Title: Learning as Ideological vs. Learning as Communicative: The Janus Face of Institutionalized Education
Stream: Emerging Philosophical Perspectives on Learning & Education
Presentation Type: Oral Presentation
Authors:
Hsin-I Liu, University of the Incarnate Word, United States
Abstract:
This paper critically reflects upon the dual processes of institutionalized education in contemporary capitalist society: ideological and communicative. On the one hand, as the French philosopher Louis Althusser claimed, institutionalized education is an “ideological state apparatus,” in which the dominant cultural signification and representation are systematically transmitted to the next generation. But on the other hand, institutionalized education also allows expression and dialogue among educators and learners, which may continually transform the dominant symbolic forms. By taking such a duality of learning into consideration, I will argue that any studies on institutionalized education should always combine ideological analysis of domination with communicative inquiry of everyday life interactions. The studies on learning need to explore how educators/learners struggle with ideological hegemony in their daily lives and understand how they keep trying to cope with and transform the symbolic meanings constructed in their educational contexts. In other words, as the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu argued, the relations of communication are always interwoven with relations of power and no human communication is without socio-cultural domination. Following this argument, it is necessary to explore how educators/learners wrestle between the forces of homogenization and diversification, and between the dominant and emergent elements in their learning processes.
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