On the Future of Awful Thoughts in Teacher Education

This article explores the idea that the future of a profession resides in the questions it might ask of itself and how such questions affect its thinking. We consider how current conditions in teacher education-its crisis-driven orientation, its manic pace, its focus on control and stable knowledge-foreclose the capacity to think creatively from the having of awful thoughts. Drawing an example from literature we ask, what can it mean, to the lives we already live, to encounter human relations at the most difficult moments and in their most generous and ethical attempts? From this question, we raise themes that might allow us to rethink teacher education: affiliation, commitment, trauma, destruction and community.