Purposes of school – a phenomenological analysis via Hegel, Langeveld and Fink

Abstract

ABSTRACT Following the continental tradition of phenomenological pedagogy, this paper focuses on the lived time and space of school – and on contexts in which school is understood as a democratic community. It does so by comparing and contrasting related works of G.W.F. Hegel (1770–1831), Martinus Langeveld (1905–1989) and Eugen Fink (1905–1975). It shows how, within the school, social questions and problems are transformed into pedagogical ones, allowing pedagogical action to become socially productive. In so doing, it articulates a systematic approach to the general question of purposes of the school as a distinctive social institution with its own logic of teaching and learning. First, it is shown via Hegel that in school a pedagogical practice is taking place in an institutionalised and artificial manner which is opposed to other social spheres, institutions and practices. With Langeveld the logic of pedagogical action is worked out, in which extrinsic questions and problems are implemented in a temporal, spatial and social pedagogical order. Fink locates school in a dynamic and scientific-technical (post-)modern and (post-)democratic society. In this context he sees the action and communication occurring in school as able to add to the production of meaning and experience.