Hogan, Pádraig
(2005)
The Inherent Risks of Human Learning.
Educational Theory, 55 (2).
pp. 115-121.
ISSN 0013-2004
Abstract
As a distinctive human undertaking, education carries risks that are deep and
enduring. It would be true in an everyday sense to say that these risks are often
overlooked, or unnoticed. It would be closer to the mark, however, to say that they
have been largely domesticated, or even insured against, by the institutional forms
education has historically taken, at least in Western civilization. Here, we are
clearly not talking about entrepreneurial risks, fueled as these are by the prospects
of material profit, though education has more than occasionally been used to promote
a sense of individual entrepreneurial spirit. Nor are we talking of the risks
an individual might take to achieve fame and glory. Nor yet are we talking of
the risks a group of people might take to win human rights or political freedoms.
Rather, the risks we are calling attention to here are those that are inescapably
— not just contingently — connected with the deliberate promotion of
human learning. At stake is nothing less than what we become as human beings
as a consequence of what we experience as learners. Such consequences include
coming to understand and judge ourselves, our human significance, and our prospects
in certain ways rather than in others; coming to understand and judge others
and their significance in particular ways; and coming to understand and judge the
merits of learning itself in its various forms and possibilities.
| Item Type: |
Article
|
| Keywords: |
Inherent; Risks; Human; Learning; |
| Academic Unit: |
Faculty of Social Sciences > Education |
| Item ID: |
8590 |
| Identification Number: |
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0013-2004.2005.00001.x |
| Depositing User: |
Dr. Padraig Hogan,
|
| Date Deposited: |
09 Aug 2017 12:25 |
| Journal or Publication Title: |
Educational Theory |
| Publisher: |
Wiley |
| Refereed: |
Yes |
| URI: |
|
| Use Licence: |
This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available
here |
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