Abstract
Although Norbert Elias did not explicitly address educational practice or the role of education in society, he was deeply interested in the development of the social learning processes of young children and adults. This paper will begin by looking at Elias’s relational perspective on childhood, focusing on the long-term individual civilising processes that young children undergo as they prepare for adulthood in complex societies. It will then focus on two of the major psychoanalytic thinkers of the British object relations school, Donald Winnicott and Wilfred Bion, to understand how these processes of learning are sometimes ‘blocked’ by teachers in diff erent institutions where it is assumed that pedagogy is predominantly a rational, conscious and deliberate process. I will argue that Elias’s distinctive approach to learning can be used to integrate the findings of psychoanalysis, developing a relational sociology of Early Years Education that views schools as anxious institutions where young children have to exercise a more intensive and all-embracing control over their emotions.
Highlights
This paper begins by looking at two of the most important educational thinkers, John MacMurray and John Dewey and how they developed relational concepts that can enable us to move beyond traditional dichotomies between care and learning or the sterile debate between ‘traditional education’ and ‘progressive education’
Norbert Elias did not explicitly address educational practice or the role of education in society, he was deeply interested in the development of the social learning processes of young children and adults
My paper turns to two of the major psychoanalytic thinkers of the British object relations school, Donald Winnicott and Wilfred Bion, to understand how these processes of learning are sometimes ‘blocked’ by teachers in educational institutions where it is assumed that pedagogy is mainly a rational, conscious and deliberate process
Summary
This paper begins by looking at two of the most important educational thinkers, John MacMurray and John Dewey and how they developed relational concepts that can enable us to move beyond traditional dichotomies between care and learning or the sterile debate between ‘traditional education’ and ‘progressive education’. I introduce Elias’s important relational concept of love and learning to focus on the long-term individual civilising processes that young children undergo as they prepare for adulthood in complex societies. I argue that Elias’s distinctive approach to learning can be used to integrate the findings of psychoanalysis, developing a relational sociology of Early Years Education that views schools as anxious institutions where young children have to exercise a more intensive and all-embracing control over their emotions
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