The question concerning the relation between thinking and the university is the starting point of this paper. After a very brief outline of some reflections on this topic, the case of Campus in Camps, a Palestinian experimental university, is presented to shed light on this issue. Inspired by Isabelle Stengers' ecology of practices, it is possible…

Against the background of the many attacks on the school as being outdated, alienating, ineffective and reproducing inequalities we offer a morphological understanding of the school as distinguished from functionalist understandings (sociological or economical perspectives in terms of functions and roles) and idealistic understandings…

As a response to "Le Fils," a film directed by the Dardenne brothers, we explore the idea of speaking as an invitation and juxtapose it against ideas of speaking as a transactional, calculative, calibrated, activity. Speaking tends to be understood as a relatively straightforward matter: as a means of communication structured by such values as the…

This article takes up a text that Ranciere published shortly after "The Ignorant School Master" appeared in French, "Ecole, production, egalite" ["School, Production, Equality"] (1988), in which he sketched the school as being preeminently the place of equality. In this vein, and opposed to the story of the school as the place where inequality is…

Background/Context: The article reflects on the public role of education on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the publication of Hannah Arendt's essay, "The Crisis in Education" and in facing the current transformation of public policy into "new public management." Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: Based on Arendt's essay,…

Schools and classrooms, as well as the work place and the Internet, are considered today as learning "environments". People are regarded as learners and the main target of school education has become "learning" pupils and students how to learn. The roles of teachers and lecturers are redefined as instructors, designers of (powerful) learning…

In this essay, Maarten Simons and Jan Masschelein reconsider the concepts "educationalization" and "the grammar of schooling" in the light of the overwhelming importance of "learning" today. Doubting whether these concepts and related historical-analytical perspectives are still useful, the authors suggest the concept "learning apparatus" as a…

Questions whether and how instruction and schooling play a role in the problematization of the sciences and in the limitation and assessment of the implications of a universalized scientific rationality. Sketches the contours of an organization of schooling not characterized by a technical pattern. (CMK)