A new rootedness? Education in the technological age

Glendinning, Simon ORCID: 0000-0002-2312-1839 (2018) A new rootedness? Education in the technological age. Studies in Philosophy in Education, 37 (1). pp. 81-96. ISSN 0039-3746

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Abstract

There is little doubt that European societies have undergone a profound transformation in the last two-hundred years. From the self-sufficient farm economies of pre-industrial times, through a period of intense industrialisation and urbanisation, and now the globalisation of tele-technology and capitalism. In the course of these social developments educational regimes underwent their own changes: from the rote schools, through the progressive movement, and into our own technocratic, managerial and performance focussed approaches in mass education. How should we think through the questions concerning the goal of education in our time? This essay considers contributions to this issue from Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Dewey and Nietzsche, highlighting two interrelated themes. The first, concerns the goal of education; the second concerns the characterisation of our time. The essay answers the first question in terms of human flourishing in a place; and the second in terms of the ubiquity of modern technology. Today, young children are not just “natives” of a town or country or region, rooted in the milieu of a national culture; they are increasingly becoming delocalised “digital natives”, and it is easy to think that they are becoming “rootless” as a result. The essay argues that we are not seeing a transition from rootedness to rootlessness, but a transition within a general space of nativisation. The implications of this transition for the education of young people today are introduced and briefly considered. I In a memorial address delivered in his home town of Meskirch in 1955, Martin Heidegger invited his audience to “dwell upon that which concerns us, each one of us, here, on this patch of home ground, and now, in the present hour of history” (MA, p. 47). Heidegger thinks that the “now” of our present hour of history is marked precisely by a distinctive loss of rootedness, the accelerating deracination of our lives from any “patch of home ground”, an uprooting from any definite “here”. In this essay I will try to introduce the problem this new social condition raises with respect to the education; the second concerns the characterisation of our time. The essay answers the first question in terms of human flourishing in a place; and the second in terms of the ubiquity of modern technology. Today, young children are not just “natives” of a town or country or region, rooted in the milieu of a national culture; they are increasingly becoming delocalised “digital natives”, and it is easy to think that they are becoming “rootless” as a result. The essay argues that we are not seeing a transition from rootedness to rootlessness, but a transition within a general space of nativisation. The implications of this transition for the education of young people today are introduced and briefly considered.

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	http://link.springer.com/
Additional Information:	© 2017 The Author. © CC BY 4.0
Divisions:	European Institute
Subjects:	L Education > L Education (General)
Date Deposited:	18 Apr 2016 11:50
Last Modified:	31 Oct 2024 21:00
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/66163

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