Building a Publicly Responsive Education from the Ground Up: Ethical Challenges and Possibilities Sharon Todd Department of Education Maynooth University

Framing ideas…. Reclaiming the term ‘Public Education’ Ethics as a relationship to otherness at the centre of public education Marginalised communities and individuals need to claim their space and their right to speak in ways that will be heard

Outline 1.Why Public? Why Now? 2.Ethical Challenges of Facing Diversity 3.Ethical Possibilities 4. The Day in Question (2010) 5.Building a Publicly Responsive Education

1. Why Public? Why Now? Tensions between: educating the masses in order to preserve order in society and educating them to create a learned, participatory public citizenry; education’s role in conserving cultural tradition and its role in promoting agents of free thought and change; education’s task in fulfilling private interests and its place in serving the common good; the ideal of education being available for all and the reality of exclusion conducted in its name.

Aims of public education are currently under threat Scope of public education is being challenged

How do we understand diversity? Cultural Diversity Religions Ethnicities Languages Economic levels Cultures not distinct ‘groups’, but rather defined through overlapping and sometimes contesting ‘practices’.

Resulting in… The ‘exoticisation’ of others – ‘positive’ attributes – ‘negative’ stereotypes and biases A desire for ‘them’ to be like ‘us’ – Who gets defined as ‘us’ is often dependent upon who is the ‘them’ – Reflects more about ourselves than it does others

Equality 1 – Treating everyone the same – Commonality; ‘humanity’ Equality 2 (equity) – Treating everyone differently based on their different needs – Diversity, pluralism, difference

Philosophical framings – Pluralism as a human condition (Hannah Arendt) – Difference as basic not incidental (Emmanuel Levinas) – Diversity not just numerical but constitutive (Zygmunt Bauman – polycultural society)

2. Ethical Possibilities Transformation – More than socialization or qualification (which are necessary aims of schooling). At its core is freedom. (Biesta, 2015) – Moving from ‘noise’ to voices that can be heard (Säfström, 2011) – Schooling may or may not practice ‘education’

Listening and Voice – Face the difficulty of giving something of ourselves to others through actively engaged forms of listening – Listening is not a behaviour but an experience – Mutual activity - the other person needs to feel they have been listened to – Attentive to very otherness of the other, not only to what is being said

3. The Day in Question

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4. Building a Publicly Responsive Education Staging spaces carefully to create opportunities for voice and listening Educational processes A common project of working toward change Building a Publicly Responsive Education is part of what it means to practice Ethical Education