Chapter 7: Human(E) Education: Being and Learning for a “Trans-Modern” Age

Educators have repeatedly sought to reform the neoliberal system of education in order to bring students’ human assets—agency, values, social connection and critical reflection—to the fore. While they may successfully work around the system of education to engage these human qualities in individual classrooms or in a school for periods of time, characteristically, their long-term efforts are systemically ineffectual as they become marginalized and coopted to serve an impersonal, individualized, competitive educational system. The reason is that both the extant educational processes and many such humanizing reforms operate within the boundaries of Cartesian epistemology which, unless displaced by a “trans-modern” (Dussel, 2008) alternative, will continue to negate what is most critical to human identity, teaching, and learning: The humanity, agency, purpose—the human relationships of teachers and students both rich and poor alike.