Résumés
Abstract
This text aims at shifting interest from public education to the publicness of education, and it does so by discussing the very foundations of education itself. In particular this article explores the difference between the Sophists’ practice-oriented understanding of education and its autotelic aims, on the one hand, and Plato’s understanding that education is a tool to perfect the state, on the other hand. I argue that the Sophist’s understanding of education is more productive for expanding the public meaning of education beyond the conventional understandings of the public as being tied to the state. This requires a shift from seeing the state as the only legitimate owner of the goals and aims of education for its people, to a publicness of education owned by the people themselves.
Parties annexes
Bibliography
- Apple, M. W. (2018). The struggle for democracy in education. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315194684
- Bauman, Z. (1991). The social manipulation of morality: Moralizing actors, adiaphorizing action. Theory Culture & Society, 8(1), 137–151. https://doi.org/10.1177/026327691008001007
- Bauman, Z. (1999a). Culture as praxis. Sage Publishing. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781446218433
- Bauman, Z. (1999b). In search of politics. Stanford University Press.
- Bauman, Z. (2000). Liquid modernity. Polity Press.
- Bengtsson, J. (2009). Qualifications of future teachers. Ideas and ideals in the liberal discourse about teachers and teacher education in Sweden. Utbildning & Demokrati, 18(1), 59–67. https://doi.org/10.48059/uod.v18i1.898
- Biesta, G. (2011). Disciplines and theory in the academic study of education: A comparative analysis of the Anglo-American and continental construction of the field. Pedagogy, Culture and Society, 19(2), 175–192. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681366.2011.582255
- Biesta, G. (2014). The beautiful risk of education. Paradigm Publishers.
- Biesta, G., De Bie, M., & Wildemersch, D. (Eds.) (2013). Civic learning, democratic citizenship, and the public sphere. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7259-5
- Bishop, P. (Ed.) (2011). The archaic: The past in the present. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203803424
- Bloom, A. (1991). The republic of Plato. Basic Books.
- Butler, J. (2015). Notes towards a performative theory of assembly. Harvard University Press.
- Butler, J. (2020). The force of non-violence: The ethical in the political. Verso.
- Carr, W., & Hartnett, A. (1996). Education and the struggle for democracy: The politics of educational ideas. Open University Press.
- Cassin, B. (2014). Sophistical practice: Towards a consistent relativism. Fordham University Press.
- Cassin, B. (2020). Jacques the sophist: Lacan, logos, and psychoanalysis. Fordham University Press.
- Cervinkova, H., & Rasinski, L. (2023). Public parents, reclaiming publicness of education in the new tyrannies. In C. A. Säfström & G. Biesta (Eds.), The new publicness of education: Democratic possibilities after the critique of neo-liberalism (pp. 132–147). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003289067
- Cosigny, S. (2001). Gorgias: Sophist and artist. University of South Carolina Press.
- Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education: An introduction to the philosophy of education. MacMillan.
- Dōgen, E. (2006). Master Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō (G. Nishijima & C. Cross., Trans.). Book Surge Press.
- Durkheim, E. (1956). Education and sociology. Free Press.
- Englund, T. (2008). Didaktisk renässans? [Pedagogical renaissance?] Pedagogisk forskning i Sverige, 13 (4), 291–295. https://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:oru:diva-6322
- Englund, T. (2009). The general school system is a universal or a particular institution, and its role in the formation of social capital. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 53 (1), 17–33. https://doi.org/10.1080/00313830802628307
- Evaldsson, A.-C., & Nilholm, C. (2009). Evidensbaserat skolarbete och demokrati: Mobbning som exempel [Evidence-based school work and democracy: Bullying as an example]. Pedagogisk Forskning i Sverige, 14(1), 65–82. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hj:diva-10905
- Fejes, A., & Dahlstedt, M. (2018). Skolan, marknaden och framtiden [The school, the market and the future]. Studentlitteratur.
- Giroux, H. (2018). American nightmare: Facing the challenge of fascism. City Lights Books.
- Habermas, J. (2023). Offentlighetens nya strukturomvandling och iden om deliberativ demokrati [The new structural transformation of the public sphere and the idea of deliberative democracy]. Daidalos.
- Higgins, C., & Knight Abowitz, K. (2011). What makes a public school public? A framework for evaluating the civic substance of schooling. Educational Theory, 61(4), 365–380. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-5446.2011.00409.x
- Hodgson, N., Vlieghe, J., & Zamojski, P., (2018). Manifesto for a post-critical pedagogy. Punctum Books. https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.2353835
- Hogan, A. & Thompson, G. (2021). Privatisation and commercialisation in public education. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429330025
- Jaeger, W. (1965). Paideia: The ideas of Greek culture: Vol. 1. Archaic Greece: The minds of Athens. Oxford University Press. (Original work published 1939)
- Jaeger, W. (1986). Paideia: The ideas of Greek culture: Vol. 2. In search of the divine centre. Oxford University Press. (Original work published 1943)
- Jaeger, W. (1986). Paideia: The ideas of Greek culture: Vol. 3. The conflict of cultural ideals in the age of Plato. Oxford University Press. (Original work published 1944)
- Levinas, E. (1980). Totality and infinity: An essay on exteriority. Kluwer Academic Publisher.
