Judith Suissa | UCL Institute of Education (original) (raw)
Papers by Judith Suissa
The Philosophers' Magazine, 2021
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Dit artikel schetst hoe we vandaag over opvoeden en ouderschap denken en spreken. We richten de a... more Dit artikel schetst hoe we vandaag over opvoeden en ouderschap denken en spreken. We richten de aandacht op twee aspecten: (1) hoe ons verstaan van opvoeden en ouderschap in de greep is van het discours van de psychologie, en in het bijzonder dat van de ontwikkelingspsychologie, en (2) hoe ons verstaan van opvoeden en ouderschap doortrokken is van de (vermeende) noodzaak van deskundigheid. Die twee staan niet los van elkaar. Samen verwijzen ze naar wat we de verwetenschappelijking van de ouder-kindrelatie noemen. In dat plaatje nemen gedragsproblemen een eigen plaats in. Als onze schets van ‘opvoeden vandaag’ steek houdt, of minstens aannemelijk is, dan wordt misschien ook duidelijk dat de aandacht voor gedragsproblemen eigenlijk niet zo vreemd is, en er in zekere zin zelfs bij hoort. We kunnen gedragsproblemen immers beschouwen als een ‘symptoom’ van onze hedendaagse opvatting over opvoeden en ouderschap. Ze zijn tegelijk een teken van een bepaalde manier van denken en spreken over opvoeden en ouderschap, en versterken die manier van denken en spreken.status: publishe
Journal of Philosophy of Education
This article explores the context for the accompanying suite of papers on creating and sustaining... more This article explores the context for the accompanying suite of papers on creating and sustaining democratic spaces in education. Prompted by the centenary of Summerhill, the internationally famous democratic school founded in Suffolk, England, in 1921, by A.S. Neill, this collection of papers explores and broadens out the central questions at the heart of experiments in democratic education. We suggest that, at a time of distrust in and questioning of the central institutions of democratic government, and in the wake of challenges to the mainstream system of state schooling, these questions are more relevant than ever. We argue that detailed attention to the everyday practice of creating democratic spaces in a variety of educational and social contexts can highlight the myriad ways in which educators, students, families and communities can keep democratic values and principles alive, thereby enriching our discussions about the meaning and value of democratic education.
Families, Relationships and Societies, 2019
Narratives of ‘the future’ shape action, and the idea that certain members of society have more o... more Narratives of ‘the future’ shape action, and the idea that certain members of society have more of a claim to ‘the future’ than others has received explicit articulation from academics, political commentators and journalists. Children are often viewed as the embodiment of ‘the future’, with parents positioned as having unique stakes in ‘the future’, particularly in comparison to non-parents. Asserting one agent’s rights to ‘the future’ inevitably undercuts another’s, and marginalised groups may be held responsible for the state of ‘the future’ but rendered unable to speak about it. In contrast, we argue that ‘the future’ is not the private possession of exclusionary subject positions or reductive political imaginaries which reduce the possible to a continuation of capitalist ethno-nations. Instead, we propose to understand futures as a collective intergenerational endeavour involving critical reflection on the present in order to challenge injustices in the present and enact evaluab...
Journal of Philosophy of Education
This paper revisits the battle between Summerhill School and the Department for Education and Emp... more This paper revisits the battle between Summerhill School and the Department for Education and Employment following the damning Ofsted inspection in 1999 that demanded changes to the school’s practice. The focus of the discussion is Paul Hirst’s involvement in the subsequent inspection of Summerhill following the school’s victory against Ofsted in their 2000 appeal at the Independent Schools Tribunal. Drawing on contemporary commentaries on the Ofsted inspection and the court case, alongside Hirst’s work on curriculum and early criticisms of this work, I explore what is meant by ‘a broad and balanced curriculum’—a phrase that lay at the heart of Ofsted’s case against Summerhill. The discussion will question some of the commonly posited oppositions between ‘progressive’ and ‘liberal’ education, and will suggest that such a framing of the issues is an unhelpful way to understand the radical challenge posed by democratic schools such as Summerhill. In focusing on the daily life and etho...
Parents and their relationships with their children rarely feature in the work of philosophers wr... more Parents and their relationships with their children rarely feature in the work of philosophers writing about education. When they do, I argue, they are discussed in a language that draws primarily on the political concepts of rights, duties and obligations. Often, in this context, the parent-child relationship is seen as posing interesting or troubling conceptual problems for our political or moral theories, rather than as a subject for philosophical reflection in itself. At the same time, talk of “parenting” and notions of “good parenting” are increasingly prominent in government policy on families and children, as well as in the popular media and self-help books. The language and logic of this discourse in overwhelmingly drawn from the field of developmental psychology, using supposedly neutral, descriptive concepts in a manner that both masks their evaluative aspects and makes it difficult to talk about parentchild relationship in any other way.
Education, Ethics and Experience, 2015
This is an extract from our book The Claims of Parenting: Reasons, Responsibility and Society in ... more This is an extract from our book The Claims of Parenting: Reasons, Responsibility and Society in which our main concern is to show how the parent-child relationship has been claimed by certain languages and forms of reasoning, to the extent that it has become difficult to find other ways of talking about it and exploring its significance, at both an individual and a societal level. The idea of writing the book emerged partly from our experience as parents, and our sense that dominant accounts of “good parenting” in both policy discourse and popular literature for parents were raising significant conceptual and ethical questions that, as philosophers, we should have something to say about. Yet at the same time, we felt a dissatisfaction with many discussions of families, parents and children in philosophy of education, moral philosophy and political philosophy, where parent-child relationships seemed to be framed as a sub-category within a broader moral or political theory rather tha...
Routledge Handbook of Radical Politics, 2019
In this paper, I focus on the statist imaginary associated with the defence of public education. ... more In this paper, I focus on the statist imaginary associated with the defence of public education. Drawing on work on the idea of the public sphere, anarchist theory, and the politics of movement, I argue that in a world characterised by unprecedented and growing levels of mass migration and displacement, a new, non-statist imaginary is needed. I explore some ways in which such imaginaries can play a role in educational thought and practice. Riassunto: Nel presente articolo mi concentro sugli immaginari statuali associati alla difesa dell’educazione pubblica. Sulla scorta delle idee di sfera pubblica, teoria anarchica e politica del movimento, argomento che in un mondo caratterizzato da livelli inediti e crescenti di migrazioni e spostamenti di massa, occorre un immaginario sociale nuovo, non statuale. Esploro alcuni modi in cui tali immaginari possono svolgere un ruolo nel pensiero e nella pratica educativa.
In her paper the author points to the impoverishment of the popular and policy discourse on good ... more In her paper the author points to the impoverishment of the popular and policy discourse on good parenting and highlights a glaring absence of the moral dimension and moral language in the debate. This fact unveils a somewhat flattened understanding of the process of child-rearing - devoid of moral reflection, moral choices, and moral concepts, thus giving the impression that modern parenting is solely a matter of skilful application of universal, neutral, scientifically verified procedures and tools. Such discourse promotes, so called, effective parenting conceptualized as a set of skills or ‘the science of parenting’ rather than the process that should assign moral meaning to the things parents and educators do with children. The paper reveals weaknesses of such conceptualization by unveiling some of its underlying assumptions that are questionable and yet determine the discussion on and approach to child-rearing and parenting in Britain today.
Journal of Philosophy of Education, 2021
Philosophical arguments regarding academic freedom can sometimes appear removed from the real con... more Philosophical arguments regarding academic freedom can sometimes appear removed from the real conflicts playing out in contemporary universities. This paper focusses on a set of issues at the front line of these conflicts, namely, questions regarding sex, gender and gender identity. We document the ways in which the work of academics has been affected by political activism around these questions and, drawing on our respective disciplinary expertise as a sociologist and a philosopher, elucidate the costs of curtailing discussion on fundamental demographic and conceptual categories. We discuss some philosophical work that addresses the conceptual distinction between academic freedom and free speech and explore how these notions are intertwined in significant ways in universities. Our discussion elucidates and emphasises the educational costs of curtailing academic freedom. The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.
