Participation in Education as an Invitation to Become Towards the World: Hannah Arendt on the authority, thoughtfulness and imagination of the educator

Abstract

This article draws on Hannah Arendt’s analysis of authority in education, along with her insights into the workings of the imagination and the thinking process, to argue that participation in education should be conceived as an invitation to become towards the world. The potential of this invitation, the article argues, is located in the educator’s imaginative and thoughtful responsibility to receive the young as they are and as they are becoming on the one hand, and to represent the world to them, on the other hand. The ways in which this potential can be negated are examined in relation to Arendt’s accounts of non-thinking and wilfulness. The article advances to the conclusion that participation in an education is possible only where young persons are received by educators who are persistently awake to their responsibility to receive the young people they educate anew.

Keywords:

• participation
• inclusion
• authority
• responsbility
• imagination
• thinking