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Myth in the Practice of Reason: The Production of Education and Productive Confusion
Citation
Davison, AG, Myth in the Practice of Reason: The Production of Education and Productive Confusion, Pedagogies of the Imagination: Mythopoetic Curriculum in Educational Practice, Springer, T Leonard, P Willis (ed), Dordrecht, pp. 53-63. ISBN 978-1-4020-8281-8 (2008) [Research Book Chapter]
Copyright Statement
copyright 2008 Springer Science + Business Media B.V.
DOI: doi:10.1007/978-1-4020-8350-1_4
Abstract
The pedagogies of pure reason have great power to order, direct, and
accelerate linear modes of learning. Education has been transformed by this
power into a science of reliable formulae, engineered curricula and
measurable indicators: a science for maximizing the production and
consumption of knowledge. In the process, scientific pedagogies have sought
to strip myth from the world, revealing a universe in which ever less is
left to the imagination. Yet, I argue, this project is itself profoundly
mythic. Through an interest in nonlinear, unpredictable, and wild
possibilities in learning, and drawing upon my experience as a teacher in
the productivist university, I advocate not that myth be added back onto the
modern curriculum, but that teachers be seen as already and always bearers
of myth. When teachers step out from behind the façade of consistency,
certainty, and coherence that has taken on almost sacred importance in
modern pedagogies, even for a moment, they may initiate productive forms of
confusion that can bring into empathetic inquiry the myth at the core of
modern reason. This is a form of transformative inquiry capable of
reconstituting teaching as a craft for facilitating human encounters with a
knowing reality, an eloquent reality, a good reality.
Item Details
Item Type: | Research Book Chapter |
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Keywords: | myth, pedagogy, phronesis, confusion, rationality |
Research Division: | Education |
Research Group: | Other education |
Research Field: | Other education not elsewhere classified |
Objective Division: | Expanding Knowledge |
Objective Group: | Expanding knowledge |
Objective Field: | Expanding knowledge in human society |
UTAS Author: | Davison, AG (Associate Professor Aidan Davison) |
ID Code: | 54162 |
Year Published: | 2008 |
Deposited By: | Geography and Environmental Studies |
Deposited On: | 2009-02-11 |
Last Modified: | 2014-12-16 |
Downloads: | 1 View Download Statistics |
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