Education-for-Myself and Education-for-the Other: The Right to Freedom of Education and Mikhail Bakhtin’s Experience

Oleg Osovsky,Vera Kirzhaeva,Elizaveta Maslova,Ekaterina Chernetsova

doi:10.5195/dpj.2020.346

Abstract

The article contains reflections on the problem which has arised in Eugene Matusov's article on freedom of education, and considers the experience of Mikhail Bakhtin as an example of the way the right to the freedom can be fulfilled. Not only Bakhtin's life and ideas play a significant role in contemporary social and educational theories and practices, but they reveal how education becomes a result of selection of particular knowledge and one's conscious choice. The core of the article is a correlation of notions “Education-for-myself” and “Education-for-the other” which are taken by the authors as derivatives of the terms of Bakhtin’s early philosophy “I-for-myself” and “I-for-the other”. Thus ideas of “Education-for-an individual” and “Education-for-the society” result from the reflections and can be evidence of the need in mutual understanding and dialogue in order to achieve freedom of education.

Highlights

The article contains reflections on the problem which has arised in Eugene Matusov's article on freedom of education, and considers the experience of Mikhail Bakhtin as an example of the way the right to the freedom can be fulfilled
Vera Kirzhaeva works as a professor of Russian at Philology department in Saransk
Professor Eugene Matusov wrote a serious and crucial article which in many respects reflects a whole range of the most complicated problems closely linked to a changing image of the contemporary education

Summary

Introduction

The article contains reflections on the problem which has arised in Eugene Matusov's article on freedom of education, and considers the experience of Mikhail Bakhtin as an example of the way the right to the freedom can be fulfilled. A brilliant thinker Mikhail Bakhtin creates himself, without going through a single formal educational institution, gaining his philosophical, wider-intellectual view of the world and culture via exploration of scientific heritage created in previous eras, and thereby he demonstrates the highest degree of freedom of education, the right which he could realize due to the circumstances of his own life, as we try to show.

Results

Conclusion