman writes, there is no firm soil and secure home. Second is
perceived saturation of all social and political discourses with power and dominance, so any
metanarrative is just a synonymous for social and political hegemony. The third idea connects
postmodern thinking with the turn in value orientation that begins to celebrate differences in a
society and otherness of every person not only as a fact or even as a problem that should be
solved in communication, but as core values of contemporary time. Burbules and Rice
conclude that while first position declares an “antimodern statement”, which seems to deny
any value to classical modern knowledge, other two positions emphasize more productive
ways of solving problems of contemporary being:
–
A deconstruction of meaning of humanistic concepts in European tradition and
dismantling unjust concepts of power, dominance, and hegemony;
13
–
A recognition of differences in a society and the otherness of a subject as core values of
our time.
Deconstruction of hegemonic social concepts of modernity – the case of insanity
Both ways of postmodern reflection are tightly connected. If we want to really celebrate
differences and otherness as core values, we have to make a serious reflection/deconstruction
of several key concepts of modernity. One of good examples of this kind of deconstruction is
Foucault (1973) approach on the history of insanity in Western Europe civilization. If we can
find a kind of ambivalent attitude toward persons that are bearers of reasoning which is not
part of the common sense since enlightenment period, it was Descartes’s faith in the universal
rational method that definitively excluded the contingent otherness. In the same spotlight we
can analyze Kant’s conviction that the laws legitimated by the autonomous person for herself
are those that are common to all rational beings as such – that they are therefore the universal
laws of reason. Indeed, a model of ethics which is based on the faith in uniform rationality of
the autonomous subject is particularly prone to the exclusion of those individuals or groups
which for any personal or culturally-specific reason develop an alternative meaning of life,
life style, or communicative code.
Let’s look at some historical examples through the eyes of artistic imagination. Art (especially
literature and music) was from antiquity and for centuries recognized as a core of humanistic
education (septem artes liberales), but also as one of the modest tools for understanding
reality of life with its dilemmas and contradictions.
One of the best examples of recognizing the clash between the authority of state and
individual with her opponent moral reasoning is Sophocles Antigone. Antigone is refusing
Creon’s legitimate order that her brother should not be buried as the enemy of the state. While
Sophocles could not provide a decisive answer to the question whether her autonomous stance
was founded in the name of eternal moral rule of the sacredness of life and death (i.e. moral
rationality) or on the Dionysian dimension of eros, it is nevertheless certain that, despite their
faith in man’s dispassionate and rational nature as embodied in the Apollinarian cult, the
Greeks still acknowledged the positive role of the hybris and the Dionysian cult, and
considered both important for the further development of civilization. Simply said, Antigone
is one of the modest examples of the person that is denoted with double alterity (or otherness),
first as a woman that takes over an active social role, and second as a person that persists in
alternative moral reasoning, but sympathies of the writer and audience are clearly on her side.
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PICTURE 3
A postmodern Medusa
Photo by Žiga Kroflič
In the period of modern conviction on universal rationality we can find three leading
metaphors of exclusive relation toward persons that are because of alternative convictions and
reasoning described as insane or mad. The motif that best describes the Renaissance attitude
towards the otherness (otherness as unreason) is the Ship of Fools, which could have been
seen in both literary and visual artistic forms ever since the end of the fifteenth century. Two
characteristic European metaphors of otherness combine in it, those of The Leper and The
Court Fool.
The court fool is the person who is permitted to speak the truth, but for the price that people
who are listening at him doesn’t take him seriously – so he is in a soft way excluded from the
community of reasonable people. It is not surprising that in the first edition of Brant’s satire
Narrenschiff (1497), an engraving depicts the author as a scholar surrounded by books and
dressed as a university professor, whose cap from behind has the typical shape of the court
jester’s cockscomb:
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PICTURE 4
The author of Narresschiff (The Ship of
Fools, 1497), wise man or court fool?
The described ambivalence of folly remained in place even after they began to expel the fools
from townships with ships; in this practice, folly was connected with yet another metaphor,
that of The Leper.
PICTURE 5
Hieronymus Bosch: The Ship of
Fool, painted between 1490 and
1500, kept in Louvre, Paris
16
The most interesting depiction of the access to truth which is reserved for the expelled fool is
certainly the tree placed by Hieronymus Bosch on the Ship of Fools in place of the mast,
which can be interpreted as the symbol of the biblical tree of knowledge of good and evil.
Foucault is convinced that after leprosy had been eradicated in Europe, the role of The Leper
was assumed by poor vagabonds, criminals, and “deranged minds”, and that the metaphor of
The Leper combined the care for healing with the care for exclusion. The combination of the
care for healing and the care for exclusion became an empirical fact in the seventeenthcentury Europe, when the “Hôpital” began to emerge, as well as psychiatry as one among so
called normative sciences in the nineteenth century.
The European culture of the modern age established yet another metaphor of otherness, that of
The Noble Savage. Although the Christian Europe maintained the negative image of the
barbarian as an uncivilized, wild being, the Crusades brought about not only the stories of
conquest and civilization of barbarian lands, but also of a quest for one’s own roots; what is
more, a quest for the lost wonderful, primeval and innocent world. The fascination with the
uncivilized yet innocent natural state emerged as early as the Enlightenment when, for
example, Rousseau in his Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men
attributed moral deprivation to the negative influences of the human world; but the vision was
strengthened at the turn of the nineteenth century, when the awareness of the negative side
effects of civilization and enculturation grew, and The Noble Savage became the image of
human liberated from the “ballast of culture” .
In the nineteenth and twentieth century, the interest in the world of The Noble Savage entered
everyday life (the “empathic” fascination with a physically deformed and therefore
“uncivilized” individual in Victorian England was brilliantly illustrated in Lynch’s film The
Elephant Man (1980)) and scientific discourse (Grosrichard’s Structure of the Seraglio
describes fascination with the oriental forms of government, Levi-Strauss’s Savage Mind
breaks down the myth of the unintelligent nature of the totemic man). Of course, the topic
also appeared in art:
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PICTURE 6
Paul Gaughin: Vairaumati
Painted in 1896
Kept in Musée d’Orsay, Paris
Gauguin’s Vairaumati certainly
expresses
his of
deep
of civilization beyond
Vairaumati
is the Eve
the conviction
Tahitian mythology
European notions and of the equality of mythological and religious views of the origins of
man. But although Gauguin had spend a lot of time in Tahiti and also died there, we cannot
help having the impression that the figure of The Noble Savage remained the figure of
otherness beyond our own world: the figure of the native as an ideal object of tourist
attraction in which the civilized man of the twentieth century seeks the remains of the
“unspoiled nature” in both physical and cultural senses of the word.
