The Cruel Optimism of Education and Education's Implication with ‘Passing-on’

Abstract

In this article I draw on Lauren Berlant's notion of 'cruel optimism' to identify and untangle how the prevailing sense of 'optimism' in education works against our common hope or collective striving for what is educational in education. In particular, I discuss how the 'cruel optimism' that invites individuals to constantly innovate and improve themselves through ever more learning leads ultimately to a sense of 'presentism', 'privation' and 'loneliness', which comes to threaten the role that education plays (or should play) in sustaining and forging a common world. Proposing that education is where the concern with 'passing-on' (in all senses of the word) properly takes place, I discuss how education can tend to and pine towards something larger and more durable (the world) than the individual acquisition of knowledge and skills that serve immediate transient interests. As an exemplar of a place of 'passing-on', I ask us to consider how education invites us to affirm the 'living-on' of the question of what it might mean to live together after all: to forge, sustain and pledge something of significance in common (and across generations) amidst what is constantly passing away. In this sense, I seek to gesture to the possibility of hope (as opposed to a mere optimism) within education: a sensibility and affirmation for 'passing-on' and 'sur-vivance'. Such a hope might help to address the cruel depravity and isolation affecting our time that is caught up in the 'learnification of education'.

Influence of Students’ Entrepreneurial Psychological Capital on Entrepreneurial Exploratory Learning under the Background of Extended Reality (XR)

“…found that optimistic and hopeful students are more likely to accept academic innovation activities [15]. Di Paolantoni, M analyzed the definition of optimism in education and believed that optimistic learners are more accustomed to the cultivation of learning behavior [16]. Rose, E analyzed students' preference for online courses and their use habits of learning management system [17].…”

Toddlers as soul workers: A critical take on emotions and well‐being in early childhood education

“…As the coach sets out to fish out the toddlers’ ‘inner experience’, eager to ‘watch along’ while the toddler ‘brings out what lives inside of her’ (Jeannin et al., 2008, p. 42), what comes to mind is De Vos's (2012) observation of how in post‐Fordist times, ‘the private space comes to be folded over into the public’, ultimately turning the toddlers’ intimacy into ‘extimacy’ (p. 83). He notes that ‘if the old‐times discipline did not leave you much space to breathe, now the therapeutic zeal is claiming even the refuge of your inner thoughts’ (2012, p. 6).…”

Democratic Education for Hope: Contesting the Neoliberal Common Sense

“…In contemporary educational systems, these mechanisms manifest themselves, among other things, in the form of "learnification" of education, referring to the reduction of education to the construction of flexible and self-responsible subjectivities with specific predetermined skills and competencies (Biesta 2014;Paolantonio 2016;Brunila and Siivonen 2016). Differently put, people enter and undertake an education with the hope of managing and sustaining their precarious occupation in an ever-unpredictable market society (e.g.…”

“…However, in contemporary late-capitalist societies, these goods are increasingly difficult to cash in: education no longer guarantees economic or job security or an esteemed position in society. At the same time, the responsibility for attaining these desired objects-as well as the failure to attain them-is placed on the individual (Paolantonio 2016;Brunila and Siivonen 2016). As the focus and responsibility is placed on the individual, attention is drawn away from structural injustices.…”