Faithfully Connected Holistic Teacher Formation for Shalom-Seeking Citizenship in a Fragmented Society A Case Study Peter Chr. van Olst
Theological University of Apeldoorn / Driestar Christian University Faithfully Connected Holistic Teacher Formation for ShalomSeeking Citizenship in a Fragmented Society A Case Study Peter Chr. van Olst
Author: Peter van Olst Cover Design: Ridderprint, ridderprint.nl Lay-out and design: Ridderprint, ridderprint.nl Printing: Ridderprint, ridderprint.nl ISBN: 978-94-6506-410-9 Copyright © Peter van Olst, the Netherlands (2024)
THEOLOGISCHE UNIVERSITEIT APELDOORN -------------------- FAITHFULLY CONNECTED HOLISTIC TEACHER FORMATION FOR SHALOM-SEEKING CITIZENSHIP IN A FRAGMENTED SOCIETY – A CASE STUDY (met een samenvatting in het Nederlands) PROEFSCHRIFT TER VERKRIJGING VAN DE GRAAD VAN DOCTOR OP GEZAG VAN DE RECTOR PROF. DR. M.J. KATER, VOLGENS HET BESLUIT VAN HET COLLEGE VAN PROMOTIES IN HET OPENBAAR TE VERDEDIGEN OP 20 SEPTEMBER 2024 OM 10:00 UUR IN DE AULA VAN DE UNIVERSITEIT, WILHELMINAPARK 4, APELDOORN door Peter Christiaan van Olst, geboren op 30 juli 1976 te ZWOLLE
Supervisors Prof Dr A. de Muynck (Theological University of Apeldoorn) Prof Dr R. Kuiper (Theological University Utrecht) Members of the Assessment Committee Dr C.C. den Hertog Dr A. Mayo Prof Dr J. van der Stoep Dr C. Watkins Prof Dr M. Wisse This research was facilitated by Porticus Foundation. The publication was made possible by the J.E. Jurriaanse Stichting.
To Annelies and Anneloes. ‘… and of the children of Issachar, which were men that had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do; the heads of them were two hundred; and all their brethren were at their commandment.’ – 1 Chronicles 12:32 KJV ‘In our isolation lies our strength.’ – Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer, 1876
TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface 10 Introduction Teaching and the Art of Living Together 15 1. Schools Amid Diversity and Complexity 2. Proposal for a Holistic Approach 3. Research Question and Context 4. Towards a (Holistic) Research Design 5. Structure of the Study Chapter 1 Fragmentation and Subjectification 41 1.1 MacIntyre and Taylor: A Joint Critique of Modernity 1.1.1 A diagnostic of fragmentation 1.1.2 Consequences of fragmentation 1.1.3 Protestantism as an accelerant 1.2 Consequences of Fragmentation for Education and Schools 1.2.1 Disorientation among students 1.2.2 Fragmented schools 1.2.3 Fragmented (global) education 1.2.4 Engaging with subjectivity: A conclusion 1.3 Answers from Christian Theology and Pedagogy 1.3.1 Re-connecting the person: Zizioulas 1.3.2 Healing communities: Zerbe 1.3.3 Communicating frameworks: Beech 4. Conclusion Chapter 2 Whole Child Development as a (W)Holistic Response 87 2.1 Reductionism in Education 2.2 Holism as a Broad Reaction to Reductionism 2.3 WCE as an Educational Reaction to Reductionism 2.3.1 History leading up to WCD 2.3.2 Meta-ethnography of WCD-related studies 2.4 Merging of Holism and Wholism in Education 2.5 Towards a Conceptual Framework 2.6 Conclusion Chapter 3 Christian Anthropology and the (W)Holistic Approach 115 3.1 WCD Insights and Christian Anthropology 3.1.1 Ján Amos Comenius and Jan Hábl 3.1.2 Herman Dooyeweerd and André Troost 3.1.3 Aurelius Augustine and James K.A. Smith 3.2 Synthesis of the Three Contributions 3.3 Towards Shalom-Seeking Citizenship 3.4 Conclusion
Chapter 4 The Methodology of Theological Action Research 151 4.1 Justification for the Use of TAR 4.2 TAR Application for DCU 4.3 Data Collection 4.4 Ethical Considerations 4.5 Analysis of Data Chapter 5 Preliminary WCD Reception at Driestar Christian University 175 5.1 DCU Amid Secularisation and Fragmentation 5.2 Baseline Survey 5.3 Exploratory Student Research 5.4 Conclusion Chapter 6 Subjectifying Education and the Art of Living Together 197 6.1 The Practice of Citizenship Formation 6.1.1 Critical faithfulness and critical openness 6.1.2 Eye-opening experiences 6.1.3 Citizenship formation as personhood formation 6.2 Four Theological Voices on Shalom-Seeking Citizenship 6.2.1 The voice of operant theology 6.2.2 The voice of espoused theology 6.2.3 The voice of formal theology 6.2.4 The voice of normative theology 6.3 Concrete Elaborations for DCU’s Curriculum 6.4 Conclusion Chapter 7 Relational Epistemology and the Art of Living Together 225 7.1 Conflicting Allegiances: Between Faithfulness and Openness 7.1.1 Loyalty to God, parents and social background 7.1.2 Loyalty to (Biblical) world-centredness 7.1.3 Starting points on absolute truth 7.2 Four Theological Voices on Relational Epistemology 7.2.1 The voice of normative theology 7.2.2 The voice of operant theology 7.2.3 The voice of espoused theology 7.2.4 The voice of formal theology 7.3 Concrete Elaborations for DCU’s Curriculum 7.4 Conclusion Chapter 8 Basic Attitude and the Art of Living Together 255 8.1 Character and Longing to Pursue 8.1.1 Felt need for character formatio 8.1.2 Felt need for a pedagogy of longin
8.2 Four Theological Voices on Basic Attitude Formation 8.2.1 The voice of normative theology 8.2.2 The voice of formal theology 8.2.3 The voice of operant theology 8.2.4 The voice of espoused theology 8.3 Concrete Elaborations for DCU’s Curriculum 8.4 Conclusion Chapter 9 Theology of Disclosure for Christian Citizenship Formation 285 9.1 Process Towards a Theology of Disclosure 9.2 Theology of Disclosure – The Final Text 9.3 A Personal Note Chapter 10 Conclusion and Discussion 299 10.1 Core Components: A Practice-Theory 10.2 Core Components and The Teacher Training Curriculum 10.3 Discussion of the Methodology Used 10.4 Discussion of Future Research Bibliography 314 Summary (English) 330 Summary (Nederlands) 336 Appendices 342 1. Matrix of Studies and Reports on Whole Child Education 2. Informed Consent Form for the Research Participants 3. Structure Focus Group Interview Six Senior DCU Students 4. List of Codes Used in TAR 5. Conceptual Influences from Theory and Practice 6. Explication of Artistic Imagination Curriculum Vitae 354
