The Rediscovery of Teaching by Gert J. J. Biesta

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Rediscovery of Teaching by Gert J. J. Biesta Xenia Coulter and Alan Mandell Gert J. J. Biesta. The Rediscovery of Teaching. New York, NY: Routledge, 2017. 111 pp. Softcover: $39.50. ISBN 978-1-138-67070-9 Gert Biesta is a highly respected European philosopher of education who deserves to be better known in the United States. His recent book, The Rediscovery of Teaching (2017), the 4th book of a previous trilogy, could be said to play a similar role to that of John Dewey's Experience and Education (1938) in that it focuses upon the nature of teaching and its critical role in the schools of purportedly free societies. Moreover, both books were written rather late in their authors' careers, and as relatively short texts, they seem to serve well as accessible descriptions of their philosophies for readers not yet familiar with their earlier works. In addition, although both men wrote primarily about the education of children, their conception of the goals and methods of education is readily applicable not only to younger students but to traditional-aged college students (those 18–25), and also to older adults seeking a college degree. For both men, progressive education, with its emphasis upon student independence and individualization, is singularly well-suited for life in an ever-changing, and thus uncertain, democratic world. For Biesta, such a world needs adults who are assertive "grown up" "subjects," rather than objects of someone else's attention, a perspective that is quite comparable to Dewey's insistence that learners be their own "agents." For both Biesta and Dewey, students need space to think for themselves about the subject matter they are considering, and teachers must trust their students' ability to do so. Thus, the teacher's activities as an educator and the student's activities as a learner are clearly separate–the teacher's role is to invite students to learn, to provide stimulation ("to arouse the desire in the student," p. 95) and support, and to interrogate and assess the student's knowledge during this process. For their part, students "encounter" (p. 98) a kind of freedom that permits them to learn for themselves. As Biesta notes, not only are teachers not "sages on the stage" (who, like Freire's knowledge bankers, pour knowledge into the heads of students [1972]), but they are also not "guides on the side" (who learn along with their students), nor are they "peers in the rear" (who let students learn whenever they wish). Thus, like Dewey, he knows how important teachers are to the learning process and champions the complex and challenging task that they face. Biesta thus sharply criticizes contemporary attempts to reduce teaching to that of a mirror image of what is to be learned–which he refers to as "the learnification" of education (p. 27). All told, Biesta, and probably Dewey too, seek to remind the reader, especially now in an age in which education is becoming increasingly mechanized, that true teaching is a deeply human endeavor–and badly needed. At first glance, this kind of teaching may seem appropriate only for unsettled content areas that allow for student speculation. But even in seemingly rigid forms of technical or professional education, the teacher at some point must relinquish control and allow students to perform on their own (i.e., to learn from their mistakes, practice, or even experiment) whether learning to ride a bike, play bridge, wire a house, or even solve mathematical problems. Indeed, in a recent TedX talk, math educator Finkel (2015) uses almost the same language as does Biesta. Rather than telling students what they need to know, he emphasizes instead the importance of inviting them into mathematical discussions where the learners' efforts to find out for themselves are [End Page E-15] taken seriously. Biesta uses an example of language learning to make the same point. Borrowing from French philosopher Rancière (1991), he offers the story of an "ignorant schoolmaster" who was able to successfully "teach" Flemish students the French language even though the teacher was unable to speak Flemish. To us, Dewey's view of teachers as creators of educative experiences rather than lecturers or...