2015/01/02 by Jan Masschelein, Maarten Simons · 1 citation
Psychology · Social Sciences · #Education Systems and Policy #Mathematics education #Pedagogy #Psychology #Sociology
paper · doi:10.1080/17449642.2014.998027
openalex publication_date 2015/01/02 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/09
Against the background of the many attacks on the school as being outdated, alienating, ineffective and reproducing inequalities we offer a morphological understanding of the school as distinguished from functionalist understandings (sociological or economical perspectives in terms of functions and roles) and idealistic understandings (philosophical ones in terms of ‘ideas of education’). Our educational morphology approaches the school as a particular scholastic ‘form of gathering’ i.e. a particular time–space–matter arrangement (including concrete architectures, technologies, practices and figures) that deals in a specific way with the new generation, allows for a particular relation to the world, and for a particular experience of potentiality and of commonality (of making things public). We elucidate how this form performs particular operations of suspension, profanation and formation of attention and how these operations imply a slowing down and an opening of future. Finally, we emphasise the potentially revolutionary character of the scholastic form and discuss contemporary attempts at taming or neutralising the school.