Page 34 - Šolsko polje, XXXI, 2020, 5-6: Teaching Feminism, ed. Valerija Vendramin
P. 34
šolsko polje, letnik xxxi, številka 5–6
At one moment, I felt like giving up on yet another attempt at ana-
lysing what this is all about and taking refuge in feminist scepticism, but I
resisted. There is no possibility of any pulling back, not anymore.
Promising Entry
I recently reread Nora Sternfeld’s article “Unglamorous Tasks: What Can
Education Learn from its Political Traditions?” (Sternfeld, 2010), which
fully reinvigorated my previous ideas on how alternative education might
look like, emboldening me to create the grounds for exploring the role of
women’s studies education in the current and quite specific historical and
cultural context. It also enabled me to help move in this direction, despite
some inner reluctance and sites of resistance. Instead of promoting certain
nationally-oriented goals, culture and values or reproduction of knowl-
edge as embedded in the traditional tasks of education, Sternfeld opted
for another intention of education. In her view, education is “/…/ about
exploring the possibilities of an alternative production of knowledge that
resists, supplements, thwarts, undercuts, or challenges traditional forms
of knowledge” (Sternfeld, 2010, p. 1).
Sternfeld elaborated her critical ideas while rethinking the tradi-
tions of political education via examples of the role of Left protagonists
(Walter Benjamin, Edwin Hoernie, Bertolt Brecht) in the Germany of
the Weimar Republic and their ideas on “communist pedagogy” and
“teaching play” methods, then with regard to the “pedagogy of the op-
pressed” and “liberation pedagogy” first developed by the Brazilian the-
ologian Paulo Freire, and further elaborated by Peter Mayo, as well as
more recent radical, feminist and antiracist education (Henry A. Giroux,
bell hooks) from the 1960s onwards. By using this historical trajectory of
critical ideas and practices, she wanted to explain not only which educa-
tional techniques have guided towards progressive tasks within twenti-
eth-century (post)-modernity, but why we need a politicality of educa-
tion nowadays.
My analysis somehow emerges as a productive response to some of
the theses set out in this article. Three postulates from Sternfeld’s text are
relevant here: first, there is no neutral education while dealing with spe-
cific conditions and contingencies as well as with one’s own experiential
gesture; second, education is the very process of taking a stand that both
dismantles the traditional educator/learner (subject–object) relationship
and urges for emancipatory action; third, “there is always something un-
foreseeable in education” (ibid., p. 5) that sheds more light on the entire
process, making it exciting, unpredictable and uncontrollable.
32
At one moment, I felt like giving up on yet another attempt at ana-
lysing what this is all about and taking refuge in feminist scepticism, but I
resisted. There is no possibility of any pulling back, not anymore.
Promising Entry
I recently reread Nora Sternfeld’s article “Unglamorous Tasks: What Can
Education Learn from its Political Traditions?” (Sternfeld, 2010), which
fully reinvigorated my previous ideas on how alternative education might
look like, emboldening me to create the grounds for exploring the role of
women’s studies education in the current and quite specific historical and
cultural context. It also enabled me to help move in this direction, despite
some inner reluctance and sites of resistance. Instead of promoting certain
nationally-oriented goals, culture and values or reproduction of knowl-
edge as embedded in the traditional tasks of education, Sternfeld opted
for another intention of education. In her view, education is “/…/ about
exploring the possibilities of an alternative production of knowledge that
resists, supplements, thwarts, undercuts, or challenges traditional forms
of knowledge” (Sternfeld, 2010, p. 1).
Sternfeld elaborated her critical ideas while rethinking the tradi-
tions of political education via examples of the role of Left protagonists
(Walter Benjamin, Edwin Hoernie, Bertolt Brecht) in the Germany of
the Weimar Republic and their ideas on “communist pedagogy” and
“teaching play” methods, then with regard to the “pedagogy of the op-
pressed” and “liberation pedagogy” first developed by the Brazilian the-
ologian Paulo Freire, and further elaborated by Peter Mayo, as well as
more recent radical, feminist and antiracist education (Henry A. Giroux,
bell hooks) from the 1960s onwards. By using this historical trajectory of
critical ideas and practices, she wanted to explain not only which educa-
tional techniques have guided towards progressive tasks within twenti-
eth-century (post)-modernity, but why we need a politicality of educa-
tion nowadays.
My analysis somehow emerges as a productive response to some of
the theses set out in this article. Three postulates from Sternfeld’s text are
relevant here: first, there is no neutral education while dealing with spe-
cific conditions and contingencies as well as with one’s own experiential
gesture; second, education is the very process of taking a stand that both
dismantles the traditional educator/learner (subject–object) relationship
and urges for emancipatory action; third, “there is always something un-
foreseeable in education” (ibid., p. 5) that sheds more light on the entire
process, making it exciting, unpredictable and uncontrollable.
32
