The Body as Blind Spot: Towards Lived Experience and a Body-Specific Philosophy in Education

Abstract

What do the philosophies of phenomenological scholars such as Husserl, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty tell us about education in South Africa? How can we use the philosophies of these scholars to develop the minds of our learners and students holistically? Drawing from Husserl’s “lifeworld theory,” Heidegger’s notion of Dasein and Merleau-Ponty’s “lived body theory,” this paper argues for a shift towards a philosophy of “lived experience” in the classroom that views the “body,” which is often dismissed in an educational setting, as an authentic, intelligible and privileged metaphysical object for learning. We argue that teaching should not promote a domain-specific epistemological ethos to open up new pathways to knowing and understanding the natural world, but instead should adopt a body-specific ethos that leads to a process of understanding our “true self,” “true nature” or “true humanity.” This means that education structured around preparing the masses for the corporate world should therefore not be our aim, but rather nurturing “body knowledge” that is already there.

(Re) Learning to Teach in Contexts of Crises

“…Dark teaching can directly result in dark learning (Bengsten & Barnett 2018). This happens as academics are restrained by so much attention given to tests and examinations, that results in students memorising and regurgitating factual information (Koopman 2018). In the process, dark teaching limits a student's learning experiences.…”

“…It is in the process of 'being' or 'acting' in the world that a person's thoughts are made explicit. For full details on the different modes of Dasein, see Heidegger (1967), Dreyfus (2006), and Koopman & Koopman (2018), amongst others. In his later works, Heidegger's (1977) philosophy shifted to focus on the field of 'technology' as a mode of existence without any reference to 'Dasein'.…”

“…Over the last two decades, we have witnessed how students in our classrooms are viewed as raw materials in need of crafting for a market-driven knowledge economy within global capitalism. This neo-liberal agenda has infiltrated every sphere of the university, which revolves around the commodification of knowledge and relegates mathematics and science to a level above lived human experience (Koopman & Koopman 2018). This (neoliberal) agenda is visible and witnessed by students and academics during the current COVID-19 pandemic, where the completion of the academic year takes precedence over human lives and safety (DHET 2020).…”