Education at the Borders: Rights, Refugees, and Responsibilities

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

This symposium features a panel of curriculum theorists and educational philosophers addressing the educational significance of Hannah Arendt’s notion of political thinking. Drawing on Arendt’s writings and constructs addressing “dark times” in the previous century, the panel engages events related to human rights, refugees, and ethical responsibilities at the Mexico-U.S. border. Each paper models a form of political thinking in its apprehension and examinations of fascism, children’s detention, and curricular objects that has direct global impacts and implications for school-based education and public pedagogy. The panelists offer political thinking as part of a teacher’s special duty to teach their students to think about the dangers of thoughtlessness and to carefully consider what it has meant and means to be human.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Critical Issues in Curriculum and Cultural Studies

Chair

• Hannah Spector, Penn State University - Harrisburg

Papers

• The Rights and Personhood of Other People's Children - Aparna Rita Mishra Tarc, York University

• The University, Teacher Education, and Bearing Witness at the Border When Political Institutions Fail - Mario Di Paolantonio, York University

• The Juridical Hypocrisy of Human Rights and Genocide Education Laws - Hannah Spector, Penn State University - Harrisburg

• Not Political: Violence and Education in Hannah Arendt - Samuel Rocha, The University of British Columbia

Discussant

• Jo-Anne Margaret Dillabough, University of Cambridge