Tag: education

What does people’s refusal to wear face-masks during a pandemic tell us about the possibility of Kant’s self-governing humans?

June 28, 2020

“In early 2020, the covid-19 pandemic was declared and national governments around the world put in place various levels of restriction […] reduce close-contact with each other so as to reduce transmission of the virus. […]

Does the refusal of so many to follow what seems to so many others as rational rules which benefit us all individually and collectively then disprove the Kantian hope of self-governance? Does Foucault accidentally provide the state with an argument for more disciplinary power, given new evidence of people’s apparent inability to follow their rational self-interest? … More What does people’s refusal to wear face-masks during a pandemic tell us about the possibility of Kant’s self-governing humans?

The Truth About the Conscription of Student Nurses: Let Them Eat Cake (Again! But This Time With Clapping!)

April 3, 2020

“On 19th March, the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) called for student nurses in the final stage of their course to “volunteer” to assist in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic […] it is expected that thousands of final year students will begin working this month. The main focus of this article will be to highlight the atrocious wordplay bordering on an outright lie of claiming that early registration is on a voluntary basis.

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I spoke to a few student nurses about their actual situations and how this crisis is affecting them […]

One student, Claire is a single mother with 2 young children […] not being able to go on placement means her income is devastated and she must defer. Considering pursuing her course has already been a financial struggle, deferring another year may mean the end of her university career and hopes of becoming a registered nurse, but this is her only real option- no choice. ” … More The Truth About the Conscription of Student Nurses: Let Them Eat Cake (Again! But This Time With Clapping!)

Arendt’s “Thoughtfulness” & Bourdieu’s “Reflexivity”: Differences, Similarities & Consequences | Part 2

February 5, 2020

“In order to prevent future moral catastrophe, we need to encourage thoughtfulness and discourage thoughtlessness. In order to do this, we need to include philosophers’ biographies when considering their philosophies. […] Nixon ends by admitting how he believes too much thoughtfulness could lead to mental quagmire, as in Heidegger, thoughtlessness would lead to more Eichmanns, and points to Mendelssohn, whom befriended a teenage Arendt, as giving an example of how to foster thinking. It’s a nice sentiment, and we can agree Mendelssohn did a good thing, however by leaving it there, Nixon fails to follow his own call to action.

Biography does indeed need to be considered when thinking about thinkers and their thoughts- what this really means is we cannot think about thought alone; the material reality and its influences on a persons thoughts and actions is necessary to truly understand either.” … More Arendt’s “Thoughtfulness” & Bourdieu’s “Reflexivity”: Differences, Similarities & Consequences | Part 2

Arendt’s “Thoughtfulness” & Bourdieu’s “Reflexivity”: Differences, Similarities & Consequences | Part 1

September 24, 2019

“Similarly to how Arendt saw the process of becoming thoughtful as a reaction to actual events, Bourdieu claims that reflexivity, the temporary ability for us to reflect upon and change our social practices (which include thoughtfulness), is a reaction to the world. […] Arendt’s life cause her to become not just thoughtful, but reflecting on her own thoughtfulness, allows Arendt to develop her ideas about the connection between thoughtfulness and morality […] Similarly, Bourdieu wrestled with internal conflicts which, in a similarly meta-reflexive action, helped him develop the concept of cleft habitus. […] Thinking about how doxa affects social practices, which include both the social practice of thinking as such, and reflexivity, can then help us understand how doxa themselves can be considered forms of capital. […] we might say that Arendt’s refusal to systematise her thinking was due to her cleft habitus, as a fractured habitus could perhaps only contain fractured doxa- a habitus without a bannister.” … More Arendt’s “Thoughtfulness” & Bourdieu’s “Reflexivity”: Differences, Similarities & Consequences | Part 1

The Psychic Landscape of Social Class & My Cleft Habitus | Part 9: Does Social Mobility Reduce Hysteresis?

January 23, 2019

“Like the old adage, “you can take the person out of the place, but you can’t take the place out the person,” Bourdieu’s theory of habitus includes the idea of a primary habitus, the result of primary socialisation, which is much more resistant to change- yet not eternal. When a person experiences rapid changes in field, Bourdieu argued that the mismatch between a person’s habitus and their new field causes a “hysteresis effect”. […] in today’s world in which social mobility is much more common, is the working-class habitus protected from splitting that might occur as a result of rapid upwards social mobility, perhaps simply as a result of increased awareness of such a possibility existing?” … More The Psychic Landscape of Social Class & My Cleft Habitus | Part 9: Does Social Mobility Reduce Hysteresis?