10 Preface Preface
11 Preface P How can Christian trainee teachers be adequately prepared to fulfil their duties towards children and youth in a society that can no longer be characterised as Christian? This question came to me when I started my job at Driestar Christian University for Teacher Education in 2017. I witnessed both academic instructors and school representatives wrestling with new challenges concerning citizenship education, as urged or even imposed by national and international authorities. The lively discussions involved, shifted between the desire to respond positively to understandable social concerns, on the one hand, and the idea of defending the freedom of individual, religiously bound education, on the other hand. Somewhat later, I encountered the same question and discussions in international circles, such as the International Network for Christian Higher Education (INCHE) and the Association of Christian Schools International (ACSI). What these discussions lacked, however, was a clear awareness of the depth of the cultural change that Western countries such as the Netherlands—and, to some extent, as a result of globalisation, all countries of the world—had experienced in recent decades. I vividly remember Driestar Christian University’s celebration, in 2019, of its 75th anniversary, where a keynote speaker from a liberal think tank (1) expressed deep concern with regard to Christian education and the freedom of religious education that makes it possible. He offered two reasons for his standpoint. First, he wanted children to not be immersed in any form of religion. Second, he accused Christian schools of being too removed from general society to be helpful in the crucial task of integrating all kinds of people from very different cultural, ethnic and religious backgrounds. His keynote speech itself was an illustration of how the Netherlands had changed from a relatively homogeneous country with strong Christian roots into an open and plural society in a globalised world. As a theologian, it was easy for me to disagree with the speaker’s first objection to religious education, but as a political scientist, I could understand his second objection. Are education and schooling not always a function of and for society? And is it not reasonable that national and international authorities sometimes appeal to this functionality when preoccupied with, for example, polarisation or the lack of social cohesion? It might have been my intercultural background that helped me to view the problem from this perspective and to question what it means today to form Christian teachers to take their place in society and the world as it actually is. For 10 years I lived and worked with my family in Ecuador. Immediately 1 Patrick van Schie, Teldersstichting VVD.
12 Preface afterwards, I wrote and edited a Reformed Christian missiology (2), which was the starting point for my entry into Christian education in 2017. The longing to have an impact on society from the Christian perspective had never faded. Based on my theological, missiological and political science interests, I went back to the famous Dutch statesman and historiographer Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer, who is considered in the Netherlands to be the father of Christian education as it took shape from the 19th century onwards. I discovered that his life’s motto—‘In our isolation lies our strength’ (1876, p. 52)—did not in any way refer to physical or social isolation on the part of Reformed Christians; rather, it related to the fundamental consistency of principle necessary to prepare for meaningful sociocultural and educational engagement (Kamphuis, 1976, pp. 10, 14, 15). How would Groen van Prinsterer, drawing on this reasoning, react to today’s challenges regarding education, almost two centuries after uttering his famous motto? How should we, if we want to be ‘gospel confessors’ like him, prepare Christian teachers for modern, non-Christian, plural society? I was fortunate enough to have the chance to investigate this issue. I believe the opportunity was given to me. Therefore, I first and foremost thank the Lord, humbly confessing that this research would not have been possible without His guidance. After Him, I thank Annelies Kraaiveld, to whom I dedicate this dissertation. As my manager at Driestar Christian University, she heard my wish and enabled me to join an inter-institutional research project on a topic she and I believed to be helpful and applicable to citizenship education. The topic was whole child development, which includes whole teacher development as an important component. How this topic relates to Christian citizenship formation will become clear in the introduction and chapters to follow. I also dedicate this study to Anneloes Bout. She is the individual who stands for the many—the many students I have worked with during the past few years. The research resulted in action research for these students’ curriculum. It was all done to enable them to become Christian teachers who are fully engaged in today’s world and society. In Annelies Kraaiveld, I thank Driestar Christian University; in Anneloes Bout, its students, especially those who took part in this research—though not without mentioning how Anneloes showed a special interest in shalom-seeking citizenship, which made her a richer teacher. I would also like to address words of thanks to the loyal and constructively critical members of my project and research team who, as a conversational community, dedicated themselves to action research concerning the aforementioned curriculum. Without them, I would not have collected the 2 Kooijman, J. H. C., & van Olst, P. C. (2017). Onverhinderd. De voortgang van het Evangelie in de wereld [Unhindered. The progress of the Gospel in the world]. ZGG.
