School-time as a democratic experience of the present

Abstract

According to the Greeks philosophers, the idea of a school implied a specific experience of time: scholè as free time. (Huizinga 1949, 147) In the contemporary field of education, school-time predominantly appears as a productive time in which time is a means for the realisation of certain predefined outcomes and specific economical, political or social needs. (Maschelein 2010, 673) Time is then considered as a chronological succession and transfer between past and present investments in favour a certified future. The main research-question of this paper is to explore Agambenâ s idea of â Messianic timeâ as a critical and contemporary attempt to rethink the school as a genuine democratic and pedagogical experience of time. The Messianic time is the experience of time as a remainder, which interrupts the chronological succession of time by making the present moment visible as an experience of pure potentiality (Agamben 2005b). In this present-time the realisations of the past (in educational context: the assumed social, political positions) and the expected future outcomes (in educational context: the expected social, economical and political goals) are made in-operative. School-time would in this way disclose a genuine democratic experience of equality in students become freed from past or future inequalities.

status: published