Heidegger and the Technology of Further Education

Abstract

The new further education, characterised by managerialism, accounting systems and the packaging of learning, has brought about far-reaching changes for staff and students, changes that can broadly be understood in terms of technology. This paper seeks to gain a new perspective on this through a consideration of Heidegger's exploration of techne and of the pathologies of technology. The various responses that Heidegger advocates in the face of technology are then related to possibilities of good practice in technical and further education. The discussion involves questions concerning work and language, especially as these arise in conditions of postmodernity.

Marketing and education — A clash or a synergy in time?

“…Young (2002) offers the example of the bureaucratic, machine-like modern university where teachers and students are 'suppliers' and 'consumers' with all that this system entails: a place where to be is to be an item of resource, an entity able to be used and marketed. Fitzsimmons (2002) and Standish (1997) articulate similar views of the impact of Enframing on education. Clegg (2003) offers the fullest expression of the changes in temporality in academic settings.…”

Teaching and Doing Philosophy of Education: The Question of Style

“…The managerial culture and language, and the way it has infiltrated higher education, has been justly criticized for its tendency to focus on controllable outcomes which leave little room for spontaneity and the excitement of the educational encounter (see Standish 1997). Many philosophers would argue that this culture is particularly ill-suited to the study of philosophy, which is not primarily about acquiring knowledge, skills, or even understanding, but has to do with experiencing a certain way of doing and thinking.…”

Technical skills and the ethics of market research

“…In this phase of techne, desire is exploited to its outer limits towards finite social and human ends, because production is now geared toward the achievement of maximal availability, feeding upon the creation of new desires, through an ongoing creation of needs for the satisfaction of endless desire (Heidegger 1977, Standish 1997, Lambeir 2002. Here, marketing research is used to construct a reality by revealing opportunities for exploitation of potential needs directed to the satisfaction of the means of production and not necessarily the wellbeing of consumers.…”