London Branch Seminar

  • 21st February 2024
  • 5:30 pm - 7:15 pm
  • Room 828, UCL Institute of Education, 20 Bedford Way, WC1H 0AL, London, London
  • Seminar

Studying with a Teacher: Education beyond the logic of progress
Piotr Zamojski (Polish Naval Academy)

I present a thought-experiment aimed at thinking education beyond the logic of progress. First, I reconstruct the entanglement of the Modern idea of progress (in Francis Bacon and Comenius) and education, while tracking down the coupling of obedience and conquest at work. Thus, a link is determined between progress and of emancipation. This acknowledges the difficulty of imagining education outside progress. Second, an attempt is made to match this task by suggesting that when studying with a teacher, the logic of progress is deactivated. A phenomenological analysis points to the specific way of living together that such collective study involves.

Piotr Zamojski is an associate professor at Department of Educational Studies of the Polish Naval Academy (Poland). His main field of research is educational theory and philosophy of education. He has authored five books, including two recently written in collaboration with Naomi Hodgson and Joris Vlieghe (Manifesto for a Post-Critical Pedagogy, Punctum Books 2017), and with Joris Vlieghe (Towards an Ontology of Teaching. Thing-centered pedagogy, affirmation and love for the world, Springer 2019). The Manifesto for a Post-Critical Pedagogy sparked various debates in the field of educational theory and was recently translated into Spanish, German and Turkish.

This talk is based on a recently published paper: Zamojski, P. (2023) ‘Studying with a Teacher. Education beyond the logic of progress’, Journal of Philosophy of Education, vol. 57 issue 6, pp. 1072–1086. Available here: https://doi.org/10.1093/jopedu/qhad057

For further inquiries: Yuxin Su (yuxin.su.16@ucl.ac.uk).

Please note that this seminar series is run by academics on an entirely voluntary and unpaid basis, on top of existing teaching and other work commitments. While we endeavour to make these events as inclusive and welcoming as possible, we cannot undertake any extra work regarding the presentation, dissemination or planning of the talks or make adjustments to the existing programme.