The Crisis In Education And The Loss Of Authority

As one of the most influential political philosophers of the 20th century, Hannah Arendt is not only unique in the fields of contemporary philosophy, politics, culture, etc., and also prominently important in education. On the one hand, her general theories, like action, public realm, and responsibility and judgment, provide unique perspectives and conceptual frameworks for thinking of contemporary education. On the other hand, her views on education which are embodied in The Crisis in Education and Reflections on Little Rock, aroused people’s deep concern and introspection about education reality. While the existing studies mostly focusing on the educational application of Arendt’s political philosophy, this thesis, starting from the crisis in education, mainly makes internal interpretation of Arendt’s thoughts concerning education and makes critical reflections on it, which are based on the texts of The Crisis in Education (and Reflections on Little Rock).The crisis in education which Arendt pays attention to occurs in the 50s of the 20th century, characterized by the declining of American school standards. Due to the invalid measures of the government to prevent the declining tendency, the education problem turned into a political issue. In Arendt’s opinion, the reasons why this crisis is noteworthy lie in that it is not peculiar to the United States, but universal to the world. At the same time, it also provides the chance to rethink the essence of education and return to education itself. However, as an immigration country, America is open to new things blindly and has an excessive equal political atmosphere, which make the crisis the most serious in United States.Arendt argued that the apparent reason of the crisis in education is the concept deviation, including assuming the children’s world self-sufficient, pedagogy the science of methods and the students acquiring knowledge only through practice. While the deep root lies in the loss of political authority. To get out of the crisis, we need to return to education itself and pay close attention to the nature of education------natality. First of all, we should protect and guide the children as newcomers, taking right attitudes towards the relationship between the children and the adults, and the world. Secondly, we ought to restore the teachers’ authority and let teachers take responsibility for the world and the children, protecting children from the damage coming from the world and the world from the children’s destroy. Thirdly, as a social field, schools need some independent space to develop, paying attention to systematical subject knowledge and rejecting to replacing serious study with playing totally.However, Arendt’s thoughts concerning education is faced with the challenge of dropping into the trap of elitism, the simplification of teaching style and the absolute division among different fields. Nevertheless, her education views still has important implications for Chinese contemporary schooling, including connecting "tradition" with "modern" closely, delimiting the border of children’s freedom, strengthening the teachers’authority and responsibility and treating the equality in schools rationally.