Educational Philosophy and Theory, 2018
Choice Reviews Online, 2011
Introduction 1 1 Anarchism-definitions and questions 7 Anarchism and Marxism 12 Anarchism, philos... more Introduction 1 1 Anarchism-definitions and questions 7 Anarchism and Marxism 12 Anarchism, philosophy of education and liberal suspicions 15 Liberalism and liberal education 18 2 Anarchism and human nature 24 Human nature in social-anarchist theory 25 Human nature and the capitalist state 29 Nurturing the propensity for mutual aid 31 The ideal of rationality 34 Human nature in liberalism 36 3 Anarchist values? 38 Autonomy in anarchism and liberalism 41 Reciprocal awareness 44 Liberal paternalism and libertarianism 46 Autonomy and community-tensions and questions 47 Robert Wolff and the argument from autonomy 50 4 Authority, the state and education 54 The anarchist objection to the state 55 Authority 57 Preface to 2010 edition vii 5 The positive core of anarchism Equality 63 Fraternity 67 Liberal values? Anarchist values? 72 Education for the social virtues 73
The Philosophers' Magazine, 2021
<jats:p />
Dit artikel schetst hoe we vandaag over opvoeden en ouderschap denken en spreken. We richten de a... more Dit artikel schetst hoe we vandaag over opvoeden en ouderschap denken en spreken. We richten de aandacht op twee aspecten: (1) hoe ons verstaan van opvoeden en ouderschap in de greep is van het discours van de psychologie, en in het bijzonder dat van de ontwikkelingspsychologie, en (2) hoe ons verstaan van opvoeden en ouderschap doortrokken is van de (vermeende) noodzaak van deskundigheid. Die twee staan niet los van elkaar. Samen verwijzen ze naar wat we de verwetenschappelijking van de ouder-kindrelatie noemen. In dat plaatje nemen gedragsproblemen een eigen plaats in. Als onze schets van ‘opvoeden vandaag’ steek houdt, of minstens aannemelijk is, dan wordt misschien ook duidelijk dat de aandacht voor gedragsproblemen eigenlijk niet zo vreemd is, en er in zekere zin zelfs bij hoort. We kunnen gedragsproblemen immers beschouwen als een ‘symptoom’ van onze hedendaagse opvatting over opvoeden en ouderschap. Ze zijn tegelijk een teken van een bepaalde manier van denken en spreken over opvoeden en ouderschap, en versterken die manier van denken en spreken.status: publishe
Journal of Philosophy of Education
This article explores the context for the accompanying suite of papers on creating and sustaining... more This article explores the context for the accompanying suite of papers on creating and sustaining democratic spaces in education. Prompted by the centenary of Summerhill, the internationally famous democratic school founded in Suffolk, England, in 1921, by A.S. Neill, this collection of papers explores and broadens out the central questions at the heart of experiments in democratic education. We suggest that, at a time of distrust in and questioning of the central institutions of democratic government, and in the wake of challenges to the mainstream system of state schooling, these questions are more relevant than ever. We argue that detailed attention to the everyday practice of creating democratic spaces in a variety of educational and social contexts can highlight the myriad ways in which educators, students, families and communities can keep democratic values and principles alive, thereby enriching our discussions about the meaning and value of democratic education.
Families, Relationships and Societies, 2019
Narratives of ‘the future’ shape action, and the idea that certain members of society have more o... more Narratives of ‘the future’ shape action, and the idea that certain members of society have more of a claim to ‘the future’ than others has received explicit articulation from academics, political commentators and journalists. Children are often viewed as the embodiment of ‘the future’, with parents positioned as having unique stakes in ‘the future’, particularly in comparison to non-parents. Asserting one agent’s rights to ‘the future’ inevitably undercuts another’s, and marginalised groups may be held responsible for the state of ‘the future’ but rendered unable to speak about it. In contrast, we argue that ‘the future’ is not the private possession of exclusionary subject positions or reductive political imaginaries which reduce the possible to a continuation of capitalist ethno-nations. Instead, we propose to understand futures as a collective intergenerational endeavour involving critical reflection on the present in order to challenge injustices in the present and enact evaluab...
Journal of Philosophy of Education
This paper revisits the battle between Summerhill School and the Department for Education and Emp... more This paper revisits the battle between Summerhill School and the Department for Education and Employment following the damning Ofsted inspection in 1999 that demanded changes to the school’s practice. The focus of the discussion is Paul Hirst’s involvement in the subsequent inspection of Summerhill following the school’s victory against Ofsted in their 2000 appeal at the Independent Schools Tribunal. Drawing on contemporary commentaries on the Ofsted inspection and the court case, alongside Hirst’s work on curriculum and early criticisms of this work, I explore what is meant by ‘a broad and balanced curriculum’—a phrase that lay at the heart of Ofsted’s case against Summerhill. The discussion will question some of the commonly posited oppositions between ‘progressive’ and ‘liberal’ education, and will suggest that such a framing of the issues is an unhelpful way to understand the radical challenge posed by democratic schools such as Summerhill. In focusing on the daily life and etho...
Parents and their relationships with their children rarely feature in the work of philosophers wr... more Parents and their relationships with their children rarely feature in the work of philosophers writing about education. When they do, I argue, they are discussed in a language that draws primarily on the political concepts of rights, duties and obligations. Often, in this context, the parent-child relationship is seen as posing interesting or troubling conceptual problems for our political or moral theories, rather than as a subject for philosophical reflection in itself. At the same time, talk of “parenting” and notions of “good parenting” are increasingly prominent in government policy on families and children, as well as in the popular media and self-help books. The language and logic of this discourse in overwhelmingly drawn from the field of developmental psychology, using supposedly neutral, descriptive concepts in a manner that both masks their evaluative aspects and makes it difficult to talk about parentchild relationship in any other way.
