2nd Global Conference
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Thursday 14th July - Saturday 16th July
2005
Mansfield College, Oxford
Conference Programme, Abstracts & Papers
Session 10: Engagement with the
Writing, Reading and Thinking Processes
Chair: Valentina Martini
Learning to Write Right Before School: The Conditions
of Natural Learning the Lead to Engagement with Process, Product
and People
Phil
Fitzsimmons
Faculty of Education,
The University of Woollongong,
Australia
No abstract is presently available
Deep Childhood: Perception as Educational Response
Stephanie
Burdick
Montclair State University, USA.
David Abram, noted philosopher, ecologist,
and magician, makes the claim that that modern humanity has severed
an ancient, reciprocal, and perceptual link with the natural world.
Abram regards the loss of sensual language, the impact of writing,
and the advancement of technology to be critical indications that
this severance entails a loss of perception. In order to rectify this
severance Abram incorporates the phenomenological philosophy of Merleau-Ponty,
in which he explores an ethic for regaining our perceptions of the
natural world. Abram argues that until we are able to perceive nature
as phenomenon we will not be able to respond to it responsibly.
However,
if one can find the same lacunae of perception within the modern conception
of the child as Abrams found in the modern perception of the natural
world, then Abram’s environmental ethic has benefit
to educators as well.
The following explores this modern lack of perception
of the young child, concluding that Abram’s ethic then can be used
as a paradigm for responsible educative response. Until we, as educators,
can hear, see, smell, touch, taste, and sense that which be, child,
any educational response will remain inadequate.
To this end Philosophy
for Children can provide much insight. The theory of the philosophical
community of inquiry posed through a shared text, an equalization of
power, a commitment to communal knowledge, and the act of perception-sharing
of, by, and with children; can be considered one form of responsible
educative response.
