philosophizing about the art of education between body and childhood: considerations on adorno and lyotard

Abstract

In recent years, one can observe an increasing instrumentalization of education, evident in the frantic search by teachers for new methods and techniques offered by the publishing industry or established by government policies. It can also be observed that, at least in Brazil, the curricular matrix of teacher training courses privileges a technical perspective at the expense of human sciences and philosophy disciplines. In an attempt to contribute to a reflection on these issues, this article aims to discuss some possibilities of conceiving education as an art, and of understanding poetics as a dimension of teaching, in opposition to the tendency toward scientifization and instrumentalization of teaching. In particular, this article inquires into the place--or no-place--of philosophy and philosophizing in the art of education, and on the poetics of this kind of teaching, considering the way it is conceived in and by contemporary philosophical thought. In this way, I hope to identify the main problems and issues of this form of philosophy and of philosophizing, and to offer, not only a set of questions to reflect on, but also to suggest some perspectives through which educators might deal with the challenges of this activity. In order to achieve this, I have revisited the thought of the Frankfurt school--particularly that of Theodore Adorno. Although there are divergences between the thought of Adorno and Jean-Francois Lyotard--beginning with the fact that they did not live in the same historical context—this paper identifies some of their affinities that are relevant to considering education as an art, and to the constitution of a poetical education based on a policy of active resistance to instrumentalization.