13 Preface P data that render this research valid. I am also grateful for the companionship of the representatives of the NIVOZ Foundation and the three other teacher training institutes with which we collaborated during the overarching research project on whole child development (WCD). Without them, it would not have been possible to reflect so deeply on WCD and its significance in today’s educational context. With them, I thank the Porticus Foundation, which made the overarching project possible and made room in it for this PhD study. What I learned from all of the above-mentioned participants is to never forget to include students in educational research, which brings me to express my gratitude to all of the students who participated in the study, especially the six who dedicated their theses to the investigation of WCD and took part in the preliminary research. I also think gratefully of my fellow PhD students from the tightly knit international group of ‘Professor Bram’ we formed for some years. I thank my supervisors, Bram de Muynck and Roel Kuiper, for their close reading of my texts and the vivid discussions that reading prompted, in which Bram scrutinised matters from the pedagogical perspective, while Roel did so from the political-philosophical perspective. I also thank and praise my colleague Martijn Boer and my son Thomas van Olst for the artistic expressions they made for all of the chapters of this dissertation. Last but not least, I want to express my profound gratitude to my wife, Sofieke. The illness she suffered for a large part of the years of my PhD study led to the neither sought nor desired homeboundness, which nevertheless provided for the kind of stability that made it possible for this project to be finished within the indicated four years. It is my hope and prayer that we may together enjoy the new phase we enter with my completing this project.
Introduction Teaching and the Art of Living Together ‘We may define citizenship as the art of living together, an obvious and a permanent need in all ages.’ S.P.T. Prideaux during a talk to teachers in Salisbury, 1940 ‘According to God’s will, Christendom is a scattered people, scattered like seed “into all the Kingdoms of the earth”. That is its curse and its promise.’ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, 1939, p. 7
16 Introduction Over 80 years ago, around the outbreak of the Second World War, an Anglican reverend named S.P.T. Prideaux addressed a group of teachers and teacher trainers at the College of Sarum St. Michael—formerly the Salisbury Training College—in England (3). His topic was the same as the topic of this dissertation—namely, citizenship and how trainee teachers should be prepared to practice and teach it from a Christian perspective. Moreover, his approach was as broad as this dissertation’s approach aims to be, as evidenced by his definition of citizenship as ‘the art of living together’ (Prideaux, 1940, p. 203). His context, however, was very different from that of the world as it is in the 21st century. The citizenship Prideaux referred to was the art of living together in a Christian country on its way to, as he saw it, the ‘full realization’ of the Biblical ideals concerning citizenship. Although that realisation was still ‘very far from complete’, Prideaux did not hesitate to invite his audience to make a ‘large contribution’ to it, finishing with the statement that ‘the need of Christian teaching in schools and colleges is urgent today’ (p. 209). For Prideaux, the Bible functioned as his ‘handbook of citizenship’ (p. 203). In it, he found his deepest motivation to invest in the art of living together. Indeed, Prideaux (1940) believed that it would be ‘unscientific and doomed to failure’ not to include God in citizenship education (p. 203). Citizenship education, he claimed, should always centre on three deeply interconnected core elements: the individual, the group and God as ‘the originator of the whole process of life’ (Prideaux, 1940, p. 203). While the omission of one of these elements would have disruptive consequences, their connectedness provides for wholeness. At the end of his talk, Prideaux (1940) summarised his contribution by stating that ‘God is to be put first in everything; the rights and freedom of the individual are to be respected (…); there is to be perfect balance between the individual and the community’ (p. 208). To this threefold conclusion he added that ‘the whole process of living, its motive and its method, is summed up in the world Love’ and that real agapè consists of ‘the recognition of God and devotion to God on the one hand, plus the devotion to the highest welfare of man’s fellow-men on the other’ (Prideaux, 1940, p. 209). It is my conviction that Prideaux’ talk, the text of which was published in 1940 in a scientific journal, can serve as a historic mirror for the research I am about to present. Like Prideaux, I am a Christian teacher trainer—and like Prideaux’ teaching-related audience in 1940, there are many teachers and teacher trainers today, all over the globe, who find in their Christian faith their 3 I thank Jenny Head for providing useful information about Prideaux and his role at the College of Sarum St. Michael and for the shipping of the memorial book she wrote together with Anne Johns (Head & Johns, 2015).
