2026/06/30 by Florencia Fernández, Elodie Guillemin
Social Sciences · #Critical and Liberation Pedagogy #Global Educational Policies and Reforms #Peace and Human Rights Education
paper · doi:10.1093/jopedu/qhag023
openalex publication_date 2026/06/30 · openalex created_date 2026/07/29 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
Abstract In this article, we explore the notion of scholè as suspension, central to Jan Masschelein and Maarten Simon’s work on the publicness of school, with the aim of addressing the position that scholè as suspension can be conceptualized as non-political. We begin by discussing Masschelein and Simons’ idea. Further, we suggest a contrast with the understanding of suspension put forward in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Émile, ou de l’éducation. This alternative account challenges the centrality of schools in enabling suspension and shows that embracing the school as the pre-eminent site of the scholè can run the risk of perpetuating injustice. Then, through childist and decolonial perspectives on schooling developed by Tatek Abebe and Tanu Biswas, we show how a certain form of schooling can hinder other ways of living and being, rather than promoting free time from the tyranny of (capitalist) society and the unequal family order. Finally, we discuss Stefano Harney and Fred Moten’s notion of black study in order to expand the notion of scholè by exploring its political gesture. In contrast to the classroom understood as a moment of free time from society, we insist that the classroom is a contested space, where educational suspension nevertheless happens/can happen.