Troubling troubled school time: posthuman multiple temporalities

Abstract

Inspired by the philosophies of Donna Haraway and Karen Barad, the aim of this paper is to stir up trouble and to trouble school time. What we intend to disturb puts our own self as human at stake through a philosophical investigation in how a particular relationship to and experience of time is nowadays prominently fostered and cultivated in educational institutions. We propose that 'time' and 'childhood' are intrinsically entangled concepts and logically connected, in the lived experience of educational contemporary institutions, with colonialism and capitalism. Decolonisation requires a troubling of the experience of time as it involves the subordination and denigration of children and childhood ('mysopedy'). We do this through a genealogy (a political reading of 'the' present) of the concepts time, childhood and school.

A Right to be Included: The Best and Worst of Times for Learners with Disabilities

“…As Davis (2010: 8) notes, 'the person enters into an identical relationship with the body, the body forms the identity, and the identity is unchangeable and indelible as one's place on the normal curve'. As such, the propensity of educational institutions to perpetuate a relationship to time that is linear (Adam 2003) and aligned with neoliberal intent (Murris & Kohan 2020) gives rise to an unmet universal right to inclusion in education (Whitburn & Thomas 2021). It is this we emphasize as the paradox of the inclusive present.…”

“…Education in countries that are dominated by neoliberal ideals, nevertheless, is frequently predicated on a linear, normative notion of time-progression (Adam 1995;Adam 2018;Lingard & Thompson 2017;Murris & Kohan 2020;Thompson 1967), which can place barriers before students whose achievements fail to fit pre-set temporal frameworks (Adam 2003;Thomas & Whitburn 2019;Whitburn & Thomas 2021). As Adam (2003: 64) writes, 'we know that not all children learn at the same pace.…”

“…Yet, age-based classes, educational attainment targets and assessment apply the invariable norm as [a] measure'. For Murris and Kohan (2020), who provide an instructive account of the temporal colonisation of education, the ways that schools mediate time characterises how they relate to childhood, and as well how adults and children interact with one another. Developing along normative temporal trajectories, children are propelled through school in the service of fulfilling a market need in the future.…”

Who Needs Sensory Education?

“…The significance of challenging the sovereignty of linear, chronological time prevalent in educational theory and praxis is a shared preoccupation for the intertwined fields of philosophy of childhood and philosophy of education (e.g. Kohan 2014;Tesar 2016;Murris and Kohan 2020). This has lead especially philosophers of childhood to at times adopt non-chronological forms of argumentation and re-script how processes of pedagogical philosophising themselves might unfold (e.g.…”

right under our noses: the postponement of children's political equality and the NOW

“…By comparing children's abilities to the adult norm, child -'not-yet' adult, 'wild' and of nature (Kennedy, 2020) -needs taming and domesticating by culture, through adult practices of facilitation, remediation, diagnosing and so forth, in order to become fully human (Murris, 2016), rather than being already regarded as "already able" (Haynes, 2014). Becoming an adult involves bringing children into the experience of chronological time through its educational institutions and practices (Murris & Kohan, 2020). For other philosophers of childhood, the psycho-social colonisation of childhood demonises, sentimentalises and scientifically objectifies child, is 'ableist' and 'childist' (Rollo, 2020), but also opens up conceptually rich possibilities; of reconfiguring child as philosophical (Kennedy & Bahler, 2017, p.x); of the notion of "child as natural philosopher" (Matthews, 1994) and the provocative idea of the philosophical facilitator as "difficultator" (Haynes & Kohan, 2018) This tension is explored by Walter Kohan and David Kennedy (2017) Kennedy argue that education should not form childhood, but nurture and restore the experience of childhood itself -a particularly intensive childlike experience of being-intime (Kohan & Kennedy, 2017).…”