A "More General Crisis": Hannah Arendt, world-alienation, and the challenges of teaching for the world as it is

Teachers College Record

Volumn 112, Issue 2, 2010, Pages 464-487

  Natasha, Levinson ^a  

^a KENT STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 77950669027     PISSN: 01614681     EISSN: 14679620     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (41)

1. Hannah Arendt "The Crisis in Education," in Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought (New York: Viking Press, 1961; Penguin Books, 1977), 173-196
2. Ibid, 187.
3. Stephanie Madder's (2009) essay in this volume has helped me to see how central the phenomenon of world-alienation is to Arendt's political philosophy and spurred me to think about the challenges of teaching "for thworld" under these conthtions. Stephanie Mackler, "And Worldlessness, Alas, Is Always a Kind of Barbarism: Hannah Arendt and the Challenge of Educating in Worldless Times," Teachers College Record 112, no.2 (2010).
4. Arendt "Crisis," 195.
5. Ibid., 189.
6. Hannah Arendt "Reflections on Litde Rock" Dissent 6/1 (Winter 1959).
7. For an account of the drama surrounding publication of the essay, see Elizabedi Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982), 308-318
8. Arendt "Crisis," 188.
9. Ibid., 192.
10. Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt, 316-317
11. Arendt "The Crisis," 175.
12. Ibid., 194.
13. Ibid., 178.
14. Arendt is writing primarily about "young person [s]" rather than children in this essay. In e case of young persons-presumably adolescents-one can be less concerned with eir "vital welfare" and more attentive to the "free development of characteristic qualities and talents." See "Crisis," 188-189
15. Arendt "Crisis," 176.
16. Ibid., 176.
17. Ibid., 183.
18. David Labaree explores this. David Labaree, "The Ed Schools Romance with Progressrvism," in The Trouble wi Ed Schools (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), 129-169
19. See also Kieran Egan, Getting It Wrong from e Beginning (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002).
20. Arendt "Crisis," 182.
21. Patricia Graham gives a helpful synopsis of life adjustment education in her book Schooling America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 76-80 and 91-94.
22. Arendt "Crisis," 188-189
23. Ibid., 193.
24. Ibid., 195.
25. Arendt Human Condition, 24.
26. Ibid., 198.
27. Ibid., 199.
28. Margaret Canovan has done a great deal to bring this theme in Arendt's writings to e fore. See Hannah Arendt: A Ranterpretation of her Political Thought (Cambridge, UKCambridge University Press, 1992 ), 104.
29. See also Kimberry Curtis, "Multicultural Education and Arendtian Conservatism," in Hannah Arendt and Education: Renewing Our Common World, ed. Mordechai Gordon (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2001), 133.
30. Arendt The Human Condition, 176-177
31. Margaret Canovan righdy argues that The Human Conthtion is best read in relation to The Origins of Totalitarianism in this and in many other regards. Totalitarian rule is prompted by the belief that men can remake the conthtions under which life is given to us (Canovan, 99).
32. Arendt "Crisis," 192.
33. Canovan explains how this view of "the conthtions under which life is given to man" is at the heart of Arendt's critique of totalitarianism, nuclear physics, and other forms of human arrogance that thsregard the limits of the human conthtion. See Canovan, 103-104
34. Arendt Human Condition, 81.
35. Ibid., 85.
36. Arendt "Crisis," 192.
37. For a fuller account of how consumerism fits into Arendt's dunking, see Trevor Norris, "Hannah Arendt and Jean Baudrillard: Pedagogy in the Consumer Society," Studies in Philosophy and Education 25 (2006): 457-477
38. Arendt Human Condition. For the remainder of the article, page numbers for The Human Conthtion will appear in parentheses in the text
39. Arendt's analysis here foreshadows Michel Foucault's assessment of the carceral society in such texts as Disapline and Punish.
40. Arendt uses this phrase in the course of her essay in praise of Gotdiold Lessing, "On Humanity in Dark Times: Thoughts on Lessing," Men in Dark Times (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1968), 8.
41. See also Curtis, "Multicultural Education," 140.