What do the prevailing metaphors of otherness in the European tradition tell us? The Leper
became an undesirable metaphor in the twentieth century, because its mode of exclusion is too
obvious; but at the same time, the acknowledgement that madness may establish an
“alternative field of rationality” was lost, as postulated most clearly by the anti-psychiatric
movement. The Court Fool survived in the roles of the local eccentric and the clown, who are
allowed to speak about the unspeakable truths of existence at the price of exclusion from the
normalized community. The metaphor of The Native, however, experienced a boom not only
in the form of the tourist attraction based on the suppressed myth of the noble savage and the
original natural existence, but also in the attitude to people with certain special needs
(epilepsy, for example, is in Slovanic folk speech still recognized as a Good’s disease) and to
members of certain minority cultures (the Romany in Europe, for example). The fact that the
discourse of medicine readily recognizes Romany children as children with special needs is
masked by the cliché of a romantic, indigenous culture of music and dance. Even more – the
true Romany musician should be, according to this illusion, incapable of reading musical
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scores (supposedly the basis of civilized achievement in musical art), which makes him an
example of natural musicianship coming directly “from the heart”.
PICTURE 7
A Gypsy dancer
Photo by Robi Kroflič
After this short presentation of deconstruction method on the topics of the relationship toward
madness we can see how tightly unjust concepts of power, dominance, and hegemony are
connected with exclusion of representatives of otherness and differences concerning rational
thinking and other cultural symbols; and how urgent is “striping” of hegemonic concepts of
modernity if we want to create an interconnected, multicultural society.
Searching for a just and respectful society in late modernity
Second philosophical question is connected with postmodern understanding of a society.
Concept that we have most frequently in mind when we think about social space of
contemporary time is globalization. Globalization is today recognized not only as a fact of
living that was enabled by technological and especially informational progress, but also as a
typical ambivalent concept. On one side we meet beautiful opportunities to be easily
connected with all parts of the world by information and new communicative tools, and at
least for researchers this new opportunities are really helpful. But on the other side
globalization means “coca-colisation” of the world and real threat to saving cultural
differences around the globe. In its economical and political dimension we have to emphasize
that globalization is a paradox phenomenon of postmodernity with typical modern ideology
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that includes cultural assimilation under the influence of economical and law ideologies of
“advanced west” and an attempt on domestication of diversity into monocultural identity.
To save the positive aspects of global connections and migrations and on the other hand to
reject its negative influence on assimilation, several theorists have already tried to emphasize
alternative dimensions of those processes. So Sheila Benhabib is speaking about so called
“reverse globalization”, a migration process that brings elements of different cultures in
metropolis of “advanced” western world, and of course about a need to accept this diversity as
a sign of the possible higher quality of life.
Another alternative concept is concept of “glocalization”. The idea was developed in Japan
and in nineties adopted by Robert Robertson as counterweigh to globalization. Glocalization
focuses on the simultaneity – the co-presence of the particular and the universal and refers to
the social process of interaction between the local and the global and vice-versa. It is very
important that at the concrete project level we assure that an emphasis on global dimensions is
not accepted as a threat to national, ethnic, religious, cultural, and social identities, so we have
to strengthen empowerment of local subjects to cooperate in global cultural, political, and
economic exchanges on the principles of fairness and justice.
If we try to summarize, we can say that glocalization is a concept that accepts necessity of
global integrations and rejects assimilation; it tries to ground ideology of global bounds on
key value of postmodernity: diversity and differences not only as a fact and obstacle, but a
new quality. To be successful and not only another ideological slogan, glocalization should be
grounded on a new set of values that are important for politics, economy, and also education.
Among many lists of so called postmodern values I would like to emphasize four of them: a
deeper meaning of democracy, recognition of otherness as a way of accepting other person in
her authentic identity, responsibility as primarily a mode of respectful relation toward the face
of the other, and building an inclusive community that enables optimal development and
participation in community decision-making processes specially to (groups of) persons that
are frequently excluded or belong to the society margins.
PICTURE 8
Globalization as coca-colization
Photo by Robi Kroflič
20
While we have already spoken about the importance of recognition and responsibility toward
the face of other as different, let’s explain here some brief notions on democracy and
inclusiveness of contemporary social spaces. Both concepts are today amongst most important
value orientations of political philosophy. As G. Biesta (2006) emphasized we should not
think about democracy only as a form of political government but primarily as a form of
interconnected living in common social space that couldn’t become necessary value
orientation until we accepted thesis about plurality and differences. In a world of common
belief on universal values and truths aristocracy which can be leaded by a wise monarch is
much more proper form of government as we noticed in Antiquity Greek political philosophy.
Democracy is itself therefore a commitment to a world of plurality and difference, a
commitment to a world where freedom of all citizens can appear, a freedom to express every
individual opinion and a responsibility of society that especially voices of persons or the
members of social groups that were in the history several times marginalized or even
excluded are heart and considered.
In the educational environment creating of inclusive community enables optimal development
and participation in community decision-making processes especially to (groups of) students
that are frequently excluded or belong to the society margins. So inclusive school is enabled
by a proper legal frame (a notion on public school as an institution for all children and
youngsters), cultural frame (interrelations of respectful acceptance of persons from different
cultural, language, social, racial origin, and also persons with different learning styles and
capabilities for academic success), and school practice (reconciliation of different learning
and teaching styles and organizing support to learners with less capabilities or special needs).
During the running of the European Multiple Choice Identity project we emphasize it’s
democratic and inclusive orientation. So Wim Kratsborn once noticed that with work on the
project the differences between children/pupils/students were not smaller but we could see
increased awareness and tolerant acceptance (recognition) of them... Even more illustrative is
a thought of Maria Peňa, fifteen years old student and member of the project from Lisbon who
said: “The MCI project links the tiny things inside myself with the other and the great stuff.”
A thought that emphasize one of the basic notions on successful education as support to
identity development of children and youngsters: only democratic and inclusive education can
bind private “students emotions” with common values and hopes – “a great stuff” and with
personal moral awareness and responsibility of every individual person for common rights
and values.
Let’s close this chapter with one of the most important notions about characteristics of the
society of late modernity. While speaking about open possibilities for identity development
in modern societies, Anthony Giddens (1991) warns us about one specific feature of the
society in late modernity. On the level of the self, a fundamental component of day-to-day
activity is simply that of choice. Modernity confronts the individual with a complex diversity
of choices and, because it is non-foundational, at the same time offers little help as to which
21
options should be selected. If a pre-modern society was based on strong foundational concepts
of family and church (institutions of common faith) which offered to the individual a strong
sense of belonging (and at the same time limited her or his possibilities of free choices), today
we can find much more weak and unstable social spaces where an individual is searching for
a support. This is the main reason why the idea of inclusiveness stresses out the importance of
participation in community decision-making processes. So without strengthening a sense of
foundational importance of common value of human rights we can not strengthen a sense of
ontological security of a person of late modernity and help her or him to defend from the
pressures on anxiety which becomes one of the most broadening diseases of the time and
space we are living in.
PICTURE 9
A self portrait
Photo by Žiga Kroflič
Is post-modernity a new chance or obstacle for authentic self-identity development?
One of the basic paradoxes of a time (postmodernity) and space (Europe Union) we are living
in is the lack of ontological security among younger generations. When people are scared (and
free choice always include fear, not from what we could get, but from what we can lose) we
are often searching for somebody that could make decisions instead of us. We can accept
religious leader, new-age guru or even somebody that constructs personal horoscopes for the
authorities that could, as we hope, reduce our fear. That’s why it isn’t so contradictory that
developed capitalism on one side proclaims free choices and on the other side encourages
people to identify with different new leaders. Beside these processes of rejection of freedom
we can trace an anxiety that is connected with threat of losing basic sense of security (Salecl
2004).