17 Teaching and the Art of Living Together I deepest motivation to be involved in (citizenship) education. With regard to ‘the art of living together’, the core elements referenced in Prideaux’ talk— that is, the recognition of the Creator of all and the ensuing respect for the interconnectedness of all living things—are still important to these teachers and teacher trainers. However, as a faith community, they are concerned about how they should relate all this to the changed societal reality. Can the Bible still be considered a ‘handbook of citizenship’ in a context of high cultural, ethnical and directional diversity, especially one in which the Bible has consequently, for the vast majority of people, lost its authority? Has the gap between ideal and practice, as already indicated in 1940, now grown so wide in the 21st century that the old ideal has become unrealistic or even undesirable in the context of today’s pluralism? In summary, does Prideaux’ Biblically comprehensive approach regarding ‘the art of living together’ still apply to citizenship education today? In light of the high levels of diversity and complexity that countries in Western Europe currently face, Prideaux’ (1940) talk may come across as anachronistic. Due to rapid cultural change during the last eight decades, his ideal of the Christian country has largely disappeared from sight. For Christian teachers, the loss may lead to a certain nostalgia that incites them to refrain from providing adequate contemporary citizenship education, or to just concentrate on the bare cognitive necessities of such education. In the most extreme situation, this would cause them to turn their backs on (active participation in) broader society. In other situations, it implies that their personal, faith-based ideals become somehow detached from their citizenship education practices. This may lead to a reduction in their educational effort to just certain areas of life and to the subsequent loss of what Donner (2012, p. 19) termed a ‘Christian cosmovision’, which is an ordered conception of where the whole of life comes from and what it is meant for. If such a loss were to occur, citizenship would no longer be defined broadly and positively as ‘the art of living together’, at least not in terms of the strict connection Prideaux (1940) made with the Biblical command to love God and your neighbours. This study investigates a completely different, almost opposite approach to citizenship education for Christian teachers in contemporary society. To accomplish this, it draws on the central themes of unity and interconnectedness in Prideaux’ talk and searches for an approach that is both theological and holistic. Theological, because it deliberately includes the spiritual (vertical) connection between the teacher and God, without obscuring the importance of this connection or placing it in brackets. Holistic, because it connects the vertical to the horizontal relationships, envisioning a network
18 Introduction of connections—that is, to others, to the community, to society as a whole and, finally, to the world itself as God’s created whole. Such a Biblically holistic approach recognises ‘the art of living together’ as, just like Prideaux (1940) stated, ‘an obvious and permanent need in all ages’ (p. 203). Theologically, this art is connected to God’s command to practice agapè, while holistically, it focuses on the importance of a sense of belonging (Valle Painter, 2013) in relation to a complex network of relationships. The present study relates this approach to society and the world as they exist today, not shying away from reality but studying how to live together in it. Or, as this dissertation’s title indicates, to be ‘faithfully connected’ with reality. This broad, Biblically holistic approach to citizenship education responds to the perceived needs of (especially) Western societies with regard to citizenship education. During the early years of the 21st century, the strengthening of citizenship through education was placed firmly on the political agenda practically everywhere in the West (Banks, 2008). For example, in the Netherlands, where the empirical part of this study was conducted at Driestar Christian University (DCU)—as a case study of faith-based teacher training in modern society (4)—the government first (in 2006) asked schools to educate students in ‘social integration’ and then (in 2021) specified that to mean ‘social cohesion’ (Kuiper, 2023) (5). A perceived lack of social cohesion raises an open question regarding (lost) connectedness to which religious education in particular should and can respond (Bertram-Troost & Miedema, 2022; de Bas & van Meir, 2023; van Gaans, 2024) (6). Following Prideaux’ example, I would like to define citizenship broadly as ‘the art of living together’, adding for today’s societal and political context the words ‘respecting fundamental differences in culture, ethnicity and basic life conceptions’. Citizenship education I would like to describe as ‘the art of creating social cohesion by inviting students 4 In Section 3 of this introduction and, later, in Chapter 5.1, Driestar Christian University will be described as a typical faith-based institute for teacher training in the modern context. 5 ‘Social cohesion’ is a broader term that includes knowledge of the democratic system, respect for otherness, attitude and the school culture. 6 ‘Bezieling’ (inspiration, animation) is an important term in this context. Bertram-Troost and Miedema spoke of ‘spirited’ education, while De Bas and Van Meir distinguished the ‘spirited citizen’ as one among four types of citizenship to which primary schools aspire. Whereas other schools opt for the adaptive citizen, the individualistic citizen, or the critical-democratic citizen, Christian schools often opt for the spirited citizen, in which consideration for the other, ethical behaviour, compassion and care for the environment are central (de Bas & van Meir, 2023, pp. 21-22).
19 Teaching and the Art of Living Together I to connect—with each other, the community, society and the world—and to flourish within those connections’ (7). The central purpose of this study is to identify core components for teacher training with regard to Christian citizenship education. To aim for more would definitely overstretch the study’s scope and possibilities. Nevertheless, a leading criterion will be that these core components must fit together holistically. If the intended outcome of citizenship education is to be holistic, the process concerning it must be likewise. To be able to prepare students for ‘the art of living together respecting fundamental differences in culture, ethnicity and basic life conceptions’ from a Christian perspective, trainee teachers should be prepared holistically. To this criterion it can be added that even the method and design of this study, given the intended outcome, should be holistic, which means that the aim is to integrate the insights and experiences of a variety of theorists and practitioners through a process of theorisation and action research. This point will be developed further towards the end of this introduction, in Section 4. The following sections of this introduction are intended to clarify the concepts already employed and to identify a research design regarding the citizenship education of trainee teachers. Section 1 delves into the challenges of both super-diversity (Vertovec, 2007) and super-complexity (Barnett, 2000) as central features of today’s world and society, with the aim being to substantiate and outline a choice for the predicate fragmented that problematises their effects on society, communities and personhood. Section 2 argues for a holistic response to this fragmentation thesis because, properly defined, fragmentation problematises a lack of cohesion. Based on that insight, Section 3 carefully phrases and explains the central research question. Section 4 then presents the case for an adequate (holistic) research design, while Section 5 provides an overview of the steps required to identify some interrelated core components in order to train (future) teachers in Christian citizenship education. The latter two sections contain an initial exploration of what is needed to bring the interrelated core components together into a practice-theory (Löfstedt & Westerlund, 2021; Rouse, 2007) for teacher training in relation to Christian citizenship education. 7 The reference to flourishing connects this study to Baarda’s (2022) study into perspectives on the theme.
