| dc.description.abstract | Like many other philosophers and educationalists, Durkheim and Habermas
understand education to have a political function. Education is understood as a
means to assure socioZpolitical stability and to secure collective aspirations.
Education must serve a collective interest and in this way it also serves the interest
of the individual. Durkheim argues that science must be the arbiter of the
educational function, providing an objective evaluation of the proper means and
ends for education. In the view of both Durkheim and Habermas, the student’s
capacity for an autonomous existence within society will depend on the
internalisation of the moral values and interests of that society. However,
Heidegger’s writings on being and time reveal tensions between the ideas of
collective and authentic existence. In addition, Foucault has shown that ‘sciences’
like psychology and the social sciences have a different foundation and function
from that of natural sciences like physics and biology, because the former are
normative and inextricable from a moral and political position. This thesis
questions the role that the human and social sciences have come to play within
modern education.
Foucault understood education to be a disciplinary function that constitutes a form
of social control. Philosophically, this thesis explores what socialisation involves
for the student and asks can education function as a policing apparatus and equally
serve the interests of all its students. In particular, it looks at the socialisation of
those whose bodies and lives apparently most contradict the collective interest,
norms and dominant aesthetic judgements. Through Deleuze and Foucault it will
argue that socialisation is an indoctrinatory function that needs to be distinguished
from education. If one imagines a space dedicated to the inculcation of values and
beliefs, a space that suggests a threat in order to eradicate the unpredictability
entailed in thinking, a space that rewards agreement and punishes resistance, is
this really a space dedicated to education? Through MerleauZPonty, Heidegger,
Hengehold and Foucault, this thesis aims to show how education is a distinct
practice from socialisation. It questions whether it really is educational or even
beneficial for those who are most marginalised within a society to be exposed to
socialisation techniques that aim for that population to internalise and ‘own’
values and beliefs often espoused in the interest of those who benefit most from a
social ordering, rather than to have an experience of genuine education. | en |