We can define ontological security as a feeling of belonging to stable relations and sensible
constructions of life. Ontological security is therefore a sense of order and continuity in regard
to an individual’s experiences. It is a stable mental state derived from a sense of continuity in
22
regard to the events in one's life. As a reaction to threats of loosing ontological security
people are today trying to create a kind of protective cocoons, bubbles that will protect them
from continuous threats of their previous choices. When we carefully observe these processes
a serious questions arise:
What does syntagm multiple choice identity really mean?
Is it right to speak about free choices (freedom to choose directions of my life and
constructions of the meaning of living) or it would be more proper to speak about
situation in which we are forced to reopen questions about past choices?
If we are right to speak about free/open choices, what kind of knowledge, skills, and
value orientations do we need to make continuous process of reflection successful?
Can public school help children and youngsters to build their identity with providing
knowledge, skills, and value orientations and with enabling social space for successful
identity building?
According to Anthony Giddens (1991) trust and hope are the millstones of ontological
security. Trust is a kind of emotional shield that protects us from existential anxieties and
helps us to sustain positive orientation towards future and not focusing that much on threats
and dangers. Trust is the main emotional support, a kind of “protective cocoon”, but also an
ability to face the possibility of loss, so urgent in creative processes of building identity.
Especially in postmodern conditions, our feelings of self-identity are both robust and fragile.
Fragile, because the biography the individual reflexively holds in mind is only one ‘story’
among many other potential stories. So whatever I have chosen as a meaningful part of my
identity (like enjoying in punk music, being engaged in a heterosexual relationship, deciding
to study humanities etc.), it can be opened again and again as a serious existential choice. And
robust, because a sense of self-identity is often securely enough held to weather major
tensions of transitions in the social environments within which the person moves. In a time
and space that is shifting very fast, we have to emphasize that trust in others is at the origin of
the experience of a stable external world and a coherent sense of self-identity. It is ‘faith’ in
the reliability and integrity of others which is at stake here.
If we have opened a discussion on the question why a syntagm “multiple choice identity” can
cause a threat to the feeling of ontological security, let’s remember again Zygmunt Bauman’s
thesis about identity development as a result of the interplay between individual and
community, and a serious game of seeking a balance between freedom and security. Today
we are more and more aware that identity choices cannot be seen as free market goods we can
experiment with them by trading/exchanging. The basic limits of identity development as a
process of searching for our authenticity are today primarily not technical (we can not only
change our self-image very frequently according to fashion codes but also gender
orientations) but social and psychological ones. To ensure so needed security we have to
create again “social stabilizers” with strengthening possibilities for sense of belonging to
23
individual relations (of friendship and love) and communities like family, school and other
social services for free time activities (so called third places). But to be successful in this task
we have to rethink basic theoretical concepts under which we could enable such communities
that would ensure productive equilibrium between freedom and security, and identity
structure – open enough for everlasting social changes and stable enough to avoid the pressure
of modern anxieties.
PICTURE 10
Kaleidoscope
Photo by Robi Kroflič
Basic pedagogical concepts
There are two ideas that influenced new approaches in the field of pedagogy and teachers
education to adopt to the challenges of contemporary time, firstly a turn of normativity in
pedagogy - a change in the way we think about basic aims of education- the turn away from
deductive aims and absolute values/virtues to inductive search for responsible coexistence;
and secondly realistic concept of teacher education which tries to bridge the gap between
theory and practice, to promote the development of responsible and reflective people who can
build on self-awareness and develop their own identities, facing the challenges that they will
encounter in their personal lives and in society at large. These two concepts are strongly
interconnected and – paradoxically – as typical postmodern concepts rooted in the same old
antiquity question, how to draw the eternal values from the sky to the ground, from abstract
societal norms and ethical principles to the responsibility for human interrelations, which was
brilliantly visualized in Rafael’s painting School of Athens (Vatican 1510-1511).
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PICTURE 11
Rafael - School of Athens
(Vatican1510-1511)
Shift in normative ideas and inductive educational approach
Pedagogy as a normative (goal oriented science) science was constituted on the basis of
Enlightenment philosophical anthropology and political theory, especially on Kant’s concepts
of autonomy and on Rousseau’s notion that study of human psychological development
should form the basis of education. This thesis becomes interesting in the spotlight of
Lyotard’s postmodern philosophy, because his thesis about the death of the great narratives of
modern philosophy and science points to the question of the legitimacy of the milestones of
pedagogy as a science. And one of the most important questions concerns the legitimacy of its
main deductive pedagogical goals, focused on the creation of autonomous person with
competencies for critical reasoning.
My general thesis is that even postmodern pedagogy (like ethics and developmental
psychology) remains a normative science but the turn of normativity is not only a political
question of the participation of pupils/students and their parents to become more active in
negotiation about the content of pedagogical goals (basic principle of democratic education).
It is also the question of a new understanding of normative agency in the field of moral acting
and of ethical responsibility that arises from the turn of responsibility we have discussed in
the chapter MCI – who am I?: from following societal norms and ethical principles of justice
to the concept of responsibility to treat fellow persons in a respectful manner, which in the
terms of postmodern philosophy enables acceptance of otherness and differences as central
values of the present time.
25
This is the same shift that we have already described as a turn of concept of moral
responsibility in Emanuel Levinas ethics and confirmed with Howard Gardner’s concept of
respectful and ethical mind. But if we want to build educational practices on these new
orientations, we have to find further anthropological basis for the possibilities of stimulating
prosocial orientation toward the fellow person, and also new method of moral education.
In the late sixties of the twentieth century during his empirical approaches Martin Hoffman
found a new pattern of parental discipline practices, which he called inductive approach. This
way of parental discipline was clearly different from the most common educational concepts
of that time. Let’s try to illustrate differences in an example of typical discipline problem
from the kindergarten practice.
Etnographic note: Children’s play with Lego constructor
Peter and Matija are playing with Lego constructor. Matija is constructing a ship, while
Peter is making a plane. When Matija becomes short of Lego constructors, he smashes
Peter’s plane. There occurs a conflict and crying, so Peter asks for the help to the teacher.
Reaction of the teacher no. 1: “Matija, you know we have a rule that taking other’s toys is
forbidden.”
Reaction of the teacher no. 2: “Matija, I am very disappointed because of your behavior.”
Reaction of the teacher no. 3: “Matija, look how you’ve made Peter sad.”
Described possible teachers reactions illustrate three discipline practices. The first one was
described by Martin Hoffman (2000) as authoritative-assertive type, second one as emotional
conditioning (which is usually used in permissive type), and third one as inductive type of
discipline practice.
For most common classifications of educational approaches it is important to recognize that as
a concept, the inductive approach is in opposition to the authoritative-assertive type of
education on one side and emotional conditioning (permissive type of education) on the other.
According to Hoffman, with inductive discipline, we:
Express our disapproval of the child’s act and indicate implicitly or explicitly that the act
is wrong and that the child has committed an infraction (this dimension is present also in
the other two concepts of discipline).