20 Introduction 1. SCHOOLS AMID DIVERSITY AND COMPLEXITY Before discerning the central features of our modern, fragmented society and their implications for citizenship education it is first necessary to understand on a basic level what schools and education are meant to do in the context of society. Good education serves to build bridges between the (mostly and hopefully) safe atmosphere of the family, on the one hand, and the more diverse and open atmosphere of society, on the other hand. In so doing, teachers invite students to cross these bridges to actively participate in both the social and the natural worlds, enabling them to accept the invitation to cross by practising the art of living together in the safe space of the school. The historic pedagogue Comenius, therefore, described schools as workshops of humanity, which is a description that can be connected to more contemporary discussion of the school as a mini-society. Hannah Arendt (1977), for example, was very precise in her elaboration of this concept, depicting the school as ‘the institution that we interpose between the private domain of home and the world in order to make the transition from the family to the world possible at all’ (pp. 188–189). Biesta (2022, p. 18) juxtaposed this ‘older, more hidden and perhaps almost forgotten history’ of the school with the ‘more common history of the modern school’. The latter, he stated, ‘emerged as a result of the modernization of society and more specifically as part of the differentiation of societal fields and functions’ (p. 18). In this final, relatively new conception, schools and education first and foremost perform functions of and for societies that have lost (parts of) their intrinsic educative power because work and jobs have moved to factories and offices and become so specialised that special institutions are now required to prepare their future workforce. However, if education has to be a broad, more general and humane invitation to the world, as Biesta (2013, pp. 141–144) argued in his earlier work, then the older, more classical history of the school is in urgent need of rediscovery. Making this argument, Biesta (2022) called the school ‘a kind of halfway house’—that is, not so much a function of and for society but ‘a rather curious place halfway in between home and the street’ (p. 19) (8). This classical vision of schools and education can also be seen in Christian thinking and writing on education. A striking example comes from Aalders (1977), who emphasised that the Christian school should be a cultural forum (in Dutch: cultuurgestalte; p. 223), a concept earlier employed by van Klinken (1953). This indicates that schools need to remain focused on their bridge8 This approach coincides with Epstein et al.’s (2002) theory of overlapping spheres of influence. According to this theory, the position of schools can be described as a remarkable intermediate position between families, state, society and other community partners.
21 Teaching and the Art of Living Together I building task. If they do not—and Aalders (1977) is very critical of Christian schools in this regard—they will fall prey either to sterile sectarianism (turning their backs on society) or to featureless worldliness (not adding anything from their Christian perspective; p. 226). The latter outcome refers to a tendency resembling the functional position of the school in modern society as described by Biesta (2022). Aalders (1977) adopted the same idea from Bavinck’s (1921) plea for classical education as a counterweight against the modern, liberal functionality (or approach). In Biblical terms, he compared the school to the city gate of Nain (Luke 7): Neither Nain, meaning lovely, itself nor the world outside of it; rather, the transitional stage from the warm safety of the family to the much wider horizon of culture. Approximating the school along these lines—that is, as a mini-society, a halfway house, a workshop of humanity, a cultural forum or a city gate— clarifies that, for school education in general and for citizenship education more specifically, it matters both how the small entity of the family is composed and what society looks like. Where there is homogeneity across the board (e.g. students all come from Christian families, gather in Christian schools and prepare for predominantly Christian society; as it was in Prideaux’ case), strong socialising tendencies are to be expected. These socialising tendencies can be, to a high degree, implicit and based on what sociologist Peter Berger (1967) defined as plausibility structures. Traditionally, many Christian schools in countries with a specifically Christian history tend to count on this socialising dynamic. The premise of this study is, however, that homogeneity is rapidly fading and that relying solely on socialising tendencies is a strategy that cannot last in the new context (9). Looking closely at the social and natural worlds into which educators invite students today (10), and comparing them with 80 years ago when Prideaux (1940) spoke to teachers about citizenship, some very clear differences can be noted. Scientists seeking to describe these changes tend to use superlatives. For instance, scholars in the field of natural sciences refer to the present era as the Great Acceleration of the Anthropocene (McNeill & Engelke, 2014), while social and political scientists since 1940 speak of epochal change in terms of 9 As Chapter 1.2 will point out, this strategy of relying on socialisation may even be contra-productive. 10 The combination of the social and the natural is important especially from a practice-theoretical perspective: ‘It is a mistake to distinguish the social world from its natural environment (…) such that a practice theory would make the social world the domain of autonomously social sciences. Moreover, this mistake is one that practice theory is especially well equipped to overcome’ (Rouse, 2007, p. 536).
