Interest, Experience and the Idea of Importance in Education
Adrian Skilbeck (University of Winchester)

Also streaming on Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81813506541

For John Dewey, the connection between education and real life was central to teaching and learning. Whilst Dewey exemplified ‘interest’ through the adult as well as the child, he had little to say about it beyond the world of schooling, excluding not only the adult learner from his vision of education but the question of why education might matter to the adult. To retrieve the personal dimension of Deweyan interests, I will turn to the American philosopher Stanley Cavell, who, in the words of his French translator Sandra Laugier, teaches us the importance of importance.

Adrian Skilbeck is Senior Lecturer in Education Studies at Winchester. He is author of Stanley Cavell and Education: Voice, Seriousness and Drama (Bloomsbury, forthcoming, 2025) and was co-editor with Paul Standish of Wittgenstein and Education: On Not Sparing Others The Trouble of Thinking (Wiley-Blackwell, 2023). Adrian is the chair of the PESGB Development Committee, a member of the PESGB Executive Committee and also sits on the editorial board of the Journal of Philosophy of Education (JOPE). Adrian is a member of the CREATE research centre at Winchester, leading on research in Philosophy of Education.

A paper (work in progress) is attached here.

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

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