Time for Values: Responding Educationally to the Call from the Past

Abstract

This paper rethinks the fostering task of the teacher in a time when it, paradoxically, has tended to become marginalized and privatized despite its public urgency. Following postholocaust thinkers such as Hannah Arendt and Zygmunt Bauman, the position explored here is radical in the sense that it takes 'the crisis of traditions' and the erosion of a common moral ground or value basis seriously, and it is conservative in the sense that it insists on responding educationally to the call from the past by returning to (a) the moral character of our existence and (b) our own embeddedness in the incompleteness of living traditions. The argument is that there is a difference between educating for common values-which entails a belief in preexisting commonalities-and making values common in and through education. The latter, we argue, entails an aspiration for continuously creating new commonalities and for cultivating the ability to act and judge as a thinking moral agent in specific, lived and worldly cases. In this sense, the fostering task of the teacher is to create commonality of what is not (yet) common, turning the liberal democratic values of the past into contested objects of study.

How and Why Education Counters Ideological Extremism in Finland

“…It is important to note that despite their efforts for equity and neutrality, education can never be neutral (e.g., Bergdahl and Langmann 2018). For example, the core values of the Finnish education system are founded on the idea of inclusion and equity that recognizes individual differences among the students and aims to respond to these by providing the students with various types of teaching and learning experiences.…”

“…The core values thus aim to support all individuals' access to the various of forms of capital within the society (Bourdieu 1986) and enhancing their membership within it. However, it is also important to note that the educational system does not have a relativist approach in which it would regard all systems of values as equally acceptable (see also Bergdahl and Langmann 2018). Following from this the teaching and learning content and activities taking place in basic education cannot be tolerant or endorsing towards any types of religious or secular ideologies or values that contradict with the core values of the curriculum (Finnish National Agency for Education 2017).…”

“…Following from this the teaching and learning content and activities taking place in basic education cannot be tolerant or endorsing towards any types of religious or secular ideologies or values that contradict with the core values of the curriculum (Finnish National Agency for Education 2017). Nevertheless this ethos of the Finnish education cannot be imposed by external rules but, in order to make value education meaningful, schools should be places that encourage critical thinking and voicing of various types of opinions and concerns that can then be subjected to critical examination (Finnish National Agency for Education 2014; see also Bergdahl and Langmann 2018).…”

Religion as a Human Right and a Security Threat—Investigating Young Adults’ Experiences of Religion in Finland

“…Here the role of education becomes central. As Bergdahl and Langmann (2018) bring forward, education about and of values needs to start from the past as the future does not yet exist. However, we claim that, in addition to the past or expected future, educational aims need to be formulated based on the present.…”

“…One answer is that education should focus on providing pupils with critical thinking skills and the kinds of knowledge needed to understand the complexities of the world today, including discussions related to different religions and worldviews (e.g., Jackson 2016). Thus, the underlying thought in many educational curricula is that by providing pupils with this knowledge and experience, young people will develop the necessary abilities to interact in the global world and avoid repeating the injustices carried out towards different population groups in the past (Bergdahl and Langmann 2018;Jackson 2016). However, as Bergdahl and Langmann (2018) point out, the teaching of values can no longer start from a conservative viewpoint that expects shared values and aims to transmit these predefined values to future generations.…”