In a time of cultural pluralism and legitimation crisis (Habermas), there is an increasing uncertainty among teachers in Europe regarding with what right they are fostering others peoples’ children. What does it mean to teach “common” values and virtues to the coming generation? How do I find legitimacy and authority for this endeavour, not as a family member or as a politician, but as a teacher?

To respond to this uncertainty, the paper takes the public/private distinction as a starting-point for rethinking the place of the school. Drawing on the work of Hannah Arendt, it argues that the school is an in-between place, no longer private and not yet public: a place that transforms values and virtues into “common goods” and turns fostering into a teaching matter. The overall purpose of the paper is to sketch out the consequences of this “in-betweenness” for what it means to find ones voice as a teacher in fostering the coming generation.

The argument unfolds in three sections. In the first section, we explore Arendt’s view of education and how it relates to her notions of the private and the public spheres. In the second section, we put the Greek distinction between the public and private in relation to Masschelein & Simons definition of the school and the ‘scholastic techniques’ they advocate as way of making the school a public issue. We argue that the school must suspend both family (the private) and society (the public) in order to present previous generations’ values and virtues as something worth studying, being engaged in, and, hence, as a “common good” torenew. In the third and concluding section, we then read the private/public distinction through the lens of feminist critique. We argue that speaking and finding one’s voice as a teacher in the “in-betweenness” of a school that is neither private nor public is never a neutral endeavour and that the private/public distinction has masculine and feminine connotations that both need to be acknowledged when teaching values and virtues to the coming generation.

Arendt, Hannah. 1961/2006. Between Past and Future. London: Penguin Books. ———. 1958. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Biesta, Gert J. J. 2010. How to Exist Politically and Learn from It: Hannah Arendt and the Problem of Democratic Education. Teachers College Record 112(2):556-575. Elshtain, Jean Bethke (1981). Public Man, Private Woman. Women in Social and Political Thought. Oxford: Martin Robertson. Gordon, Mordechai (ed.) 2001a. Hannah Arendt and Education: Renewing Our Common World. Boulder. Westview Press. ———. 2001b. Hannah Arendt on Authority: Conservatism in Education Reconsidered. In Mordechai Gordon (ed.) Hannah Arendt and Education: Renewing Our Common World. Boulder. Westview Press. Habermas, Jürgen. 1976/1997. Legitimation Crisis. Edited by Thomas McCarthy. London: Heinemann. Higgins, Christopher. 2010. Human Conditions for Teaching: The Place of Pedagogy in Arendt’s Vita Activa. Teachers College Record 112(2):407-455. Honig, Bonnie. 1985. Feminist Interpretations of Hannah Arendt. Edited by Bonnie Honig. University Park PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press. Irigaray, Luce. (2002). To speak is never neutral. London: Continuum Levinson, Natasha. 2001. “The Paradox of Natality: Teachin in the Midst of Belatedness.” In Mordechai Gordon (ed.) Hannah Arendt and Education: Renewing Our Common World. Boulder. Westview Press. Levinson, Natasha. 2010. “A ‘More General Crisis’: Hannah Arendt, World-Alienation, and the Challenges of Teaching for the World As It Is”. Teachers College Record, Vol. 112, pp.464-487. Løvlie, Lars. 2007. The pedagogy of Place. Nordic Educational Research 1: 32-37. Masschelein, Jan. 2011. Experimentum Scholae: The World Once More … But Not (Yet) Finished. Studies in Philosophy and Education 30:529-535. Masschelein, Jan & Simons, Maarten. 2013. In Defence of the School. A Public Issue. Trans. Jack McMartin. Leuven: E-ducation, Culture & Society. Sjöholm, Cecilia. 2015. Doing Aesthetics with Arendt. How to See Things. Columbia: Columbia University Press. Weintraub, Jeff. (1997). “The Theory and Politics of the Public/Private Distinction” in Public and Private. Perspectives on the Theory and Politics of the Public/Private Distinction. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Skolinspektionen. (2012). Skolornas arbete med demokrati och värdegrund. [Swedish Schools Inspectorate (2012)]. http://www.skolinspektionen.se/globalassets/0-si/01-inspektion/kvalitetsgranskning/demokrati/kvalgr-demokrati-samf.pdf Lgr. -11. Skolverket. Läroplan för grundskolan, förskoleklassen, och fritidshemmet.