The Psychic Landscape of Social Class & My Cleft Habitus | Part 7: What School Should I Send My Children To? Am I Also Choosing What Social Class They Will Be?

November 14, 2018

“Pursuing higher education as a means to become upwardly socially mobile also reflects the hyper-competitive individualistic culture of contemporary society and universities, especially their marketing departments, are partly to blame for this. For me personally, academic pursuits were not a means to the end of greater financial security, although when I was younger this was seen as an obvious benefit, but I was drawn to them because it is in my habitus. However, there is still a lingering feeling of anxiety and sometimes guilty shame about my choices regarding my education […]

Reay’s research shows how some parents felt guilty about not sending their children to the best school possible and how they struggled balancing their own values with normative notions about good middle-class parenting. […]

If I can afford it, I would send my children to private school. Does this make me complicit in this unfair system? Is the privilege of choosing a lower or middle-class school also a choice about what social class one’s children will be?” … More The Psychic Landscape of Social Class & My Cleft Habitus | Part 7: What School Should I Send My Children To? Am I Also Choosing What Social Class They Will Be?

Macbeth Had a Cleft Habitus, Sometimes Propaganda is Moral, and Social Mobility is Like Killing the King

October 19, 2018

“Macbeth teaches its audience a moral lesson beyond killing is wrong, since it is unquestioningly alright to kill your fellow man at war, nor even regicide is wrong as King Macbeth is justly slain at the end (no spoiler alerts on a four centuries old play), but that it is wrong to disturb the social order. […]

Perhaps Bernays’ concept of propaganda is too broad? Can we consider, for example, Aesop’s fables as propaganda? […]

t is also difficult to examine how much luck was involved in creating my situation because, like Bourdieu who first theorised about habitus, my class mobility is an exception to the rule about how our inherited capitals, our origins, determine our destinations. […]

At what point does doing what modern society requires of one to get ahead, perhaps abandoning the class interests as a whole yet still working towards more justice and opportunities for those like myself that want to move up, equate to killing the king?” … More Macbeth Had a Cleft Habitus, Sometimes Propaganda is Moral, and Social Mobility is Like Killing the King

The Psychic Landscape of Social Class & My Cleft Habitus | Part 6: The Beginnings of a Bourdieusian Analysis of Mental Illness (BPD)?

July 31, 2018

“Risking reducing parts of Bourdieu’s socioanalysis from a philosophical enquiry into the essence of his own being through examining his becoming, and certainly hoping not to appear to pathologise his reflexivity, there is a kind of constant flux of self-image as it is constantly re-examined. The difference between Bourdieu and one who suffers with BPD perhaps is, as many psychologists would agree (at least in my experience with fellow students many of which are now practising psychologists in some form) is that his reflexive actions did not cause him social problems and/or psychic distress enough to be considered pathological. ” … More The Psychic Landscape of Social Class & My Cleft Habitus | Part 6: The Beginnings of a Bourdieusian Analysis of Mental Illness (BPD)?

Hereditary Meritocracy Is Not Meritocracy | Critical Commentary of The Economist

April 23, 2018

“The idea of a “Hereditary Meritocracy” is provocative and not dissimilar from, albeit a quite reductive form of, one of the main ideas by our favourite Frenchman Pierre Bourdieu- we in the advanced economies of the world, although not subject to the arbitrary inequality of hereditary transmission of power legitimised by divine right, are still far from the ideal world in which “the condition of your birth does not determine the outcome of your life”. Actually, the transmission of power and privilege is still quite arbitrary, largely hereditary but now it is disguised in other forms… If we really want to (I can’t believe I’m going to quote Thatcher!) “let our poppies grow tall”, then we need to accept the reality that some of those poppies are getting extra fertiliser and some are born in the shade. ” … More Hereditary Meritocracy Is Not Meritocracy | Critical Commentary of The Economist

The Psychic Landscape of Social Class & My Cleft Habitus | Part 4: Some Reflexions & Notes on Habitus, Luck & Biological Capital

February 11, 2018

“Being reflexive means being conscious in a way that makes our normal practice, however much it felt like we were consciously doing it before, seem like unconscious. […] By analysing how I came to acquire the scholastic disposition and become academically successful we can look at the structures which led to this, so policy can encourage these types of results.
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Biological transfer is, although stochastic and probabilistic, it is not absolutely deterministic. […] Our statistical techniques can never give us 100% certainty (if they did, we would have hard laws rather than statistical probabilities), human errors, or all the other kinds of problems associated with human research, we always face margins of errors” … More The Psychic Landscape of Social Class & My Cleft Habitus | Part 4: Some Reflexions & Notes on Habitus, Luck & Biological Capital