190025 SE Concepts of Humans and Theories of Education (2020S)

Today's international discussion in education is characterized by different national discourses or epistemologies, which ultimately have little to say to each other. Either one philosophises about concepts in the style of Anglo-Saxon educational philosophy, or one defends the educational idea of social cooperation as a preparation for democracy in the sense of American pragmatism, or one speaks of the necessity of standards and monitoring in the logic of American test psychology and evidence-based policy, or one vehemently defends the German-national ideal of "Bildung".
These nationally connoted pedagogies did not come about by chance, but reflect dominant cultural ideas that are very old and that began to be educationalized in the 18th century. Around 1800 there are two or three ideal types of pedagogical intervention: the "virtuous citizen" in the US, in Switzerland and partly in France and the "gebildete Mensch" in Germany.
The aim of the seminar is to understand, on the basis of selected texts, how these two or educationalized ideal types emerged from comprehensive discourses, how they were educationalized and became the basis of the national education theories that still dominate today.
Language: English and German