22 Introduction the Great Transformation (Kuiper, 2021; Polanyi, 1944). Together, they refer to global processes such as the exponential growth of the world’s population, urbanisation, increasing mobility and migration, advances in communication technology and, finally, globalisation, which can be considered causes or accelerators of radical changee in the world’s ecosystems and cultures (Kooijman & van Olst, 2017). In Western countries in particular, a strong process of secularisation has been identified (Taylor, 2007). The French philosopher Chantal Delsol (2021) argued that this tendency has now, in the last few decades, reached a climax indicating nothing less than the definitive end of 16 centuries of Christian dominance over politics and culture (11). Instead of becoming increasingly Christian, as teacher trainers such as Prideaux (1940) envisioned, Western societies have become highly plural, thereby encompassing a wide range of religious, political and ethical viewpoints. More than ever before, these societies are characterised by two main features: diversity and complexity. Vertovec (2007), writing specifically about the United Kingdom (UK), referenced both diversity and complexity and chose super-diversity as a central predicate to ‘underline a level and kind of complexity surpassing anything the country has previously experienced’ (p. 1024). For his part, Barnett (2000) opted for super-complexity. What both qualifications mean to express is that—as Vertovec (2007) phrases it—diversity per se is nothing new, although ‘the interplay of factors’ and ‘the emergence of their scale’ are (pp. 1025–1026). According to Barnett (2000), complexity per se is nothing new either, whereas ‘the handling of multiple frames of understanding, of action and of self-identity by which we might understand the world’ (p. 6) is, in fact, novel. The relative homogeneity of Western countries has given way to societies comprised of a mixture of people with very different ethnical and cultural backgrounds and life convictions, a mixture who live closely together within the boundaries of the law but differ fundamentally in their answers to basic questions concerning sense-giving and meaning. The bridges that school teachers need to make, therefore, have become substantially longer. As a consequence, the school, if it wishes to serve as a mini-society or a halfway house where the art of living together and the art of creating social cohesion are practiced, must teach students to emerge from their safe spaces and relate to this rapidly developed heterogeneity of super-diversity and super-complexity. This study does not intend to approach the aforementioned diversity and complexity as a threat. The resultant change can be perceived that way, 11 Delsol (2021) discussed Chrétienté (or Christendom), meaning Christen-dominance.
23 Teaching and the Art of Living Together I especially among Christian teachers and schools when they see the implicit socialising processes they learned to reckon with interrupted by it (12). I choose, however, to view diversity and complexity as a reality that needs to be taken into account in the education of children and, as a consequence, in the education of their teachers. Thus, I do not choose to speak of today’s world as post-Christian (Delsol, 2021) or secular (Taylor, 2007). Although these predicates are certainly not untrue, they convey, especially for Christian teachers, a certain degree of fatalism, a melancholy clinging to a past that has already faded away. In this way, they may implicitly and unwillingly foster an attitude of resistance. Both terms could, therefore, generate impediments to engagement in the task of building bridges between family and society. Other predicates used to describe society as it is in the 21st century include pluralistic (Dahl, 1978) and intercultural (Cantle, 2013). Importantly, where postChristian and secular, especially from a Christian perspective, have negative connotations, plural or pluralistic moves in the opposite direction. While pluralism is certainly a key feature of modern society (13), I do not opt for that qualification because its positivity may very well overlook the super-complexity associated with super-diversity. The predicate intercultural, which was proposed by Cantle (2013) as an alternative to multicultural, seems particularly interesting for this study, as it articulates the societal challenges for education in a detailed way, which is why it will form part of the present study. The problem with this predicate is, however, that it—just like super-diversity and super-complexity— may present a proper description of the status quo but does not describe or evaluate the underlying tendencies, such as societal fracturation or even atomisation. By contrast, a predicate that does so is fragmented. It comes from the work of philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre (2007) and concerns the loss of a former sense of interconnectedness or interwovenness. MacIntyre used the example of a fragmentation bomb that, after the Enlightenment project, left only severed fragments of the classical account of morality, deprived from their sense-giving context (‘of that context and of that justification’, as he stated in his introduction). A coherent context in which different components are mutually interconnected is a strong context, as it assigns meaning to the 12 MacMullen (2007) recognised that seeking ‘the balance between cultivation and indoctrination may be difficult to define’ (p. 24), but opposed what he sees many liberal democracies do—namely, limiting religious education to liberal civic standards. At this point, he even referred to ‘the civic case against religious schools’ (MacMullen, 2007, p. 20). 13 Mouw and Griffioen (1995) distinguished directional, contextual and associational pluralism, among which this study finds the former (directional pluralism) especially interesting.
