A Teacher – Between a Potentially Tragic Role and a Crack of Emancipation

• Main Author: Małgorzata Lewartowska-Zychowicz
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: University of Lower Silesia 2014-12-01
• Series: Forum Oświatowe
• Subjects: nauczyciel; kultura neoliberalna; reprodukcja kultury; rozwój indywidualny
• Online Access: http://forumoswiatowe.pl/index.php/czasopismo/article/view/134

<p>Being a teacher is a concomitant of the experience of unavoidable ambivalence, which is characteristic to human condition in general. In the teacher’s case, it is related to functioning between two discourses—on the one hand, the discourse of cultural reproduction, which demands the teacher to pass on the earned by generations culture to his scholars and shape their identity accordingly to socially acceptable patterns. On the other hand, the paid ocentric discourse, which states that the teacher should create favourable conditions for the uninhibited development of a child in respect of its autonomy. The issue here is the fact, that both tasks the teacher has to face are the elements of different, yet socially constructed discourses. Therefore, both are externally enforced components of a teacher’s role. In the context of modern, neoliberal culture, they no longer function as alternative patterns of a teacher’s role, but merged, due to centralisation of all the individual’s development aims to free market activity. In this reconfiguration, I see the possibility to perceive a teacher analogically to the heroes of ancient tragedies, involved in a clash of forces that surpass them and have unavoidable influence on them. The heroism of a teacher I place in his firmness in attempts to discover the truth about the world and his existence in it.</p>