Teaching without Banisters: Hannah Arendt and Preparing Teachers for an Active Life

• In Event: Diversity, Critical Pedagogies, and Social Justice Education

Abstract

The current situation in public education threatens to undermine many of our previous assumptions about education in a democracy and the teachers' role in creating citizens for that democracy. In this paper, Hannah Arendt's notions of natality, the active life and thinking without banisters are examined for their potential in rethinking teacher preparation to recruit and prepare teachers who are willing to ask more substantial questions about their role and responsibility to students and then are willing to teacher "without banisters" in order to fulfill that responsibility.

Author

• Rick Breault, Ashland University