24 Introduction components and justifies their role within the organic whole of the context. On a societal level, fragmentation means that the unified, sense-giving context is disrupted. In a context characterised by super-diversity and super-complexity, the old accounts of social cohesion are shattered and changed, and entirely new accounts are proposed. The loss of broad moral homogeneity may cause disorientation among teachers and students, and it asks for a broad and integrative reorientation with regard to both citizenship and citizenship education. MacIntyre (2007) chose fragmented over pluralistic. His moral account of fragmentation deliberately dramatised unlimited plurality and diversity. For that reason, he evaluated the term pluralistic as ‘too imprecise’, ‘for it may equally well apply to an ordered dialogue of intersecting viewpoints and to an un-harmonious melange of ill-assorted fragments’ (MacIntyre, 2007, p. 10). One more reason to opt for the MacIntyrian lens of fragmentism is that it facilitates the search for a moral account of citizenship conceptions and citizenship education. Such an account has been shown to appeal to an explicitly felt need among educators (Veugelers, 2011) (14). Moreover, it ties together the global and the local, focusing on personal responsibility. This perspective also provides the opportunity to address fragmentation, not just at the societal level but also within the individual person, where processes of alienation from the self—as a type of inner fragmentation—can be observed as the effects of radical individualization and subjectivation. As I will argue in Chapter 1, this context of fragmentation is highly relevant for education in general and for citizenship education in particular. The conclusion to be drawn from this section can be that, in terms of their classical function of preparing students for society, schools have to face the specific challenges of fragmentation as a key characteristic of modern society. Super-diversity and super-complexity are both symptoms of the rapid sociocultural change that led to this fragmentation. Furthermore, part of the complexity stems from the fact that the movement schools have to make to bridge the gap between the relative homogeneity of family and the superdiversity of society has grown much larger than it was in the past. 14 As Veugelers (2011) found in his study, teachers opt for moral global citizenship over open global citizenship, which would neglect the moral dimensions, and social-political global citizenship, which would pay too much attention to sensitive political affairs.
25 Teaching and the Art of Living Together I 2. PROPOSAL FOR A HOLISTIC APPROACH If we intend to abide by Prideaux’ choice, made 80 years ago, to define citizenship broadly as ‘the art of living together’, and if we would like to practice this art in schools that fulfil their classical role as workplaces of humanity, cultural fora, halfway houses or mini-societies, we must envision the need for an approach to citizenship education that is comprehensive, integrative, non-reductionistic, connected to the whole of the curriculum, and connected to the whole of the student and society as well. All these qualifications seem to respond to the problem of fragmentation as the isolation of elements from their original sense-giving context. Together, they form what this study intends to develop: a response in the form of a holistic approach. If fragmentation is the problem, it automatically follows that partial answers pertaining to just one, two or some aspects of the problem will be insufficient. They will combat the symptoms, but not the much deeper problem. If society can be characterised as fragmented, and if this problem not only has consequences for interpersonal living but also entails intrapersonal consequences within individual citizens, then it is clear that partial countermeasures will not restore social cohesion and/or improve the art of living together if they do not fit together holistically. The former implies that citizenship formation cannot be just a cognitive enterprise, or just an affective one, or a practical one. It always requires the interaction of the cognitive, the affective and the practical to respond to the problem of fragmentation. It cannot aim solely at the head (representing cognition), the heart (representing emotion) or the hands (representing concrete action); rather, it should simultaneously affect them all. Another aspect is that citizenship formation cannot merely be added as a new and additional subject. Integrative, non-reductive citizenship formation has to be directly tied to everything we do, at least in the field of character or personhood formation. Again, the idea of fragmentation as the breaking of interconnectedness calls for a holistic answer, meaning an answer that provides for a meaningful context in which all the constituent elements fit together in a way that renders the whole more than just the sum of its parts. Although the term holistic has been used frequently above, it is not easy to define what it actually means. Thus, Chapters 2 and 3 will study this issue and, finally, offer a more detailed definition. To accomplish this, Chapter 2 makes use of the insights of a worldwide movement that advocates for WCD. This movement will also prove helpful in a more practical sense during the intended search for core components for teacher training concerning Christian citizenship education. For now, it suffices to observe that, in relation to citizenship education, holistic means that it cannot be just an add-on to
26 Introduction an already existing curriculum, with its aims and objectives separated from other subjects, other educational practices or the pedagogical relationship itself. Citizenship education must—always, but especially in a situation of high diversity and complexity—be embedded in the whole of the educational process and closely tied to its personhood formation, affecting the head, heart and hands. Citizenship education in this sense means nothing less than broad citizenship formation. This theoretical deduction regarding the need for a holistic approach to citizenship education or formation is supported by a two-decade empirical study of citizenship education in the UK (Weinberg & Flinders, 2018). Through the analysis of surveys and focus-group interviews, the researchers observed a lack of understanding of citizenship, both conceptually and pedagogically. Furthermore, they noted an emphasis among teachers on individualistic notions of good citizenship. Specifically, the interplay of factors was missing. At the end of their article, Weinberg and Flinders (2018) warned of ‘the antidemocratic scenario in which our future citizens’ education becomes a lightning rod for party political interests’. They concluded that new approaches should ‘ensure that citizens receive a holistic political education that prepares them to be much more than an obedient, employable workforce in the decades to come’ (Weinberg & Flinders, 2018, p. 590). This final conclusion corroborates Biesta’s (2022) aforementioned critique of the dominance of the modern economical history of the school, as