Call attention to the victim’s distress and make it salient to the child.
Point up the role of the child’s action in causing that distress, which creates the condition
for feeling empathy-based guilt, which is a feeling of intense disesteem for oneself for
wrongfully harming another.
Give the chance to the offender to improve the situation which was caused by his act.
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What is new in inductive discipline approach? As we saw in the description, a teacher is no
longer pointing her finger to a moral rule that was not considered by the offender, nor is she
expressing her disappointment with the offender behavior. She is expressing disapproval of
the child’s act and making a pressure toward the offender by calling attention to the victim’s
distress, showing him that this distress was caused by his act. The underlying condition for
fostering the offender prosocial emotions and activities (giving a chance to improve the
situation) lays on the belief that inductive discipline act will provoke the offender’s emphatic
distress on the basis of emphatic guilt and intense disesteem.
Hoffman’s approach of empathy as a source of prosocial emotions enabled him to restore a
thesis that empathy is the first source of moral competencies of the child in very early
developmental period which can influence successfully to further development of emotional,
motivational and cognitive capacities for moral decision making and acting. Moral education
in early childhood should therefore focus on fostering of the development of empathy and
prosocial emotions, which are tightly connected with emphatic guilt. With this basic statement
Hoffman confirmed Levinas thesis about the responsibility toward the face of the other as preethical condition of moral acting and opened the opportunity for building of new, postmodern
conception of moral development as the central part of identity development pedagogical
approach.
However, if we want to defend the thesis about the possibility of building a new educational
concept on the basis of the inductive approach that would be acceptable for different
educational settings and age groups of pupils/students, we have to widen Hoffman’s
approaches on several theoretical and methodical questions, as per the following:
What could be the profound anthropological basis of the inductive educational approach?
How can we define basic educational goals (and therefore a new concept of pedagogical
normativity)?
Which are the principles of new educational methods?
How can we define the active role of the educator in an inductive educational approach?
As many theorists of so-called liberal pedagogy (like R. S. Peters and K. Strike) have already
stressed out, one of the basic anthropological ideas of inductive approach is the thesis that
prosocial emotions (personal virtues) and cognitive competencies (rational tools for ethical
reasoning) are equally important for morality. Among prosocial emotions Kristian
Kristiansson (2004) emphasizes specially the importance of compassion, indignation and
empathic guilt. Let’s see how prosocial emotions influence the person’s moral orientation.
Two discoveries confirm the thesis that we have many more possibilities to foster moral
development in the developmental period when a child is not yet capable of understanding the
27
meaning of social and moral obligations than only pure disciplinary practices which help
young child to act responsibly according to a set of social and moral rules. First is the
discovery of so-called empathic guilt in very early childhood by M. Klein and S. Tood, and
second is the discovery of the early development of empathy as a source of prosocial emotions
by M. Hoffman. Although we can’t prove that a child is sensitive for his friend distress on the
basis of his authentic altruistic or egoistic motives (as we showed his fellow distress causes
his distress too, so the child wants to get rid of this disrupting emotion), for identity
development it is crucial to recognize that orientation toward the well-being of a fellow
person grows from engaged relation of a child with important adult persons and friends.
Therefore, disciplinary practices that are based on rewards and punishment of the child’s
behavior and on our efforts to enable the child’s internalization of social and moral rules—
such as were the basis of moral education in pedagogy of modernity (Freud’s, Piaget’s and
Kohlberg’s concepts of moral development) —are simply not the only answer for these areas
of development. Development of empathy and emphatic emotions as one of the ultimate
sources of our morality has to begin in the very early developmental period and inductive
discipline as well as other elements of wider inductive educational approach can form a
successful basis for it.
The second necessary element of the inductive educational paradigm is the question about
possible changes of basic educational goals. Although historically, the educational goals were
usually described in terms of basic values or ethical norms, to describe a specific example of
the inductive educational paradigm I will ask the question, in what terms can we describe the
core of moral responsibility?
According to shifts in the ethics from Kant to Levinas, we can describe the distinction
between responsibility in modern and post-modern pedagogy. If the former concept defined
ethical responsibility as the demand to follow societal norms (in the so-called conventional
phase of morality) and ethical principles (in the so-called post-conventional phase of
autonomous morality), today we can define ethical responsibility as primarily respectful
ethical response to an existential call of the other, as personal commitment to respectful being
and acting and as care for our life mission and consistent identity.
The anthropological thesis about the priority of a respectful relationship before an ethical
principle of justice contains two dimensions. We can speak about the priority of a respectful
relationship before the ethical principle in an epistemological sense (of “competing” ethical
criteria for moral reasoning), and also about the priority of a respectful relationship before the
ethical principle in the developmental sense. The last thesis simply means that personal
qualities for respectful attitude can be developed before the child’s capabilities for ethical
reasoning.
Ethical and anthropological ideas lead us to the basic structure of inductive educational
methodic, which can be described in three phases:
28
The child is in his or her first years capable of relations of love and friendship (even if
ethical consciousness demands complex cognitive capacities), therefore pedagogy
supporting those relationships enables the child to develop relational response-ability and
normative agency for prosocial activities in a most authentic way.
Because personal engaged relations may be as well harmful, in case they lead to empathic
over-arousal, empathic bias, pity and paternalism, the next important focus is to develop
the sense of respect toward concrete persons or activities.
Last step of moral education is to become aware of ethical principles and humanistic
demands, especially concerning human rights and ecological values, and learn how to use
them as a basis for democratic negotiation in cases of interpersonal conflicts.
What is important to add to this short description is that the proposed model should not be
understood as a step model of classical linear developmental (like Kohlberg’s model of the
development of moral reasoning) because every phase of the model remains important for
morality even when the next developmental step is reached. As we have already seen through
the short analysis of conflicts about the meaning of Muslim cultural symbols, keeping in mind
the principle of respect while we are trying to apply logic of justice in public space is
especially important in multicultural societies. And the second notion is that the best way of
using the inductive model of moral development is within an inclusive school environment
and not only as an abstract learning of solving moral dilemmas in the classroom.
We have finally reached the last question that is important for the development of the
inductive approach of prosocial and moral education: how to define an active role for
educators? In the usual disciplinary practices it is obvious a teacher has a very active role
which is connected with a specific normative idea of how to stop a child’s unacceptable
behavior. Also in inductive discipline a teacher should not allow the child to “look away” and
avoid the recognition of the damage his or her behavior has produced. But with careful
observation we can notice an important shift in the normative position toward the child. A
teacher is no longer in a position of ultimate criteria of morality in terms of calling attention to
the ethical value, norm or principle. The ultimate normative criteria demands from the child to
look at the face of the victim, which we have already recognized as the pre-ethical criteria of
morality in Levinas’ philosophy.
Although an educator’s role in the inductive approach remains active, the described shift in
relation to the ultimate criteria of morality changes the character of the educator’s authority.
While describing the basic structure of pedagogical authority, I propose two important
features:
Authority is a dialogical and not a substantial concept that could be described in terms of a
set of personal (or formal) features of an educator, a pupil and/or educational setting
(Bingham 2006).
