Universidad Pontificia Comillas (Madrid, España)
April 11-13, 2012
Presentation
Teacher training for new societies - what qualifies the novelty of these societies, according to theorists of culture?
From the changes detected in the new – so-called postmodern – societies, we extract three questions that concern us:
They are new societies because they have new individuals who abdicate their identities under the yoke of autonomy, and see their subjectivity as a pluralistic management of desire. Is this an eclipse of the despotism of moral conscience, or is it the concealment of narcissistic subjects?
They are new societies because they have new families, where the tie of genealogy is tied and untied, until the desire arises to say goodbye to biology. Is this the end of the patriarchal and authoritarian family, or the sabotage of the foundations of human reproduction?
They are new societies because they have new communities in which territorial ties are dissolved in the virtuality of cyberspace. Is this an attack against the system from transparent and democratic networks, or does it monitor where solipsistic fantasies plunge?
In this scenario, our own age of instant information becomes overwhelming, discarding the modern training projects of biological and progressive formation, surrendering us to all information and all times in a paroxysm of simultaneity of events and synchronisation of the spaces.
How then can we undertake the task of training?
The Schools expect to fulfill the requirements, while they are worried about their own modernist dilemmas that came from the very beginning: how therefore can it be possible to accord the freedom to be responsible, if the new people do not want to pay the price of self-determination?
How it can be possible to form this discipline of affection if the new families disrupt the kinship and symbolic orders? How can it be possible to form that participation in democracy, if the polls are windows of hypertext?
Faced with this wave of plural identities, of postmodern families and communities in the Internet, we are offered a model of managerial school as an organisation for teaching that aims to set rational activity, but which gives rise to an almost irresistible tendency to see the educational curriculum at an ambiguous crossroads: on the one hand, as a chartered foundationally original contract in the liturgy of the sanction of the projects, programs and educational adaptations that formulated the rights and obligations to be applied to contracting parties of the educational business; on the other hand, as an organisational device that strategically guides the educational activity and allows specific assessment or skills.
This rationalisation of the educational activity involves a high risk of bureaucratisation of the education and teacher, which may reduce the alleged distinction between the virtuality of official curriculum and the hidden curriculum, since we see the loss of symbolic efficiency of the school, especially when compared with the media, and, at the same time, the pleasure of learning communities that are entrusted to the instrumental efficacy of their devices. In short, there is a tendency to reduce the moral and political dimensions of the educational activities, which is restricted to note those minimum ethics that the administration highlights, and, correspondingly, a tendency to increase the scope of methodologies, resulting in an education understood as a complacent and easily manageable didacticism.
What would enable this self-satisfaction in the management is nothing but the confidence in self-management – in other words, trust in spontaneity and self-motivated education? We are told that educating for life is educating on self-management of one's life, from which it can be inferred that the equation of life to management and subject to the manager, who handles their business, their own affairs, managing, brewing himself. This forwarding between management and biology, among executives and labour, sheds light on the ambiguity of the slogan to educate inside out which led us to confuse agere – movement driven from within – with ducere – or movement driven from the outside – resulting in the ambiguous educere that gravitates towards educating, expelling from the outside, which may range from the attraction (the philia) to the extraction (the maieutic), but is inextricably committed to the character of the school as an social institution for standardisation, with the primacy of otherness and the authority figure of the teacher.
How, then, can we train teachers?
This conference seeks new ways to clear the mystery of the teacher and express the value acquired by the exponent that has to multiply: we will seek to establish where to fix this 'more' (magis) of the teacher in order to make visible the signs (sign) of the enseignant, to glimpse where it points its index (formerly teacher).
REGISTRATION BEFORE MARCH 23rd
Registration fee for participants, with or without communication: 175 € (Includes welcome cocktail, coffee breaks, Thursday and Friday lunch, gala dinner, Colloquium proceeding book, Spanish-French translation, folder and certificate)
Registration fee for companions and non-participants in the sessions of the Colloquium: 90 €(Includes welcome cocktail, coffee breaks, Thursday and Friday lunch and gala dinner)
Registration fee for participants plus excursion: 225 € (Includes welcome cocktail, coffee breaks, Thursday and Friday lunch, gala dinner, Colloquium proceeding book, Spanish-French translation, folder, certificate, and one day excursions to the Monastery of El Escorial and to Segovia: trip, guided tour, meals, and tickets).
Registration fee for companions and non-participants plus excursion: 140 € (Includes welcome cocktail, coffee breaks, Thursday and Friday lunch and gala dinner and one day excursions to the monastery of El Escorial and to Segovia: trip, guided tour, meals, and tickets).
Registration must be done through the website:
http://www.upcomillas.es/coloquioACISEMadrid2012
and the fee has to be paid in:
Bank: Banco Popular Español
Account holder: Universidad Pontificia Comillas
IBAN: ES57 0075 0134 76 0600113512
BIC: POPUESMM
Concept: Coloquio Internacional ACISE
Once the fee is paid, you will have to send an electronic copy to Jorge Burgueño (7giorgio@gmail.com), the Colloquium secretary.