Toward a Wonderland of comparative education Iveta Silova

Professor Kazamias has argued that comparative education has lost its “soul,” by abandoning its historical and humanist episteme in the first half of the 20th century and turning to an ahistorical and nonhumanist social science today. This essay takes the readers on a journey across time and space in search of comparative education’s “soul,” briefly encountering a goddess in Greek mythology, a witch in medieval Europe, Alice in Wonderland, and Donna Haraway in the Chthulucene.

Childhood and Philosophy, 2017

This article takes issue with Gert Biesta’s lecture and the interpretation that one of his main arguments leads to the conclusion that the world is essentialist in nature. Thus, for any specific kind of entity, there is a set of characteristics, all of which any entity of that kind must have. In this text I will argue that existence “in the world” necessarily demands the belief that many other worlds consisting of diverse identities and communities have long been present and should be acknowledged. It also counters the view that children must be taught to adjust to life in the world—i.e., submit and compromise—by fostering philosophical communities of inquiry that place children’s doubts and uncertainties at the center of their focus, thereby promoting the possibility of Tikkun Olam (social justice or the establishment of godly qualities throughout the world) in its broadest sense. All these “compromises” required from the child are cultivated by the “pedagogy of fear.” I submit that, when allowed to do so from a young age, children can engage in three activities: 1) the exercising of their own thinking processes; 2) the development of the will to fight for improvement of things; and 3) the identification of possibilities for change and Tikkun Olam. Children can take part from an early age in philosophical communities of inquiry in which they can think and consider ideas—including those capable of creating their own unique “worlds.” These three activities necessarily forming part of the basis of young children’s understanding of what needs “repairing” in the world. The community of inquiry can cultivate their ability to identify injustice and social wrongs and be ready to actively seek to change society. At the heart of this change lies the potential of philosophy to serve as the driving force behind action and influence rather than as a power dedicated to preserving the status quo.

ECNU Review of Education , 2020

This article aims to reimagine education-and our selves-within the context of multiple, more-than-human worlds where everything and everyone are interrelated. Design/Approach/Methods: The aim is achieved by pursuing two speculative thought experiments to connect and bring into conversation seemingly unrelated knowledge systems across space and time-European "paganism" and 13th-century Japanese Buddhism, as well as excerpts from indigenous, ecofeminist, and decolonial scholarship. These thought experiments are conducted through a series of "and if" questions around education and schooling. Findings: The article proposes to radically reimagine education in two ways. First, it invites readers to reconfigure education as a "connective tissue" between different worlds, bringing together rather than hierarchizing them. Second, it proposes to reframe education as an opportunity to learn how to anticipate and animate our ongoing entanglement with more-thanhuman worlds. Originality/Value: Using the concept of "metamorphosis" as an antidote to Western metaphysics, the article re-situates education within a wider set of possibilities in relation to the takenfor-granted ways of knowing and being, as well as the notions of space and time.

Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 1999

The paper reviews the tension within the history of comparative education between qualitative, culturally-focused studies and more positivist approaches. It explores the dangers, as well as the possibilities, inherent in the rapidly-growing interest in comparative studies. It argues that the advent of postmodernism presents a new challenge for comparativists that requires culture to be accorded a central place in efforts to understand educational organisations and practices. Finally, the paper outlines the desirable characteristics of a 'neo-comparative' education, of a comparative 'learnology' which integrates a range of different social science perspectives, and is both rigorous and radical. Comparative education appears to share with many other fields at the present time, a desire to review its role. The infectious Zeitgeist of the millennium has prompted a period of reflection and review in many areas of life; a sense of standing on the verge of a new era that as yet can still only be dimly perceived but one which presents an urgent challenge to clarify how we will respond. The impact of this more general watershed is greatly strengthened by the knowledge that we are entering a very much more specific new era as well with the launch of the British Association of International and Comparative Education (BAICE). The birth of a new comparative and international education society on the verge of the millennium makes this an ideal opportunity to reflect on our joint endeavour and to generate a new vision for the years to come. This is my intended goal. I want my address to complement Keith Watson's masterly Presidential Address to the final British Comparative and International Education Society (BCIES) conference last year, which was recently published in Compare. It was entitled 'Memories, Models and Mapping', a title that gives a clue to both its content as a comprehensive review of past and present trends in comparative education, and to its valedictory tone. At that time it was appropriate, among other things, to reflect on the achievements of the 30 years of first, the Comparative Education Society in Europe (CESE) (British Section), later to become BCIES. Watson's theme was the prevailing historical amnesia which he argued to be one of the most characteristic features of late twentieth century society and his talk urges us to rediscover: ... the roots, origins and purposes of the discipline of comparative education

Buccellati, G. 2018. “A Children’s Hermeneutics.” Backdirt Annual Review of the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA, 32–37. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.8288927.