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Authority is a concept that enables educational effects but on the other hand it is a main
obstacle to reach the ultimate goal of moral education—development of personal
responsibility and critical moral reasoning (Kroflič 2000).
The solution of this last paradox can be described in terms of creating a type of educational
authority that is constructed through the relationship between teacher and pupil with the
following maxim: “The good teacher is therefore a person who is always working himself out
of a job”; a maxim that was developed from a similar principle of Aristotle: Amicus Plato,
magis amica veritas. It is a type of authority that I define as self-limiting authority (ibid.),
similar to the hypothesis of Charles Bingham (2006) on the possible liberating dimension of
authority: “Students need to think of teachers and schools as centres of authority, authority
they can use to increase their own agency.”
A traditional concept of authority as substance leads us to an educational (or better say
disciplinary) situation that is similar to Kafka’s novels, where the teacher as the doorkeeper
doesn’t allow students to step behind the wall where the ultimate source of the moral truth is
supposed to lie. And possible liberation lies in the changing role of a teacher in an educational
relation. The inductive teacher is no longer pointing a finger to an imaginary ultimate source
of moral law and describing him or herself as a guard at the gates of wisdom. He or she is
stressing the importance of the face of a person who was a victim of conflict and this person is
a witness that somebody has crossed the line of respectful relationship. In an epistemological
sense, self-limitation of the teacher’s authority opens the possibility of activating moral
sentiments and reasoning which leads to a possibility to repair damage. Combining elements
of emotional distress, of prosocial emotions, moral reasoning and moral acting is how we
draw moral education near to the principles of experiential learning and realistic educational
approach, which will be discussed in a next paragraph.
Inductive educational paradigm and the importance of inclusive education, relational
pedagogy, pedagogy of listening and essential learning
I have already stressed out the idea of the possibility for widening inductive approach form
merely disciplinary practice to the wider set of educational actions that have the potential for
developing of multiple choice identity, avoiding growth of personal anxieties and conflicts
about deeper meaning of common ethical values among participants of different cultural
identities. Let’s face with some other contemporary pedagogical ideas that are compatible
with our approach.
First pedagogical idea we have already confirmed is the importance of creating inclusive
environments which motivate children and young people to step into engaged and respectful
interrelations. As we saw first prosocial motives arouse from engaged relations toward
important Others, and they can be enabled only in concrete social spaces. In the chapter on
social environments of contemporary time we have already emphasized values of inclusion
and democracy, but also a postmodern threat to the individual which is connected with the
fact that traditional social institutions don’t play anymore a role of social stabilizers of
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identity development. Among descriptions of new models of engaged social spaces we also
find concept of so called third spaces. This concept was first described by Ray Oldenburg and
Christopher Lasch in early nineties of the twentieth century as a place of open and intimate
communication that was developed in between public space of institutions and private space
of the family. Materialization of such third places can be recognized in cafés and bars in a
period of student rebellions in late sixties and early seventies of the twentieth century, and
later in squats - buildings which young proponents of alternative cultures occupied mostly in
urban big cities. The basic purpose of third places is a creation of alternative utopist realities
to take people’s lives out of singularity of their jobs, families, and politics into world of
fantasies, loitering, and blathering. It just makes people happier, and happy people eventually
make better citizens. Searching for possibilities for a dialog is also one of the basic
expectations of young people that motivate them for school activities. And such personal
dialog as meeting of existential questions and possible answers with the same uncertainties of
fellow persons is also the core of identity development that should be enabled in schools
(Sidorkin 1997).
What creates the basic feature of third places despite engaged relations is celebration of
differences and respectful attitude toward face of Other in his radical alterity. Among new
pedagogical conceptions the proponents of relational pedagogy have emphasized importance
of engaged relations for the identity development in the most profound way. In their
Manifesto of relational pedagogy we can find further basic thesis:
A relation is more real than the things it brings together. Human beings and non-human
things (like art objects of performances; note by R. K.) acquire reality only in relation to
other beings and things.
The self is a knot in the web of multiple intersecting relations; pull relations out of the
web, and find no self. We do not have relations; relations have us.
Authority and knowledge are not something one has, but relations, which require others to
enact.
Human relations exist in and through shared practices.
Relations are complex; they may not be described in single utterances. To describe a
relation is to produce a multi-voiced text.
Relations are primary; actions are secondary. Human words and actions have no authentic
meaning; they acquire meaning only in a context of specific relations.
Teaching is building educational relations. Aims of teaching and outcomes of learning can
both be defined as specific forms of relations to oneself, people around the students, and
the larger world.
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Educational relation is different from any other; its nature is transitional. Educational
relation exists to include the student in a wider web of relations beyond the limits of the
educational relation.
Relations are not necessarily good; human relationality is not an ethical value. Domination
is as relational as love. (Bingham and Sidorkin 2004)
If we accept a thesis about fragility of pedagogical relation that can tend to the domination
toward the pupil/student, we can recognize the importance of respectful and personally
engaged teacher (both concepts are from the project Goodwork® and Gardner’s Five minds
for the future). But from the same thesis another important pedagogical activity of inductive
approach appears. Fear from radical otherness is tightly connected with real or possible
domination practices which represent pressures toward our identity choices. Method of
deconstruction we have presented in the chapter Deconstruction of hegemonic social concepts
of modernity – the case of insanity, can be together with clear depictions of oppressive acts
through inductive disciplinary practices and building ethical consciousness of human rights
used to reduce children’s anxieties and concrete fears from possible offensive relations.
Next postmodern concept that can deepen inductive educational paradigm is concept of
recognition of other as different and pedagogy of listening. This ideas were developed in the
most profound form in Italian early childhood concept of Reggio Emilia.
What exactly is recognition? And what kind of educational approach does the concept of
recognition demands?
First of all, recognition is much more than our intention to understand other person. If we
accept Emanuel Levinas ethics, when we think we know and understand the Other, we are
exercising our knowledge over the Other, shrouding the Other in our own totality. The Other
becomes an object of our comprehension, our world, our narrative, reducing the Other to us.
What is at stake is our ego. But if we are exposed to the Other, we can listen, attend, and be
surprised; the Other can affect us, she brings us more than we contain. And insofar as we can
be receptive and susceptible we can learn from the Other as one who is absolutely different
from us (Tood 2003).
Recognition is also much more than tolerance or passive empathy, when we only feel sorry
about bad fortune of the other person. It is an active relationship. When we recognize another,
or when we ask for recognition for ourselves, we are not asking for an Other to see us as we
are, as we already are, as we have always been, as we were constituted prior to the encounter
itself. Instead, in the asking we have already become something new, since we are constituted
by virtue of the address, a need and desire for the Other. It is also to stake one’s own being
and one’s own persistence in one’s own being, in the struggle for recognition (Buttler 2004).
