Abstract
In this chapter we introduce the concept of educational equality as a fundamental aspect of an ontological account of teaching. The argument begins with an analysis of the relation between equality, difference, identity and sameness. We claim that educational equality refers to sameness, but not in relation to any form of identity. The scholastic gesture of de-identification makes it possible to conceive of a plurality or multiplicity of people that can be gathered around a thing that renders them equal. With reference to Jacques Rancière, we argue that equality is not about enacting a status quo through political means, but that it is an axiom that is made true in the course of action. We argue that educational equality is practiced when a teacher puts a thing in the centre of everyone’s attention, and by doing this renders it into something common and invites everyone in the classroom to study it. We refer to the opposition Heidegger makes between object and thing in order to conceptualise the way in which the essential withdrawal of a thing renders us equal. Finally, we come back to Badiou’s rendering of Saint Paul’s concept of grace in order to develop the idea of a threefold gift of teaching.
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Notes
- 1.
It is telling, that in spite of making such a distinction, the mathematical understanding inevitably seems to return. For example, in the article on equality in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2011) it is claimed that: “‘Equality’ (or ‘equal’) signifies correspondence between a group of different objects, persons, processes or circumstances that have the same qualities in at least one respect, but not all respects”, and equality “needs to thus be distinguished from ‘identity’”. But at the same time, this is supposed to mean that “[t]wo non-identical objects are never completely equal” exactly because they differ. Hence, what is meant by ‘complete equality’ is sameness, i.e. being identical (See https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/equality/).
- 2.
This is, of course just the first step of thinking about equality within this dialectics. In fact, the quest for this kind of equality in turn establishes another form of identity (i.e. the identity of a citizen), meant to equalise people and to abstract from their other identities (from their differences). But then again this identity is used once more to establish inequality with all of those who are not recognized as citizens (as Arendt and Agamben have analyzed in relation to the figure of the refugee and the homo sacer respectively). This is a subsequent step of this dialectics, which we will not analyse here.
- 3.
A telling example is the story of ‘Mao suit’, which became a common outfit during the cultural revolution in China (1966–1976) when wearing colourful, decorative, not functional outfits (i.e. bourgeois outfits) was prohibited (Obukhova et al. 2014).
- 4.
This also involves a reconceptualization of difference. Totalitarian states define any kind of difference in terms of distance from unity (i.e. as inequality or deviation), whereas the next step in this dialectics requires to conceive difference in terms of heterogeneity.
- 5.
Of course, the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century have been an unintended consequence of modernity (and find their origin in the thought of Hegel and Marx especially) (Young 2004). So, post-truth antidemocratic populism is not a direct consequence of identity politics in its many forms, and those who defend identity politics certainly don’t explicitly call for it. However, although there is no direct link between identity politics and post-truth antidemocratic movements, it seems that the former have laid the ground for the latter. The transition from the celebration of differences to the dictatorship of the strongest metaphor becomes compelling when reading Powell’s (2017) recent article which has the very significant title “This is my (post) truth, tell me yours”.
- 6.
A metaphysical understanding of equality uses the terms proper to what Badiou (2005a) calls the State or the metastructure. Qualities that define social positions and identities, such as gender, race, class, sexual orientation, educational credentials, etc. are terms generated and/or used by the State to count, group, select, divide, locate, relocate, and control humans (as elements of the Situation). These terms function as parts of a whole, and so inevitably they relate to the phantasm of ‘One‘, i.e. a completely undivided society. Therefore, it could be argued that the possibility of a reconstruction of what Badiou calls the situation might lead to another step within this metaphysical equality-and-identity/difference complex.
- 7.
As this has been widely commented in educational theory (see e.g. Bingham and Biesta 2010; Simons and Masschelein eds. 2010a), there is no need here to give a detailed account of Rancière’s ideas. Rather, we focus on some insights from Rancière’s educational philosophy that, in our view, cast a new light on educational equality.
- 8.
With this expression, which we will use throughout the chapter, we want to refer to the limited power and responsibility of a teacher. Teaching always takes place in a (class)room, i.e. within a space where the suspension of chronos is possible. In that very sense, teaching is never a political activity, as it never refers to simply everyone, but always only to ‘everyone in the room’. We do not have the space to expand on this here, but we will come back to this issue in Chap. 10.
- 9.
This doesn’t mean, of course, that any meaning of a poem, or any other thing of study, is final. There is always a possibility to reveal new layers of meaning, including the possibility of a radical transformation of our understanding of a thing. It might also be the case that the thing of study doesn’t make sense to us anymore, and that we start to find it meaningless. As we will claim in the next section, a thing constantly withdraws into concealment, and hence it always maintains its potentiality, it can always be profaned – in the Agambenian sense of the word. Nevertheless, when teaching we have to assume that the thing that is put on the table has a meaning that can be disclosed in the classroom for everyone.
- 10.
Objectification of what exists is therefore a part of a wider phenomenon which Heidegger, in his late writings, referred to as the essence of technology, viz. Enframing [Ge-stell] (Heidegger 1977a). This is a way of disclosing the world, where everything that surrounds us presents itself [Vor-stellen] as a standing-reserve [Bestand], i.e. as an entity useful for some purpose.
- 11.
This is a strategy that can be found when one reads through official regulations of the curriculum in diverse national educational systems, like the National Curriculum in the UK, Podstawa Porgramowa in Poland or – to a certain extent – eindtermen in Flanders.
- 12.
Therefore, there is always a potentiality of an unforeseen newness in studying a thing.
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Vlieghe, J., Zamojski, P. (2019). Educational Equality and the Universal Excess of Teaching. In: Towards an Ontology of Teaching . Contemporary Philosophies and Theories in Education, vol 11. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16003-6_4
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