In this paper I draw on the work of Cavell and Deleuze to critique the tendency (at an international level) to view schooling in problem solving terms. I consider the notion that teaching itself has been translated into, and naturalised as, a problem solving process. In quite different ways Cavell and Deleuze expose problem “solving” as a repressive way of going on, or at least show how it may prevent us from going “on”. Whereas Cavell is concerned with the ways in which problems dissolve only to start up again, Deleuze distinguishes between “real” and “false” problems. Different understandings of “translation” are central to the arguments presented here. Drawing on the work of Cavell and Deleuze I explore various classroom scenes to imagine ways of teaching and learning that resist translation into problems that need solving.

Cavell’s treatment of “translation” owes much to his readings of Emerson and Wittgenstein. This is discussed in some detail in Saito and Standish’s article ‘What’s the Problem with Problem-Solving? Language, Skepticism, and Pragmatism’ (2009) Saito and Standish argue that Cavell’s understanding of translation is not about translating one language into another in which a foreign language can be “juxtaposed against the original”. Rather, translation is “something already woven into the process of the acquisition of the original language” (p, 160) and is always evolving. This takes us away from a metaphysical understanding of the world that pictures language as a representational symbolic system. Instead, language (and therefore the world) is constantly undergoing change. Just as language and world are in translation, so are we: “language is already in translation, in movement in the self, and we in turn, are always already in translation” (ibid.). Saito and Standish’s discussion is, in part, a critique of the problem solving dimension of Dewey’s pragmatism. Following Cavell, they argue that Dewey’s philosophy embodies a form of repression (161). The ongoing transfiguration of self and world means that problems only ever “appear” to be solved.  I try to show how this critique of Dewey also has something to say to current dominant approaches to teaching and learning. I explore the ways in which Cavell’s understanding of translation can help us to imagine alternative approaches to teaching and learning that are not concerned with solving problems.

In the second part of the paper I engage with a rather different approach to these issues by turning to the work of Gilles Deleuze. For Deleuze our ways of understanding the world arise from translating the “virtual” (or sensual) dimension of experience into various “actualisations”. This “virtual” dimension is then repressed and problem solving approaches to our environment help to reinforce the repression. Conventional approaches to problem solving must be “problematic” for Deleuze because they tend to understand things in terms of fixed “actual” identities (the problem solver, the problem). Moreover, such approaches work with finalities rather than becomings. Deleuze maintains that: “as opposed to solutions, problems must be thought of as true or false”. I consider what “true” problems might look like in a classroom setting.

In the last part of the paper I draw on Gordon Bearn’s critique of Cavell to bring these approaches into conversation.

References Bearn, G. (2000). ‘Pointlessness and the University of Beauty’. In P. Dhillon and P. Standish (Eds) Lyotard: Just Education. London: Routledge. Cavell (2005) Philosophy theday after tomorrow. Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press. Bearn, G. (2012) ‘Sensual Schooling: On the Aesthetic Education of Grownups’. In N. Saito and P. Standish (Eds) Stanley Cavell and the Education of Grownups Campbell, A., McNamara, O. and Gilroy, P. (2004). Practitioner research and professional development in education. New Delhi: Paul Chapman Publishing. Deleuze, G. (2004). Difference and Repetition. Continuum: London Kripke, S. (1982) Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Saito, S. and Standish, P. (2009) ‘What’s the Problem with Problem solving? Language, Skepticism and Pragmatism’.Contemporary Pragmatism 6 (1), 153-167. Williams, J. (2003) Gilles Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition: A Critical Introduction and Guide. Edinburgh Univesity Press: Edinburgh