A Transitional Conception of Modernity for Education. Issue 1 (15th March 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Zrudlo, Ilya
• Is Part Of: Educational theory. Volume 72:Issue 1(2022)
• Page Start: 5
• Page End: 25
• Publication Date: 2022-03-15
• Subjects: modernity -- agency -- transition -- adolescence -- Charles Taylor -- Harry Brighouse -- Lewis Mumford; Education -- Periodicals; Onderwijs; Theorievorming; Éducation -- Périodiques; 370.105
• DOI: 10.1111/edth.12509
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0013-2004

Abstract

Abstract: In this article, Ilya Zrudlo unpacks the educationally limiting effects of conflicting visions of the good embedded in Western modernity and offers a developmental vision of modernity for education that is more coherent and productive of student agency. Drawing on Charles Taylor's work, Zrudlo disarticulates four aspects of Western modernity — economic modernization, the struggle for justice, individualism, and naturalism — and highlights the internal contradictions to which they give rise that limit student agency. Harry Brighouse's On Education is then examined in order to illustrate how one influential account attempts to bring together the different educational goods of Western modernity. Despite its strengths, Brighouse's account struggles to comprehensively integrate the different goods of Western modernity and also implies a claim to historical finality, both of which hamper student agency. To overcome these obstacles, Zrudlo suggests that we distinguish between Western modernity and modernity tout court, and that the latter can be conceived of as a period of transition, akin by analogy to a period of adolescence moving toward maturity. The purpose of education from this developmental perspective would be to foster in students the kind of agency required to transition toward maturity as individuals, as well as to contribute to a movement toward maturity at the collective level, in their own communities. Drawing on the work of Lewis Mumford, Zrudlo suggests that individuals on their way to maturity strive to comprehensively and coherently develop their capacities to contribute the greater share of their powers to the development of diverse and unified communities that are organically integrated into a new, global civilization.