Aligning/contrasting pedagogy and populism as a support for democratic education

Adams, Paul (2023) Aligning/contrasting pedagogy and populism as a support for democratic education. In: Democratic Education in Transition. International Workshop in Philosophy of Education, 2023-06-15 - 2023-06-16, University of Helsinki.

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Abstract

As a political term, populism has a long and varied history (Abromeit, Chesterton, Marotta, & Norman, 2015). Populism itself presents shifting statements in response to social, political, and economic conditions and when tied to ‘myths’ of nationhood, populism presents as the antithesis of democracy in favour of strong leadership and ‘electioneering’. It is not, though, built upon opposition to democracy per se; right leaning views challenge governments who prioritise minority groups over the (God Fearing) majority. Left-leaning populism challenges neoliberalism for its disenfranchisement of ‘ordinary people’. As populism’s foil, however, is democracy, if only as that to contest. Accordingly, there is a need to consider how populism interacts with democratic education (Mårdh & Tryggvason, 2017); that is, can populism perhaps strengthen democratic approaches to education? Populist narratives deploy both anti-democratic and democratic educational challenges. The former seeks to deny agency to some (Petrie et al., 2019) and has led to structural reform to remove democratic oversight or the introduction of ‘consumer selection’ through parental choice and free schools: an international phenomenon. Petrie et al. (2019: 490) note that such hollowing out generates conditions for ‘epistemological populism’: open hostility towards intellectuals, an impatience for complexity, and valorisation of ‘common sense’ solutions. However, while liberally minded democrats may seek to engender harmony and contentment, they themselves often locate ‘the unacceptable Other’. Provocatively, Petrie et al. (2019) propose that the contingent ‘filling out’ of populist rhetoric could provide the impetus for greater democratic educational involvement given that ‘politics as normal’ has not resulted in reigning in inequality or poverty. Further, pedagogy requires democracy, not simply in terms of voting rights, but also to understand socio-cultural horizons and their achievement: a debate about what we do and do not value (Klitmøller, 2018). Problematically, Anglocentric visions of pedagogy often deploy ‘officially sanctioned’ teaching method/s (Adams, 2022). This offers simple interpretations: a smorgasbord of ideas or prescriptive/proscriptive approaches (Bell, 2003). Alternatively, pedagogy as ‘being in and acting on the world with and for others’ (Adams, 2022), favours alternatives to post-industrial, empirically based Anglocentrism (Klitmøller, 2018). Accordingly, I argue that pedagogic discussions can enrich education about/for/through democracy via positionings for populism. I examine how populism can locate pedagogy as living with and in complexity: a means to ensure educational projects become neither inured to populism nor taken by its seeming simplicity. Adams, P. (2022). Scotland and pedagogy: moving from the Anglophone towards the continental? Nordic Studies in Education. Abromeit, J., Chesterton, B. M., Marotta, G., & Norman, Y. (Eds.). (2015). Transformations of populism in Europe and the Americas: History and recent tendencies. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Mårdh, A., & Tryggvason, Á. (2017). Democratic Education in the Mode of Populism. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 36(6), 601–613. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-017-9564-5. Petrie, M., McGregor, C., & Crowther, J. (2019). Populism, democracy and a pedagogy of renewal. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 38(5), 488–502. https://doi.org/10.1080/02601370.2019.1617798. Klitmøller, J. (2018). Between ‘pedagogy’ and ‘Pädagogik’: a critique of lived pedagogy. Education 3-13, 46(7), 838–850.ttps://doi.org/10.1080/03004279.2017.1373138.

ORCID iDs

Adams, Paul ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8527-9212;