60 Chapter 1 and sees children’s coming into being as a historical possibility that fosters creativity, difference, and transcendence (…) The pedagogy of interruption will be part of the pedagogy of becoming. We can structure schools to provide opportunities for events where all voices—from that of the other to the deep voice inside the self—can be heard. (p. 673) In this way, Levinas’ (1969) subjectivity opens up the possibility for education to move away from both ‘the humanist trap of a fixed essence, where education inevitably becomes socialization’ and ‘the post humanist impasse, where education loses its ground and orientation’ (p. 675). This ‘genuine educational mission of subjectification’, as Zhao (2012, p. 675) perceived it, can be taken into account as one of the core components for the broad citizenship formation this study intends to identify for the education of trainee teachers in a modern, fragmented society. The way in which this answer to fragmentation at the micro-level of the person should function practically will be discussed below (2.4), where this ‘new and very different subjectivity’ (Zhao, 2012, p. 675) will be discussed in the light of MacIntyre’s (2007) and Taylor’s (1989) critiques of the modernist approach to the subject. For now, it is sufficient to target subjectivity, as an integral concept from Levinas’ (1969) philosophy of the face of the Other, as helpful for personal dealing with otherness and diversity in light of the meaninglessness, alienation and atomisation discussed above. 1.2.2 Fragmented schools The problem of fragmentation has not gone unnoticed in society. It may not be considered or addressed on the meso-level in its entirety and with regard to its complex stratification; nevertheless, the consequences of disintegration, alienation, atomisation and detachment are felt and perceived, which directly or indirectly leads to political debate. In this debate, it is especially the concern of politicians regarding the influence of growing ethnocultural diversity that seem to surface. Over the last few decades, this widespread political debate, which on a deeper level touches upon the problem of societal fragmentation, has led national governments to reach out to schools. In Europe and North America, national governments have asked their help to foster active citizenship and social cohesion. In the European Union (EU), the term ‘active citizenship’ was required to be implemented in the educational legislation of all EU member states (Biesta, 2009). However, the question this sub-section raises is whether schools were sufficiently prepared to respond to such (legal) appeals. The brief answer to this is as follows: they were not. The reason for this is that schools themselves were too much a part of the fragmented societal reality to face this fundamental problem through their teaching.
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