Education's outside

Abstract

Is the university to be thought of as in service of society — that is, on the inside? Or should it be regarded rather as its potential critic and prophet of its best prospects, and hence be understood to be on the outside? This is just one example of the multiple ways in which thinking in terms of the inside and the outside figures in educational policy and practice. While the opposition recurs across the broad range of our political and personal lives, it is there in the detail of conceptions of teaching and learning, and of the content of the curriculum. This article seeks to examine some implications of this opposition. It does this by reference to an article by Jacques Derrida in which questions concerning the inside and the outside, of inclusion and exclusion, of purity and contamination, are considered in relation to language itself and to the problems and possibilities of translation. On the surface the reflections of Paul Standish are a very good and impressive example of a European and international philosophy of education today and illustrate the overcoming of traditional limitations of language: here is an English philosopher of education dealing with a German debate between Gershom Scholem and Franz Rosenzweig in the 1920s, which was reread by a French philosopher — Jacques Derrida — in English. But from a second perspective, the reflections of Paul Standish are somehow discouraging, because one of the main topics of this article is the problem and limitation of language, the possibility and impossibility of translation and — therefore — the limitations of language in general. Therefore in this reply the author's comment will oscillate between the problems of understanding and translating — and will lead into foreignness as a consequence of these differences. In order to do this the author gives a very short reconstruction of the main ideas in order to prove that he has understood the argumentation in an adequate way (I), and then develops his questions concerning the ideas of Paul Standish (II).