Education, sustainable or otherwise, as simulacra: A symphony of Baudrillard

Abstract

Preamble: Singers gathering on stage

This is a paper for three voices. An attempt at a philosophic experience in the symphonic form. The first voice carries the tune and holds the shape of the paper as it focuses on Baudrillard and proposes that public education in Canada today is in fact a simulacra. The second voice has more room to roam, tracing some of the Western philosophical underpinnings of Baudrillard’s stages of the simulacra from Aristotle to Saussure’s centralization of human language and out to the disappearance of the signified altogether. And the third voice, plays a parallel tune to the first two but focuses on the evolution of education for sustainable development. Eventually all three voices find harmonies around the challenges of their respective simulacrum (i.e. public education, human language, and education for sustainable development) and will, as a dramatic conclusion, seek to offer some important educational implications. We have employed, as seen above, different fonts for each voice and divided the paper along symphonic lines (i.e. sonata, adagio, scherzo, and rondo) with each movement being accompanied by one stage of Baudrillard’s development of the simulacra. We encourage the reader to think of this paper as a philosophical score choosing to read each voice separately or all three together seeking resonances along the way.

Keywords:

• Baudrillard
• hyper-reality
• simulacra

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 While Baudrillard appears to posit four stages, many scholars, including Butler (1999), see only 3, with the third and fourth being essentially the same. We blur the lines a bit for the purposes of the larger paper project.

2 At the same time, Warren (1990) and Cheney (1989) argued that environmental ethics are necessarily contextual, and shaped by geography and historical experience, and specific to place.

3 Baudrillard scholar Mark Poster interprets that ‘this universal mirror’ means that the mirror does not reflect reality but substitutes for reality, in the sense that it ‘never simply represents reality but puts forth its own reality (p. 9). Poster further adds, ‘simulations and the real, for Baudrillard, are different from reality but always stand in relation to it’ (2001, p. 9). Butler (1999) also noted the ambiguity and paradoxes surrounding the real in Baudrillard’s writing. It is beyond the scope of this paper to further explore this but the authors of this paper maintain a sense of the real, specifically in relation to natural world.

4 https://www.rcenetwork.org/portal/rce-vision-and-mission

5 One reason for using the full term ‘education for sustainable development’ throughout.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Chloe Humphreys

Chloe Humphreys is on Faculty at Quest University in Squamish, BC, Canada. Her doctorate in philosophy of education was completed at Simon Fraser University. She is also one of the founders of Squamish Nature Learners School.

Sean Blenkinsop

Sean Blenkinsop is a Professor in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University.

Bob Jickling

Bob Jickling, Professor Emeritus at Lakehead University, has interests in environmental philosophy; environmental, experiential, and outdoor education; and philosophy of education. His most recent book is Wild Pedagogies: Touchstones for Re-Negotiating Education and the Environment in the Anthropocene in which he and others of the Crex Crex Collective attempt to find openings for radical re-visioning of education. As a long-time wilderness traveller, much of his inspiration is derived from the landscape of his home in Canada's Yukon.