- Levinas, E. (1991). Otherwise than being or beyond essence. Kluwer Academic Publisher.
- Lundahl, E., Erixon Arreman, I., Holm, A.-F., & Lundström, U. (2013). Educational Marketisation the Swedish Way. Educational Inquiry, 4(3), 407–517. https://doi.org/10.3402/edui.v4i3.22620
- Lynch, K. (2006). Neo-liberalism and marketisation: The implications for higher education. European Educational Research Journal, 5(1), 1–17. https://doi.org/10.2304/eerj.2006.5.1.1
- Lyotard, J.-F. (1979). The postmodern condition: A report on knowledge (Theory and History of Literature, Vol. 10). Manchester University Press.
- Masschelein, J., & Simons, M. (2013). In defence of the school. A public issue. E-Education, Culture & Society Publishers.
- Masschelein, J., & Simons, M. (2015). Education in times of fast learning: the future of the school. Ethics and Education, 10(1), 84–95. https://doi.org/10.1080/17449642.2014.998027
- Petersen, K. B., et al. (Eds.). (2021). Rethinking education in light of global challenges: Scandinavian perspectives on culture, society, and the Anthropocene. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003217213
- Popkewitz, S. T. (2008). Cosmopolitanism in the age of school reform: Science, education and making society by making the child. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203938812
- Rancière, J. (1991). The ignorant schoolmaster: Five lessons in intellectual emancipation (K. Ross, Trans.). Stanford University Press.
- Rancière, J. (1999). Disagreement: Politics and philosophy. University of Minnesota Press.
- Rancière, J. (2006). Hatred of democracy. Verso.
- Rancière, J. (2007). On the shore of politics. Verso.
- Rawls, J. (1996). Political liberalism: With a new introduction and reply to Habermas. Columbia University Press.
- Rorty, R. (1980). Philosophy and the mirror of nature. Blackwell.
- Simmel, G. (1950). The sociology of George Simmel (K. H. Wolff, Ed. & Trans.). Free Press.
- Stockholm School of Economics (2023, May 11). Op ed: Grade inflation might force us to introduce entry exams. https://www.hhs.se/en/about-us/news/sse/2023/dn-debatt-lars-strannegard---gladjebetygen-kan-tvinga-oss-att-infora-antagningsprov/
- Säfström, C. A. (2019). Paideia and the search for freedom in the educational formation of the public today. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 53(4), 607–618. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9752.12385
- Säfström, C. A. (2020). Teaching militant humility against the aggressions of a neoliberal world. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 43(5), 686–701. https://doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2021.1978697
- Säfström, C. A. (2021). The ethical-political potentiality of the educational present: Aristocratic principle versus democratic principle of education. Teoria de la Education. Revista Interuniversitaria, 33(10), 11–33.
- Säfström, C. A. (2023). Education for everyday life: A sophistical practice of teaching. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-4109-4
- Säfström, C. A. (2026). Sustainable education in the flow of life. In S. Windsor, O. Franck, & S. Sanders (Eds.). Paradise lost? Love and care: Narratives for and in sustainability education (pp. 11–24). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-11690-1_2
- Säfström, C. A., & Biesta, G. (2001). Learning democracy in a world of difference. The School Field, 12(5/6), 5–20. https://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:sh:diva-28507
- Säfström, C. A., & Biesta, G. (Eds.) (2023). The new publicness of education: Democratic possibilities after the critique of neo-liberalism. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003289067
- Säfström, C. A., & Månsson, N. (2004). The limits of socialisation. Interchange, 35(3), 353–364. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02698883
- Säfström, C. A., & Månsson, N. (2022). The marketisation of education and the democratic deficit. European Educational Research Journal, 21(1), 124–137. https://doi.org/10.1177/14749041211011293
- Säljö, R. (2023). Learning in educational settings: What classics can teach us about the value of attending to participant perspectives in social practices. Confero, 9(2), 18–41. https://doi.org/10.3384/confero.2001-4562.231217
- UNESCO. (2025, October 17). Education transforms life. https://www.unesco.org/en/education
- Wahlström, N. (2016). Läroplansteori och didaktik [Curriculum theory and didactics]. Gleerup.
- Whitty, G., & Power, S. (2000). Marketisation and privatisation in mass education systems. International Journal of Educational Development, 20(2), 93–107. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0738-0593(99)00061-9