Con tiempo. Sobre las formas pedagógicas. Notas para una lección

Abstract

In this valedictory lecture, Jan Masschelein concerns himself with the impoverishment and depletion of pedagogical forms of life, as well as their consequences. To do so, he first explores certain pedagogical forms to describe in more detail their own nature and potential. Thus, he explains how these, insofar as they are concrete instances of pedagogical life, are experiences that awaken and inspire by making the world speak and shedding light on knowledge; they invite adventure, not in a grand or spectacular way, but in the sense of allowing the path forward to gradually unfold as one walks along it, over time; they create a certain kind of time, distancing from economic production, and it is a “time for the world”, to better appreciate and listen to it. The pedagogical forms of life today threatened and on the brink of exhaustion due to the fever of educational digitization and the expansion of the “learning factory” and its consequences, need their own methods and practices to materialize (for example, by saying “try it”). It is the idea that we do not know (and cannot know) what bodies and minds are capable of since pedagogical forms of life are an argument in favour of believing that (the impossible) is possible. The lecture concludes by suggesting that perhaps it is precisely the pedagogues who have a role to play in envisioning a different future for pedagogical life. Perhaps pedagogues can contribute to reducing the omnipresence of the language of profit and capital, production, and feedback, by finding (or rediscovering) a language of their own with which to name and appreciate the richness of pedagogical forms of life, their beauty, and their power.