opposed to the classical and much broader conception. Earlier, Biesta (2010) advocated for a shift from an evidence-based to a value-based orientation, which might be less measurable, but would be, as he saw it, more meaningful. Wrigley (2019) moved one step ahead and criticised Western education for being too reductionistic and too focused on accountability, effectiveness and leadership—a terminology that works ‘ideologically by emphasizing technical rationalism, eclipsing questions of political or moral purpose’ (p. 156). He proposed an alternative, non-reductive understanding of schools and school culture to foster ‘an empowerment culture which enables marginalised young people to develop as learners and members of society’ and ‘would recognize the inequalities of power and the dynamic interrelation of school world and lifeworld’ (Wrigley, 2019, p. 157). Wrigley (2019) deliberately introduced the word culture here because— as he stated—it helps to avoid reductionism. Culture refers to the coherent whole that becomes both the product and the cause of how people feel, think and act, thereby matching the biological ecosystem. Developmental models in the field of education should learn from the science of living things to
27 Teaching and the Art of Living Together I reference openness, scale, stratification, complexity, systematic pressures and human purpose. Moreover, learning processes are better understood from an open systems perspective than on the basis of ‘the naively positive developmental models of change’ that are commonly used (Wrigley, 2019, p.157). The underlying reason is that they are fundamentally holistic. At this point, Wrigley (2019) introduced the triad of head, heart and hands to further explicate what he meant by holism (15). Teaching should simultaneously aim at the cognitive, the affective and the practical. ‘If you ignore this, you end up with medium- and long-term damage to personal development’ (Wrigley, 2019, p. 157). Comparable pleas for holistic education can be noted from Christian thinkers. Among them are leading contemporary thinkers regarding Christian education such as J.K.A. Smith and D.I. Smith, both active at Calvin University, Grand Rapids, Michigan. J.K.A. Smith (2009, 2016) tried to correct the cognitive emphasis he encountered among (Christian) teachers with his proposal for an affective pedagogy, which is based on a holistic anthropology. ‘Many Christian schools, colleges, and universities—particularly in the Protestant tradition’, he stated, ‘have taken on board a picture of the human person that owes more to Modernity and the Enlightenment than it does to the holistic, Biblical vision of human persons’ (J.K.A. Smith, 2009, p. 31). Faroe (2013) argued that Smith, in his affective pedagogy, focused too much on affections when compared with cognition, although he embraced Smith’s underlying holistic anthropology. He called for a pedagogy based on this anthropology that ‘honours the rich interrelatedness of the cognitive and the affective’ (Faroe, 2013, p. 4). The challenge is, according to Faroe (2013), to ‘develop a truly holistic Christian pedagogy that wisely integrates the realities, cognitive and affective, of human personhood’ (p. 11). Such a holistic Christian pedagogy cannot be reductionistic. Reductionism, as I will argue more thoroughly in Chapter 2, implies a sharp focus on separate elements. Holism is meant as a healing correction to the too-far-flung attention paid to separate elements, a correction resulting from a renewed focus on the interconnectedness of what is been studied. For citizenship education—as the art of creating social cohesion—this means that the approach should aim at the interconnection between the intrapersonal and the interpersonal levels; at the latter including its interdependency with the community and the society. Important notions for the creation of social cohesion by inviting students to connect to each other, the community, society and the world—and to flourish personally within these connections—are the notions of subjectification and 15 This triad (head, heart and hands) will prove highly valuable during the course of this study.
28 Introduction of intersubjectivity. Subjectification, as I want to use and develop the concept in the remainder of this thesis, intends for the free and deliberate subjection of one’s self to the justified needs of others (16). Intersubjectivity expresses how connectivity on a deeper level of understanding fosters one’s personal flourishing, as will be explained in Chapter 1 more thoroughly. It is interesting that, in sociological studies, the ideas of culture and interculturality have, over the past few decades, led to several types of holistic approaches that care especially about this intersubjectivity. Magni-Berton (2008) spoke of a ‘holisme bourdieusien’, referring to the French philosopher Pierre Bourdieu, famous for his rebuttal of the idea that the society and the individual are two different levels of description. What Bourdieu proposed, is ‘en un mot’, concluded Magni-Berton (2008), ‘de rejeter la distinction entre micro- et macrosociologie’ (p. 305). One could say that Bourdieu sought a healing of the connection between the micro-sociology of the individual and the homogeneous family, on the one hand, and the macro-sociology of broader society, on the other hand. This reflects the central task of school and education in terms of the classical function of school referred to above. Van der Stoep (2005) used Bourdieu’s critique of society as his starting point to evaluate the political philosophy of multiculturalism. He did so because it places a strong emphasis on the societal conditions that must be met to enable citizens to develop an open and tolerant attitude. With his holistic approach, Bourdieu occupied an interesting position in relation to, on the one hand, universalists who focus solely on modern democratic individual rights and, on the other hand, multiculturalists who mainly focus on integration while maintaining the individual’s own (cultural) identity (van der Stoep, 2005). Real tolerance implies that every citizen should have equal freedom and means to form his or her own conception of the good life, without elevating any specific political or life conviction to the status of a public norm. Citizens have to be educated and equipped to independently embrace or reject the conceptions and convictions they receive in their home situations (van der Stoep, 2005, pp. 233–234). This accords, I contend, with what Biesta (2013) called the beautiful risk of education—an idea that he combined with the notion that education should not only aim at qualification and socialisation but also at subjectification: learning to be a subject in the bigger world (Biesta, 2022). This is what citizenship formation should focus on. To approach education as an ongoing invitation to students to take their own stand in the classroom, the school community, the social sphere and the natural world entails the features of a holistic answer to 16 A more detailed description of subjectification will follow at the end of Chapter 1.2.
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