This paper offers an approach to child study that moves beyond the traditional modern domains of medicine, education and the social sciences, to explore the representation and symbolization of the child in philosophy, social and cultural history, myth and spirituality, art, literature, and psychoanalysis. It considers childhood as a cultural and historical construction, and traces the ways in which characterizations of children function symbolically as carriers of deep assumptions about human nature and its potential variability and changeability, about the construction of human subjectivity, about the ultimate meaning of the human life cycle, and about human forms of knowledge. The child as limit condition—as representing for adults the boundaries of the human—that is “nature,” animality, madness, the “primitive,” the divine—is re-evoked continually in modern and postmodern symbolizations, and then tension between reason and nature or instinct, or Enlightenment and Romance, is never far from their surface. Finally, the extent to which the construction of “child” also implies a construction of “adult” is explored in the context of the history of culture and of child rearing, particularly in the rise of the modern middle-class European adult personality, which defined itself on the basis of its distance from childhood—both the child before it and the child within. An ideal of adult maturity which includes rather than excludes childhood is capable of transforming our notions of optimal child rearing and education.

In his masterful essay, ‘The Ethics of Elfland’, G. K. Chesterton treats us to an extended meditation on a body of literature that was to be one of the most significant factors in his Christian conversion: the fairy tale. Because fairy tales awaken within us a remembrance of the wonder and awe that once filled our hearts when we first encountered the world around us, Chesterton concluded that fairy tales were revelatory of the fact that it is part of our nature as humans to be astonished and astounded. ...

Caritas et Veritas, 2022

The three transcendentals of truth, goodness, and beauty, originally being understood as signs of God in our world, have for centuries been an important element in education, providing structure for education. However, through rationalist thinking they became subjectivised, which has led to negative developments in education such as increasing individualisation and disinterest in Christianity, particularly in postmodern society. Based partly on the author's experiences of awe and wonder in teaching children, this paper proposes several changes in educational approach and how we understand the transcendentals partly through the work of Hans Urs von Balthasar, including recognising the transcendentals as objective and reinstating unity as a fourth to refocus them as signs of God and a means to know him more. Also, by reversing their order so that beauty leads to goodness and then to truth, which is a more natural way of learning, this enables the least objectionable transcendental - beauty - to call the learner in whichever setting to learn more effectively, including about Christian themes and content. Such approaches can contribute to answering several Vatican II calls for change in education in both schooling and preparing the faithful to engage as Christians in the world.

IN THIS BOOK, sixteen authors encourage the modern academy to remember that portals to enchantment can be found in its hallowed halls, and indeed must be found, if education is to nourish and inspire both heart and mind, if it is to lead future generations of students out of the cave of policy-led bureaucratisation and financially-led consumerism into the creative freedom of their own souls. Our authors offer resistance to the domination of education ‘by belief in the facts revealed solely by mandated standards and standardized testing’ through an appeal to the imagination as primary and foundational, the source of connection to self, others, and world. Enchantment catches us when we least expect it, not only through our thoughts, but through feelings, sensations, intuitions and instincts—and as Peter Abbs reminded us nearly forty years ago, if we want to promote ‘wholeness of being’ as an educational ideal then our schools and academies must embrace the full spectrum of human ways of knowing, in order to bring new, integrated perspectives to our conflicted world. TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction About the Contributors PART ONE Re-enchanting the Institution 1. Patrick Curry The Enchantment of Learning and the Fate of our Times 2. Simon Wilson Clutching the Wheel of St. Catherine; or a Visit to an Enchanted College 3. Linden West Re-Enchanting the Academy: Popular Education and the Search for Soul in the Modern Academy 4. Eduard Heyning Not to Explain the World but to Sing it: Panpsychism and the Academy PART TWO Re-enchanting the Curriculum 5. Angela Voss Delectare, Docere, Movere: Soul-learning, Reflexivity and the Third Classroom 6. Robert Bowie Stepping into Sacred Texts: How the Jesuits Taught me to Read the Bible 7. Lisa McLoughlin Enchanted Engineering: Reintegrating the Roots 8. Julia Moore On the Margins of the Academy: Séances, Sitter Groups and Academics PART THREE Re-enchanting the Mind 9. Anita Klujber The Salutogenic Imagination 10. Judith Way Enrichment and Enchantment: The Poetic Heritage of the Western Esoteric Tradition 11. Becca Tarnas The Fantastic Imagination 12. Paul Stevens Engaging the Non-linguistic Mind PART FOUR Re-enchanting Nature & Body 13. Chara & Joan Armon Toward Re-Enchantment: Cultivating Nature Connection and Reverence through Experiential Learning 14. Laura Formenti & Silvia Luraschi How do you Breathe? Duoethnography as a Means to Re-embody Research in the Academy 15. Laura Shannon Women with Wings: Right-brain Consciousness and the Learning Process 16. Sonia Overall The Walking Dead; or Why Psychogeography Matters ABOUT THE EDITORS Angela Voss, PhD, is a senior lecturer in the School of Childhood and Education Sciences, Canterbury Christ Church University, and programme director for the MA in Myth, Cosmology and the Sacred. Her teaching and research centre on the role of the symbolic imagination in Western philosophical, spiritual and cultural traditions, and she has written extensively on the astrological music therapy of the Renaissance philosopher Marsilio Ficino (Marsilio Ficino, 2006). She is a ‘walker between the worlds’ of esoteric practice and transformative learning. Simon Wilson, PhD, is a senior lecturer in the School of Childhood and Education Sciences at Canterbury Christ Church University, where he teaches on the Myth, Cosmology and the Sacred MA and supervises PhD students. He is also a member of the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies in Cambridge. Simon has published widely on subjects such as the Grail, René Guénon, and the writings of Charles Fort. His current research interests include icons, the mystical theology of the Eastern Church, and fortean phenomena.