Accounting for Oneself in Teaching: Trust, Parrhesia, and Bad Faith

Abstract

This paper seeks to reconceptualise the basis for trusting teachers in current educational discourses. It proposes moving away from trust based on ‘absolute accuracy’ to trust as encapsulated in the practice of parrhesia. On the surface, parrhesia appears to be the opposite of Sartre’s concept of ‘bad faith’. Paradoxically, however, our attempts to be sincere in our accounts are inevitably tainted by this. This paradox is especially evident in autobiographical writing, an activity that is both parrhesiastic in nature and susceptible to bad faith. This does not mean that we should abandon trust in these ways of accounting for oneself, however. Rather, parrhesiastic practices in autobiographical writing can offer a different understanding of how we account for ourselves and our practices, one that does not pertain to a narrow definition of truth as accuracy, but instead leads to a form of self-criticism where one situates oneself in relation to the ‘truth’ of their accounts in new ways. Towards the end of the paper, I explore three ‘parrhesiastic techniques’ and their relationship to accounting for oneself as a teacher, to reimagine these techniques from technicist to existential ways of relating to our practices.

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“…Allison Brady discusses trust in teachers in a high modern society that is often dominated by demands for accountability. She argues that trust should not merely be based on measurement and “necessary simplifications of practices”, but on parrhesia; “Contrary to the idea that trust can only be attained should we be able to provide clear and distinct evidence that ‘proves’ that what we say is accurate, this is a trust that is instead concerned with sincerity” [ 2 ]. But discretion in complex “wicked problems” can also be coped with in a more rigorous manner.…”

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“…Yet Foucault also developed alternative approaches. For example, Socrates' dialogues and the concept of parrhêsia ('free-spokenness') that Foucault analysed (Leask 2012) offer some promise and may serve to reconceptualise educational practices (Brady 2022).…”