In educational practices, the concept of recognition is also warning us to reject traditional
prejudices about a child as infirm, incompetent, egocentric and narcissistic being that is
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impossible to step into relationships and mutual activities with fellow persons on the basis of
respect. The founder of the Reggio Emmilia concept of pre-school education, Loris Malaguzzi
was one among first authors who affirmed the thesis about a child as cognitive, emotional and
social competent being, who has a right to be accepted as an active partner in educational
activities. As Malaguzzi (1998) mentioned in one of his interviews, among the goals of their
approach is to reinforce each child’s sense of identity through a recognition that comes from
peers and adults, so much that each would feel enough sense of belonging and self-confidence
to participate in the activities of the school. They seek to support those social exchanges that
better ensure flow of expectations, conflicts, cooperations and choices. Children are apt to
explore, make discoveries, change their points of view, and fall in love with forms and
meanings that transform themselves, but to really foster this creative and susceptive capacities
of even pre-school child, we have to recognize “one hundred languages of a child”, or as
Sharron Tood (2003) writes, attentiveness to the creative capacity for making meaning has to
become part of the ethical project of listening. Recognition of other as different from us and
unique person, therefore form together with just distribution of society goods to all citizens
(where we are especially concerned for most vulnerable persons) one of the basic features of
justice.
To accept concept of recognition, listening becomes one of the basic features of new
educational approach:
Listening is a metaphor for openness to others... Listening therefore means giving
value to the other,
as Carolina Rinaldi (2006) writes in a new book In Dialogue with Reggio Emilia with subtitle
Listening, researching and learning. She is convinced that search for the meaning of life and
of the self is born with the child and is desired by the child. This is why we have to talk about
a child who is competent and strong, the child, whom we view as an active subject that is
constructing theories of life from the very early childhood. But it is important to know also
that our theory needs to be listened to by others. This makes it possible to transform a world
that is intrinsically personal into something shared, what is urgent when we understand that
our knowledge and our identities are also constructed by the other. Sharing theories is a
response to uncertainty and solitude that become alive from our social needs as well as our
needs to develop individual self-identity.
Let’s close this chapter with ideas about real transformational form of education which can be
called essential learning.
Essential learning can be defined as learning that touches the deepest levels of our personality
and because of its intensity, a feeling of self-fulfillment occurs as a side effect of our learning
activities. Among theoretical concepts that enabled to understand better transformational
educational experiences we have to mention Abraham Maslow’s research on peak
experiences, Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi's concept of flow, and Fred Korthagen’s concept of
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onion model and core reflection – a method that can help a teacher to become dedicated to
essential learning.
All above mentioned concepts have something in common – they try to describe educational
experiences that have deep influence to the development of our self-identity. The most
profound examples of peak experiences Maslow found in the field of religious
transformations like Savel’s meeting with the truth of Christianity that have changed him to
Paul – one of the first founders of Christian theology. But Maslow also emphasized that peak
experiences can be found on the other fields of profound human activities which enable our
ultimate need for self-actualization, especially in admiring unspoiled natural environments
and in artistic events.
Csikszentmihalyi's (1991) concept of flow is just more experimentally proved description of
such profound experiences. It is described as a state of being completely in the here-and-now,
optimally connecting the demands of the situation with one’s inner capacities and enabling
optimal creative competences of individual, concerning our cognitive and also motivational
capabilities. Simply said, in a state of flow we are capable of maximal achievements and at
the same time of maximal enjoying in activity, when our learning and creating becomes hard
fun.
In searching for the explanation how to become aware of possible activities that give us a
feeling of self- fulfillment, Korthagen created the onion model – an explanation model of
levels of our personality that are engaged in educational experiences, but also special concept
of self-reflection that helps us to become aware of our deeper values, identity determinations
and life missions as personal strengths for successful learning activities and professional
practices. Because Korthagen’s concepts will be discussed in the final chapter of this book, I
would only like to emphasize again that his ideal of realistic pedagogical approach was built
on the same idea of the change of normativity as inductive approach and on emphasizing the
importance of engaged interrelations as relational pedagogy. Together with seven step
didactical model of citizenship education and identity development created by Wim
Kratsborn, principles of inductive approach, relational pedagogy and realistic education
form the core educational activities in European Multiple Choice Identity Project.
Essential learning in a state of flow has some similar characteristics as were discussed when
we spoke about authentic relationships. So like authentic relations we can also speak about
authentic activities that enable us a sense of fulfillment and self-realization, of “full time”, of
creativity and flow. Among them art is one of the most traditional areas of authentic
activities! Being engaged in authentic activities opens the possibility of peek experiences and
the development of our self-identity. In his famous book Truth and Method, Hans Georg
Gadamer describes aesthetic experience as the essence of experience per se. The work of art
tears the person experiencing it out of the context of his life, and yet relates him back to the
whole of his existence. In the experience of art is present a fullness of meaning that belongs
not only to this particular content or object but rather stands for the meaningful whole of life.
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So in the next chapter I would like to present the idea of art as the core of humanistic
education and an excellent tool for identity development.
Art as the core of humanistic education and identity development
The main purpose of this chapter is to show, why the debate about the worth of art as a core of
humanistic education is today more important than ever. As we will see from a brief historical
analysis, core values of postmodern era open more opportunity to defend a thesis about
intrinsic value of educational experience and its role in developing personal identity, or saying
in Constantijn Koopman (2005) words, about art as personal fulfillment. This of course does
not mean that lectures about arts are sufficient tool for achieving this pedagogical goal,
although they are important to educate pupil/student to be more open to concrete artistic
experiences as an artist or as an admirer of fine arts. What we will focus on in this chapter
will therefore not be a discussion on education about arts but the discussion about education
through art experiences.
As we have already seen in the chapter about deconstruction of hegemonic social concepts of
modernity, art (especially literature and music) was from antiquity and for centuries
recognized as a core of humanistic education, but its “pedagogical role” was usually reduced
to the media of transmitting existing cultural patterns and ideological standpoints, or to say in
another way – from utilitarian criteria. Already Plato had demanded a selection of
myths/stories for different bodies of society, when the message of an art object was not
appropriate for the wider public and we can trace the same intention in Christian schools in
medieval period. The same criteria was central in the period from the seventeenth to the
eighteenth century, when growth of interest for the folk tales occurred and author’s fairy-tales
became an important pedagogical tool (Charles Perrault, brothers Grimm and Christian
Andersen).
In the nineteenth century utilitarian criteria of worth of an art as the core of humanistic
education begun to prevail according to H. Spencer statement, that as arts occupy the leisure
part of life, so should they occupy the leisure part of education. And at the end of the
twentieth century we can find a desperate search for proofs that art experiences have positive
impact on the development of different intelligences and school achievements, but
unfortunately a serious meta-analysis of many research studies doesn’t confirm most of
expectations.
Changes of basic educational aims in postmodern pedagogy from cultural-transmission model
(education as transmission of core values and truths from great narratives of modern
philosophy and science) to process oriented education (that foster personal development in the
direction of auto-regulative competencies and respectful relation toward other as different)
demand new efforts to find reasons for the inner value of aesthetics experience. When we
accept thesis about affirmation of specific postmodern values and deconstruction of meanings
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of modern scientific orientations, we find the basis for reaffirmation of intrinsic value of art
experience – it’s worth for our self-fulfillment together with respectful attitude and
continuous identity development.
