ERIC Number: EJ1346329
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2022-Sep
Pages: 12
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0039-3746
EISSN: EISSN-1573-191X
Available Date: N/A
"American Higher Education, the De-Worlding of World, and the Lessons of Situated Finitude"
Koukal, D. R.
Studies in Philosophy and Education, v41 n5 p567-578 Sep 2022
This essay offers a critique of the culture of specio-vocationalism in American higher education by first drawing on Edmund Husserl's conception of "world" and connecting this notion to education conceived as a "world-disclosing" activity. The essay will then give an account of how the trends of vocationalization and specialization manifest themselves in contemporary university culture, and how they work together to "de-world" the lives of our students and deprive them of possibilities that are part of what it means to be human. After showing how this impoverishment undermines the world-disclosing function of higher education, the essay will then suggest one way to counter this "de-worlding of world": the teaching of the situated finitude of the human condition by reminding our students that our knowledge or sense of the world is always only partial. It is this realization that has the potential of placing our students once again before the vastness of the world in wonder and curiosity. In this realization they will gain a better sense of the world as a distant horizon still to be explored in all of its inexhaustible complexity and meaning. At the same time, coming to grips with their own ignorance will imbue them with an intellectual humility that will shield them not only from their own finitude, but the finitude of others as well. [This paper was presented virtually to the Society for Existential and Phenomenological Theory and Culture on April 30, 2021.]
Descriptors: Higher Education, Global Approach, Educational Trends, School Culture, Humanism, Vocational Education, Specialization
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive; Speeches/Meeting Papers
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A