A Curricular View of the Teacher and the World: A Study of Cosmopolitanism as Education

• In Event: Teacher Meets World: A Critical Conversation on Hansen’s Cosmopolitanism

Abstract

There is an odd staleness about and persistence to identity politics in educational and humanities scholarship. The cultural and intellectual cul-de-sac created by the formerly engaging but now tiring opposition between the E. D. Hirsch(s) and Stanley Fish(s) on one end and the Henry Giroux(s) and Alfie Kohn(s) on the other is not productive. For some the conundrum is solved. Diane Ravitch recently proclaimed that the curricular “culture wars” have been resolved and asserts the need for, and legitimacy of, the cultural cannon. It’s not that easy. David Hansen, while not claiming to resolve this tension, provides a distinctly different response.
In The Teacher and the World, Hansen maintains that cosmopolitanism is an orientation that allows people “to balance reflective openness to the new with reflective loyalty to the known” enabling people “to learn from rather than merely tolerate others, even while retaining the integrity and continuity of their distinctive ways of being” (pg. 1). In Hansen’s hands cosmopolitanism offers one path to live in and through the tragic gap created by the tensions of our culturally diverse and morally oppositional context. Hansen goes on to write that the promise in cultural cosmopolitanism enables “picturing cultural and individual differences more clearly, while also grasping just how challenging it can be to take on new perspectives and habits”(p.15). The text is offered with the premise that it will “provide teachers with a way to reconstruct their philosophies of education.” This is heady and heartfelt stuff and promises (perhaps too?) much. In this analysis we examine this promise by analyzing two recent educational films – “The Class” and “History Boys” through the cosmopolitanism lens. Both films offer depictions of cultural (class, ethnic, national, and gender) dynamics in classroom settings. Both portray moral conflicts (an ethics of duty versus an ethics of virtue) for students and teachers alike. In this essay we offer a textual and cultural analysis of the films utilizing Hansen’s cosmopolitan framing (informed by the works of Martha Nussbaum and Kwame Appiah). This cosmopolitan framing will be contrasted briefly with the views of those endorsing a more canonical perspective as well as those employing the lens of identity politics and it will be apprised and appraised. If time and resources allow the analysis will also be informed by anecdotes from and initial survey results of students enrolled in and “Education and Film” course for undergraduates interested in teaching. Does the cosmopolitan orientation allow students and future teachers to “reconstruct their philosophies of education”?

Authors

• Daniel Liston, University of Colorado

• Ian Parker Renga, University of Colorado - Boulder