Rescuing the ghost from the machine: towards responsive education, not explanatory machinery systems

Abstract

The significance of the “Bologna Turn” in European Higher Education, which supposedly refocused the process of teaching and learning and was expected to bring about a pedagogical reform, is discussed mainly by clarifying why it has not in fact realized the expected advances on performativity and standardization. We show how the “Bologna Process” falls into the mechanistic paradigm that Rancière (1987) acutely criticized and through which the educational intervening subjects are reduced to a functional dimension. We draw on Rancière’s criticism to make clear the dynamics of the “deranging machine”, while we call for Buber’s “pedagogy of encounter” as having the potential for opening a new space to escape from the current situation by a “pedagogy of an inspiring way of speaking”, as this may act as adequate conveyer for accomplishing the desired meaningful encounters. These issues lead us to consider why and how education requires a special “pedagogical tact”: the tact for understanding that education is an antinomical process that flows from, through and towards a meaningful dialogue, so that one can recognize that autonomy is constructed in relation to dependency, freedom in relation to compliance and care in relation to some amount of constraint.