Education, Ethics and Experience, 2015
This is an extract from our book The Claims of Parenting: Reasons, Responsibility and Society in ... more This is an extract from our book The Claims of Parenting: Reasons, Responsibility and Society in which our main concern is to show how the parent-child relationship has been claimed by certain languages and forms of reasoning, to the extent that it has become difficult to find other ways of talking about it and exploring its significance, at both an individual and a societal level. The idea of writing the book emerged partly from our experience as parents, and our sense that dominant accounts of “good parenting” in both policy discourse and popular literature for parents were raising significant conceptual and ethical questions that, as philosophers, we should have something to say about. Yet at the same time, we felt a dissatisfaction with many discussions of families, parents and children in philosophy of education, moral philosophy and political philosophy, where parent-child relationships seemed to be framed as a sub-category within a broader moral or political theory rather tha...
Routledge Handbook of Radical Politics, 2019
In this paper, I focus on the statist imaginary associated with the defence of public education. ... more In this paper, I focus on the statist imaginary associated with the defence of public education. Drawing on work on the idea of the public sphere, anarchist theory, and the politics of movement, I argue that in a world characterised by unprecedented and growing levels of mass migration and displacement, a new, non-statist imaginary is needed. I explore some ways in which such imaginaries can play a role in educational thought and practice. Riassunto: Nel presente articolo mi concentro sugli immaginari statuali associati alla difesa dell’educazione pubblica. Sulla scorta delle idee di sfera pubblica, teoria anarchica e politica del movimento, argomento che in un mondo caratterizzato da livelli inediti e crescenti di migrazioni e spostamenti di massa, occorre un immaginario sociale nuovo, non statuale. Esploro alcuni modi in cui tali immaginari possono svolgere un ruolo nel pensiero e nella pratica educativa.
In her paper the author points to the impoverishment of the popular and policy discourse on good ... more In her paper the author points to the impoverishment of the popular and policy discourse on good parenting and highlights a glaring absence of the moral dimension and moral language in the debate. This fact unveils a somewhat flattened understanding of the process of child-rearing - devoid of moral reflection, moral choices, and moral concepts, thus giving the impression that modern parenting is solely a matter of skilful application of universal, neutral, scientifically verified procedures and tools. Such discourse promotes, so called, effective parenting conceptualized as a set of skills or ‘the science of parenting’ rather than the process that should assign moral meaning to the things parents and educators do with children. The paper reveals weaknesses of such conceptualization by unveiling some of its underlying assumptions that are questionable and yet determine the discussion on and approach to child-rearing and parenting in Britain today.
Journal of Philosophy of Education, 2021
Philosophical arguments regarding academic freedom can sometimes appear removed from the real con... more Philosophical arguments regarding academic freedom can sometimes appear removed from the real conflicts playing out in contemporary universities. This paper focusses on a set of issues at the front line of these conflicts, namely, questions regarding sex, gender and gender identity. We document the ways in which the work of academics has been affected by political activism around these questions and, drawing on our respective disciplinary expertise as a sociologist and a philosopher, elucidate the costs of curtailing discussion on fundamental demographic and conceptual categories. We discuss some philosophical work that addresses the conceptual distinction between academic freedom and free speech and explore how these notions are intertwined in significant ways in universities. Our discussion elucidates and emphasises the educational costs of curtailing academic freedom. The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.
Educational Philosophy and Theory, 2018
Choice Reviews Online, 2011
Introduction 1 1 Anarchism-definitions and questions 7 Anarchism and Marxism 12 Anarchism, philos... more Introduction 1 1 Anarchism-definitions and questions 7 Anarchism and Marxism 12 Anarchism, philosophy of education and liberal suspicions 15 Liberalism and liberal education 18 2 Anarchism and human nature 24 Human nature in social-anarchist theory 25 Human nature and the capitalist state 29 Nurturing the propensity for mutual aid 31 The ideal of rationality 34 Human nature in liberalism 36 3 Anarchist values? 38 Autonomy in anarchism and liberalism 41 Reciprocal awareness 44 Liberal paternalism and libertarianism 46 Autonomy and community-tensions and questions 47 Robert Wolff and the argument from autonomy 50 4 Authority, the state and education 54 The anarchist objection to the state 55 Authority 57 Preface to 2010 edition vii 5 The positive core of anarchism Equality 63 Fraternity 67 Liberal values? Anarchist values? 72 Education for the social virtues 73