Intrinsic value of educational experience
Let’s face with some contemporary ideas about art as one of most authentic expressions of
humanity that has an important educational value, not only because of its ideological message,
but also because of its inner structure.
If art experience is a kind of embodiment of knowledge (or embodied knowledge) about
myself and the Other, then we have to find something in its inner structure that confirms its
value beyond a utilitarian criteria. In the RAND study Gifts of the Muse (Reframing the
Debate About the Benefits of the Arts (McCarthy and others 2004) we find a further
explanation of art as a communicative process:
Figure 1: Art as a Communicative Process
People who bring meaningful forms into existence are generally called artists and anyone so
engaged is, at the time of engagement, being an artist (Reimer 1998). In the field of
philosophy of education this simply means that anyone who is engaged in the experience of
art – to be a creator, or co-creator (musician playing a piece of music that was written by
another artist) of artistic expression, or just a person enjoying the piece of art – exists in the
field of aesthetic experience.
This statement of course does not mean that art classes which offer lectures about (history of)
art to pupils or students automatically offer artistic experiences. If we want to ensure to pupil
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or student appreciation of art object, she or he has to be faced with the presentation of a real
art object and motivated to enjoy in it, express her/his feelings, and interpret the message of
artistic event as her/his personal experience.
There are several reasons and concepts that confirm communicative understanding of art. First
of all, the insight into the thesis, that a piece of art is a kind of bridge between the mind of the
artist and the public, is crucial for understanding the inner value of art experience.
The artistic process is one of the most complex, mysterious, and only partly conscious human
activities, that includes intuition and expression (see top oval on figure 1). Intuition can be
described as a highly developed capacity for vivid experiencing of the world, including one’s
inner, private world. It is a cultivated sensitivity for observing life, a capacity for receiving its
impressions, that enables the artist to present this impression and vision of pieces of
subjective reality to the public (which is not capable of such deep observing and
contemplating of life). And artistic expression is, in the opinion of the Irish novelist J. Cary,
“a kind of translation, not from one language into another, but one state of existence into
another, from the receptive into creative, from the purely sensuous impression into the purely
reflective and critical act”, or as the same thought was expressed by C. Taylor in his
monumental work Sources of the self, artistic expression is “a bit of ‘frozen’ potential
communication.” (McCarthy and others 2004)
The process of appreciation (see bottom oval on figure 1) is parallel to the artistic process,
because individual experience is an inner one, intensely personal and private, and the
interpretative experience is the attempt to express to others what that direct experience was
like. Unlike most human communication, art communicates through direct experience, and
the core of our response to the piece of art is a kind of intense feeling that is enriched by
critical reflection. This means that aesthetic experience is not limited to passive spectatorship,
but it stimulates curiosity, questioning, and the search for explanation.
The key question of aesthetics, whether the art is a representation of reality or an expression of
a subjective view, emotions, and visions, remains, in the opinion of the authors of the RAND
study, still open: they declare art as “objectivation of subjective life” or “an outward showing
of inward nature”. This means that art can fill the gap left by scientific and technological
discourse of Western European culture. Rather than describing the world in impersonal,
abstract, or mathematical terms, it presents a created reality based on personal perspective
(often surprising and original) that includes the whole uncensored human being with all its
feelings, imaginings, and yearnings.
Educational value of artistic imagination
One of the most important characteristics of artistic expression for the development of
humanity is artistic imagination. It is the concept that is clearly separated from pure fantasy,
and contains selective and evaluative functions. In artistic imagination we are focusing on the
meaningful life events separating them from unimportant routines, and valuate them
according to the destiny of imaginary character.
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We can say even more so, that artistic imagination is a cognitive capacity, which enables us to
reach a coherent image of the world with the use of empathy. Artistic imagination is the
means to reach the world of the Other in a way that we become accustomed to “as if” worlds,
that were created by writers, painters, sculptors, movie directors, choreographers, and
composers, and enabled us to gain new perspectives on life - so important for the post-modern
conception of humanity and ethical consciousness (Greene 1995). It motivates us to become
accustomed to the artistic created person or event, empathic with its destiny, to restrict our
ego fantasies about ourselves as centers of the universe, to reflect life events we would never
experience, and to create visions about possible worlds that abolish selfishness and injustice.
So it is not a coincidence that in the last few decades we can find more and more proof that
human moral understanding is fundamentally imaginative and that metaphor is one of the
principal mechanisms of imaginative cognition.
Martha Nussbaum in her influential work Cultivating humanity (1997) identifies three
important dimensions of the artistic imagination: narrative imagination, deliberative
imagination, and compassionate imagination.
Cultivating humanity by art was what form Socrates, stoics and Seneca held as the central part
of basic education, because “habits of empathy and community conduce to a certain type of
citizenship and a certain form of community: one that cultivates a sympathetic responsiveness
to another's needs, and understands the way circumstances shape those needs, while
respecting separateness and privacy. This is so because of the way in which literary imagining
both inspires intense concern with the fate of characters and defines those characters as
containing a rich inner life, not all of which is open to view; in the process, the reader learns
to have respect for the hidden contents of that inner world, seeing its importance in defining a
creature as fully human.” (Ibid.)
This description of penetrating into the soul of a literal hero liberates the reader’s
stereotypical perception (what can be called deliberative imagination) and enables empathy
and compassion. Compassion involves the recognition that another person, in some ways
similar to oneself, has suffered some significant pain or misfortune in a way for which that
person is not, or not fully, to blame. Compassion includes one more important dimension that
is the sense of my own vulnerability, which tells me that I could experience a similar destiny
to the literal hero in my future, which causes my readiness to generously help: “That might
have been me, and that is how I should want to be treated.” This last dimension of
imagination Nussbaum describes as compassionate imagination, and its value is connected
with our readiness to have an empathic recognition of the social position of different,
marginalized, invisible persons in a global world of differences.
Educational value of narration
Another key concept of art expression that indicates its importance for the development of
humanity is narration. After the fall of rationalistic conviction that ethical dilemmas can be
reduced to abstract events, which are separate from the individual destiny of subjects and
from the contingent nature of social circumstances, Carol Gilligan (2001) stress the
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importance of the reconstruction of ethical dilemma in its contextual particularity, that enables
understanding of causes and consequences.
Telling the story in a narrative way can be seen as a new way of understanding and truth.
Shaping our own stories and, at the same time, opening ourselves to other stories in all their
variety and their different degrees of articulateness is also of great importance for the growth
of identity.
Especially stories with “open narrative fable” will act to enable aesthetic transgression on
institutionalized moral chains (deductive moral norms) and can motivate critical reflection
and inductive learning. As we have already shown, the inductive approach starts moral and
identity development from the analysis of concrete conflict situations (which demand an
emphatic relation toward narrative and metaphor of a concrete situation) and not from the
notion on the importance of social rule/norm, that was the starting point of social learning in
the classical culture-transmission model of education. So the ultimate value of the story told
by an artist is not the moral meaning, but opening the possibilities for a reader, listener or
spectator to step into the narration, to recognize existential dilemmas of main characters of the
story and get new experiences of life events which will probably never happen to themselves.
