Repository | Book | Chapter

It might seem strange to include here a contribution on Stanley Cavell, since he does not write explicitly about education, or at least education in the sense of schooling. This chapter argues, however, that the educational force of Cavell's work is significant, and central to understanding his thinking. It addresses two aspects of Cavell's concern with a form of education that amounts to a transformation of the self and of society: first, what it is to read, and second, the development and expression of voice. These aspects of Cavell's thinking are then considered in relation to learning, and possessing, language. Cavell's concern is not with how we learn to read books, or to speak, but with how our reception of words is ineluctably tied to the political, and to our responsibility for words in a community of speakers.In considering how Cavell's work positions him in relation to contemporary debates about education, the chapter argues that Cavell's emphasis on reading and voice is related to the concept of "uncommon schooling', an idea from Henry David Thoreau's Walden. Our education through uncommon schooling is one that requires, and is constituted by, continual transformation. This is a perfectionist education; it is the education of grownups. To read Cavell is to engage in the education of grownups; it is itself educative: it demands the very kind of reading that is a recurrent theme in his work, and opens the possibilities for the kind of education of grownups that he espouses.

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-72761-5_8

Full citation: