The Allure of Identity as a Challenge to Education

• Speakers: James Charles Conroy (University of Glasgow), Sharon l Hunter (University of Strathclyde), Robert A Davis (University of Glasgow), Lovisa Bergdhal (Soderton University)
• Chairperson: James Conroy
• When: 00 SES 02 A / Tuesday, 22/Aug/2023: 3:15pm - 4:45pm
• Location: James McCune Smith, 438AB [Floor 4]
• Gilbert Scott, Humanities [Floor 2]

This symposium addresses, from somewhat different perspectives, the rise of identity as a shaping feature of not only the discursive politics of education but, increasingly,  the spaces of pedagogy and curriculum. The claims to the import of identity are driven by often competing ideological perspectives. Hence, one element has seen the resurgence of nationalisms  while another, the emergence of an assumed right to not be offended by others opinions and beliefs. Allied to these twin concerns is the role of the State and its agencies (including education) in facilitating a closure of disagreement. The elision of the respective responsibilities of childhood and adulthood, the emerging primacy of of the post-anthropocene orthodoxy, the State's preference to promote certtain kinds of progressive discourse over more traditional or conservative forms all serve to reduce the import of dissonance to the maintenance of a healthy liberal democracy. None of the presentations intend to deny the significance of myriad progressive views on educational purpose and practice but do wish to lay bare some of the inconsistencies and unintended consequences that might flow from the two easy adoption of  liberal nostrums while exposing their significant if attenuated links to regressive forms of educational endeavour.

In this the presenters here will take seriously the post Second World War concern to see education as a critical partner in the maintenance of the social contract and, in turn, a means for securing liberal democracy.  They will  examine the State’s role with respect to the private spaces of the family and identity preferences.

In all of this, the presenters will explore the necessity of a more public questioning of, what may be considered the increasingly interventionist nostrums of the state/the institutions of educated opinion. Amongst other lenses the presenters will draw upon Arendt, Levinas  and Lysgaard to draw a critical eye on the homogenising impulses of so many different features in and of education. Many of these impulses produce forms of self-regulation that may both educationally and politically be counterproductive with respect to liberal democracy.

At the heart of this endeavour is a wish to expose,explore and analyse the myriad contradictions  and confusions that have emerged in recent decades with regard to human identity and difference and attempt to offer some suggestions by way of a corrective to what the presenters, in their different ways, consider to be educational and cultural cul de sacs.