Educational value of metaphor
A short, but very convincing argument about the importance of metaphor can be found in the
famous study Sovereignty of Good, written by I. Murdoch (1970), where she claims that we
can catch sight of good only in an indirect way through metaphor, so admiring the beauty in
art or nature is the most accessible way for a spiritual experience and a proper way to a good
life, because it masters our selfishness with an aim to see the truth. This argument about the
importance of metaphor arises from the analysis of the role of metaphorical thinking in
Platonic philosophy, and especially his famous metaphor of the cave, where he presents the
idea about the incapacity to picture and describe Good in a direct way.
So where analytical language fails to describe truth, art can - with the help of imagination,
narration, and metaphor - create “embodied meaning”, which replaces invisible secrets of
life into visible spheres, and so enables transformative experiences and personal fulfillment.
Art as sense-opener, as a source of knowledge, and as a cross-over
In a project European Multiple Choice Identity, we are using art as a special tool for the
development of personal and collective (European) identity of children and young people
according to Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences. In seven step didactical model,
constructed by W. Kratsborn, different kinds of arts (we are specially using music, visual arts
and design, literature, drama and dancing) have an important role as a:
Sense-opener and motivational tool for becoming familiar with different topics of
educational activities (such as identity, family and friends, good work, migrations and
mobility, and the otherness);
Source of knowledge about selected topics;
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Cross-over or simply say a tool for breaking cultural barriers (by preventing children
from fear about the radical otherness and finding common ground for intercultural
dialog in a respectful way).
Artistic activities can be an excellent introduction to lessons on different topics, like history
lessons, presentations of ethical and political struggles and dilemmas etc. In inductive
approach to prosocial and moral development, opening senses for different relationships has
even a deeper meaning. For children in very early years, rhythmic singing and declamation of
a simple child song together with using fingers, “walking” through different parts of a child’s
body, can become the activity that enables child’s response-ability to make a physical contact
with another person. In European Multiple Choice Identity on the topics of identity we used
such musical games Bibarije for one to three years old children as a source of the
development of child’s response-ability to the presence of other person (a teacher or peer) and
strengthening his sense of otherness of another person. This experiment confirmed out thesis
that using declamation and “finger walking” can stimulate different directions of relationships
between a child and teacher or peer; and in inclusive environment where children with special
needs are integrated in heterogeneous group with children without specific handicaps, this
activities enabled possibilities for reducing fear from radical differences and for new forms of
personal contacts:
PICTURES 12
Bibarije
Photo by Robi kroflič
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Art can be also an excellent media for reaching new knowledge on selected topics. Even
Aristotle has already claimed that artistic expression of the event from past can tell us about
the meaning of it more than objective historical report. It is even clearer today that we can
learn a lot about the specific event from a poem, drama, song or painting. I have already
emphasized the possibility to understand historical practices of exclusion of people with
mental handicaps in European modernity with metaphorical descriptions of paintings,
graphics and literature. The same method we use in the course about special educational needs
for students of Pedagogy at the university level.
Perhaps the most important function of artistic activities in a globalised world of cultural and
individual differences is cross-over. Despite the fact that art is rooted in a specific cultural
frame, it is obvious that artistic expressions can break cultural barriers and make intersecting
worlds of differences visible and acceptable to us. Perhaps the best example is so called world
music that was developed from ethno music from all parts of the globe and became very
popular in last two decades. Listening to sunny fado music of Portugal in cold lands of
Frisland, dancing to techno beats connected with tango music of Argentina in western Europe
are just a few examples of glocalisation (or “reverse-globalization”) processes of
contemporary cross-over where specially music is creating new inter-connected social spaces
and practices of respectful cohabitation.
Art as fulfillment in the post-modern world
I would like to conclude this chapter with the idea that art can be seen as a practice of
transformative experiences and personal fulfillment, because it has a power to express the
basic secrets of life and allows us to begin a dialog with the otherness of fellow-persons, and
also with the otherness in the core of our personality. Let's show some of the most famous
arguments for this hypothesis.
Let’s start with Wittgenstein’s theory about closeness and the transcendental nature of the
languages of ethics, of religious experiences, and of art, that rests on the recognition of the
different language of art, that can reach some extensions of truth better than the analytical
language of science.
When we follow the thesis about art experience as one of the most authentic forms of human
activities of personal fulfillment, we should not forget Gadamer’s thesis about ‘fulfilled time’,
exemplified by the feast or celebration, where the feast is a paradigm for the arts. Just like the
feast the work of art presents an episode of fulfilled time. Fulfillment is effected by the
organic unity of work. Every detail is united with the whole. As an internally structured unity,
the art work has its own fulfilled time.
Fulfillment is also central to the John Dewey concept of art as experience, which means ‘to
have an experience in strong sense’, to experience wholeness and self-sufficiency because art
acts to clarify and intensify events of every day experiences. So Gadamer and Dewey have
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offered us two different perspectives on the idea of fulfillment in the arts, the first one with
the concept of fulfilled time, and the second one with the concept of completed experience.
These two perspectives are supplementing, because the value of the arts resides in our
complete involvement from moment to moment when receiving, creating or performing an art
work (Koopman 2005).
The idea of art fulfillment also coincides with Maslow’s concept of peak experience and
Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of flow. Flow comes from the feeling of total fulfillment in an
artistic process that causes a peak experience of pleasure and happiness, which is brilliantly
described by the testimony of the poet M. Strand: “Well, you’re right in the work, you lose
your sense of time, you’re completely enraptured, you’re completely caught up in what you’re
doing, and you’re sort of swayed by the possibilities you see in this work. If that becomes too
powerful, then you get up, because the excitement is too great. You can’t continue to work or
continue to see the end of the work because you’re jumping ahead of yourself all the time.
The idea is to be so ... so saturated with it that there’s no future or past, it’s just an extended
present in which you’re ... making meaning.” (McCarthy and others 2004)
If we turn our analysis again to the characteristics of life in the post-modern era and the role
of art for a fulfilled life in this liquid and risky time of multiple choices and continuous need
for reflection, I would like to conclude this chapter with the two most frequently emphasized
positive roles of art. The first one is the fact that the world we live in is composed of an
uncountable number of simultaneously existing perspectives and viewpoints, so our personal
growth has to include searching for our personal voice and playing participatory and well
articulated roles in the communities. Or as the same thought was expressed by Martha
Nussbaum in her book Love’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature: “Art
provides an extension of life not only horizontally, bringing the reader into contact with
events of locations or persons or problems he or she has not otherwise met, but also, so to
speak, vertically, giving the reader experience that is deeper, sharper, and more precise than
much of what takes place in life.”
This ‘deep, sharp, and precise’ self-understanding and self-fulfillment is also strongly
connected with the otherness around me that warns me about otherness in the core of my
personality (especially non-reflected fears, stereotypes, but also admirations and joys). To
defeat fear of otherness so common to human beings, we need activities that have strong
motivational character and emotional engagement in our too objectified world. Or, as the
same thought was expressed by two giants of art in the nineteen and twentieth century: the
spirit of abstraction stifles the fire at which the heart should have warmed itself (Schiller), so a
book must be an ice-axe to break the sea frozen inside us (Kafka).
42
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