Orientations to Authority – Democracy in the Mind

• In Event: Teaching Democracy Now

Abstract

This poster describes a writing activity, followed by an assigned reading, both of which are then discussed in relation to one another in a seminar session. In this sequence, I ask teacher candidates to write about their experiences with rules: breaking them, following them, wishing about them. Then, the reading—from psychoanalyst Adam Phillips—is titled “In praise of difficult children” in which the teacher candidates read about the need to develop a both/and stance to rules and how both they and their students relate to them. Before I describe the assignment, the reading, and what I see students doing as they put them together, I want to elaborate on a kind of inquiry about rules that I think is important in general and has special significance at a time of rising authoritarianism and autocracy.

Author

• H. James Garrett, University of Georgia