“Schooling and the Enchantment of Modernity”

Modernity is built on a narrative of progress and equal opportunity for prosperity. Schools promote these core Enlightenment concepts, such as progress, universal truth, liberalism, democracy. The American dream of a house, job, career, children are all premised, since the second world war, on economic growth (Keynes, 1933). Heidegger (1999) calls this world-view of modernity, an ‛enchantment.’ But the dream is starting to fade away. Young people in affluent countries have been priced out of the housing market. Under the gig-economy, they are under-employed, and have little hope of a secure lifelong profession. The ecological crisis is increasingly urgent with climate emissions already over-running the 1.5C threshold above pre-industrial levels defined by the 2016 Paris Accord. Energy demand continues to accelerate, with Bitcoin, AI, and other expanding technological demands. Existing financial systems stimulate economic growth, which in turn is correlated with climate emissions. Heidegger argues we are swept up in the machinations of modernity, which has cast an enchantment that makes alienation from environment difficult to see. Rationality disposed of the enchantment of indigenous cultures. But modernity replaced the relationship with the environment with individualised subjectivist claims to universal truth, and hints of the noumenal. Eventually subjective interpretation has become the caliph of epistemology, and the modern world has become alienated from material reality. This shows up in schooling (which is not yet education), where students are taught to value disembodied rationality and to privilege STEM subjects over more creative, cultural, and embodied elements of the curricula. Vocationalism is overtly premised on transferable and rational skills such as writing and arithmetic. More covertly, rationality is essential to the theory of the Invisible Hand and self interested consumerism.