In this essay, Marianna Papastephanou discusses three books--Michalinos Zembylas's "The Politics of Trauma in Education"; Sigal Ben-Porath's "Citizenship Under Fire: Democratic Education in Times of Conflict"; and Kenneth Saltman's "Capitalizing on Disaster: Taking and Breaking Public Schools"--from the perspective of the material causality of…

The conception of time that dominates in the educational world of today is that of measurable, invested and managed chronological time. It is the conception of time that corresponds to current priorities such as performativity, global synchronization of educational systems, raising standards and meeting the challenges of the market. The…

In this article, I explore the way in which proximity and distance have been made relevant to cosmopolitanism and I discuss the significance contemporary theory attributes to border crossing. By employing colonial border crossing and its rationalization as an example, and by drawing from Alain Badiou's critique of political philosophy, I expose…

Suggests an account of rationality that opposes modern hegemonic discourse without succumbing to relativism, tracing hostility toward rationality to the advent of modernity, discussing the relevance of reason to new educational ideals, formulating a philosophical account of reason (relying on Habermas' mediating approach to past foundational…

The aim of this article is to investigate possibilities for conceptions of critical thinking beyond the established educational framework that emphasizes skills. Distancing ourselves from the older rationalist framework, we explain that what we think wrong with the skills perspective is, amongst other things, its absolutization of performativity…

In this paper, I discuss globalisation as an empirical reality that is in a complex relation to its corresponding discourse and in a critical distance from the cosmopolitan ideal. I argue that failure to grasp the distinctions between globalisation, globalism, and cosmopolitanism derives from mistaken identifications of the Is with the Ought and…

Pedagogical ideals differ and inform education differently. They do so in many ways since they draw from a wide spectrum of cultural and interpretive material. The construction of ideals or the promotion of existing ones can affect, modify, or alter one's conceptions of what counts as all-round learning, self-realised, active learner, and…