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Thresholdswww.cedu.niu.edu/lepf/foundations/thresholds/Thresholds in Education Foundat ion Board of Directors 2010Dr. Kerry BurchDr. Joseph FlynnMr. Todd LathamDr. Teresa WasongaExecutive EditorCharles HowellAssistant Executive EditorPatricia KeeIssue EditorLeslie A. SassoneManaging EditorMarilyn J. JustusDesignerGerardo Rivera

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A Pedagogical Imperative of PedagogicalImperativesLewis R. Gordon - Temple University

Let me begin by saying how honored Iam to be a recipient of the James and HelenMerritt Distinguished Service Award forContributions to the Philosophy of Education.Thank you, members of the selectioncommittee, for publicly announcing suchrecognition of my work, and thank you toJames and Helen Merritt for founding thisaward. A travesty in the academy has beenthe derision of critical thought, of reflection,in the study of education, especially withregard to its significance for the cultivation ofcitizenship and human well-being. To chooseto honor those whose life work is devoted tothinking, to those activities that transformthe human animal into the human beingthrough a transition from sign to symbol, tochoose such in times where nothing is morefeared in our nation's political life than aninformed public, is an act that goes beyondintelligence to the realm of wisdom.

As Dr. Linda O'Neill, a member of thecommittee, would attest, our correspondenceafter notification of my selection reveals myprofound gratitude for being acknowledged

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for what brought me to the academy in thefirst place. The story is as follows. I wasworking as a professional musician, playingdrums and sometimes piano, before goingto college. My decision to go to collegewas personal, not

absorb the pressure of a heart beat anmore abstract matters such as whethewould be a pure Being if all material thand all energy ceased.

Yes, I was an oddacademic. I wantedto spend more timewith my girlfriend.Playing jazz, blues,funk, and being inthe orchestra pit forsome off-Broadwaytheater meant

Good faith is not the opposite I did not realize tof bad faith. What is needed is however, becauseattention to the critical norms how absorbed I wof evidence, of criteria bywhich good judgment comesabout.

with such mattersToday, such interewould seem evenodd in virtue of malso being Black.

performing on many long nights, and sincethe income was low, spending many longdays in minimum-wage jobs.At first, I enrolled in many of my girlfriend'sclasses, but the experience reminded me ofhow much I loved to write. I had devotedmuch time to writing in my childhood. Thatenergy was spent on genres ranging fromshort stories to novellas, and on exploratoryessays on matters such as how blood vessels

stereotype would have it, there were,continue to be, too many distractionsthe lives of Black children, especially thliving, as I had, in the "inner city," namthe Bronx, that should have made suchabsorption impossible. But I should admy own experiences varied because, braised by my young mother who was ataking care of my brothers and extendrelatives, my family moved a lot. I canof only one home in which I have lived

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Lewis R. Gordon & Helen Merritt

longer than three years, and that occurred inmy recent adult life.Writing, then, functioned as a multitude ofthings that included the ongoing narrativeof life. Reality, in other words, continuedthrough layers of written realizations.Although I never kept a diary, my writingand thinking became one. I even consideredmusic a continuation of writing.So, attending college, where I was expectedto write, and write often, was not a burdenbut an affirmation of something I held dear.

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I took as many courses as I could andwas eventually invited to participate in anexperimental honors program, the LehmanScholars Program, an offer I almost declinedbut for the director's love for jazz. I heardsome Charlie Parker (i t may have been thecomposition "Confirmation") playing on hisold LP player in his office and struck up aconversation with him on jazz. Two yearslater, I graduated through that programwith the wealth of experience and skills of

That enthusiasm led to my becoming a NewYork City high school teacher in the 1980sand to my creating The Second ChanceProgram, a resource for in-school truants aLehman High School. Given the challengesraised in teaching such students, theprincipal had told me that a 10% retentionrate would have been sufficient for thesuccess of the program. It was fortunate thI was young, enthusiastic, and na'lve.

a liberal arts education, which I have not All that enabled me to try things that manytired of sharing and from which I continue to thought would fail, and the results were,learn.

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instead, an 85% rate of retention of thosestudents completing high school. I wasasked to write up a study of the program,which I did, but it struck me that therewere several dimensions of my work withthose students that I could not formulatein that report. How does one quantifyand thematize, in my

dissertation on bad faith and antiblackracism. That work was subsequentlyexpanded and published at a time whenthere was much pressure to examinehuman reality in oversimplified extremes ofstructures without individuals on the onehand and individuals devoid of structural

realities, negative andlimited understandingof social scientificassessment at the time,that my colleagues and Isucceeded by respectingthe humanity of ourstudents?

A travesty in theacademy has beenthe derision of critical

positive, on the other.I characterized theseextremes as forms

The answers were notavailable to me then. Idecided to explore them

thought, of reflection, inthe study of education,especially with regard toits significance for thecultivation of citizenshipand human well-being.

of bad faith. Theyinvolved allegiance tofalse views of reality,the consequence ofwhich was a set of liesabout ourselves. Socialstructures withoutindividuals could only

in the world of philosophy, at the timethinking that Aristotle's theory of potentialityoffered much fruit for such inquiry. It wasthus the case that problems of philosophyof education and its relation to the humancondition, of what it means to be a humanbeing, were preoccupations of mine from thebeginning of my graduate school career.

exist where they are not dependent uponthe activities of living people, of creatureswith agency and their day-to-day activities.Individuals without structures wouldhave to have been born "whole," so tospeak. That human beings have to acquirelanguage, a social skill, proves that we aredevelopmental and highly social-dependentcreatures. Both extremes, in other words,collapse under the weight of their owncontradictions.

is a consciousness that is ashamed ofShame, as we know, is about being sedoing what we would prefer remain hidTo be "seen" calls for the perspective oanother or others. Bad faith, then, is aabout anxiety, and at times fear, of whevidence reveals, for the latter is a speof revelation: It is an uncovering of thawhich unveils additional things. Acts ofdisclosure, of unconcealment, bring thithe fore that call for us to make decisioThey exemplify a concept in philosopheducation that is presented perhaps moften than any other, namely, that of bcritical. The words critic, critique, criteand critical come from the ancient Greword krinein, which means "to choose"to decide." To do this, one must judgmake a judgment. And to make a judgone must be informed, so one must cothe things that will compel one's judgmThus, the related word krites (judge) beverything together with kriterion, whused to make judgments. A striking thabout the Greek origins is how this ununderstanding of judgment and evidenthat which appears and compels seeinneeds to be seen, is connected. Anothword sharing etymological roots withis crisis. But here, the more anxiety-ridimensions of having to choose come

I offer this autobiographical narrativebecause I see a great deal of commitmentshave come full circle in my receiving thisaward. It was announced to me at a time One of the dimensions of bad faith is that it fore: In a crisis, we face making decisin which I was reflecting on work over thepast two decades. You see, my professionalacademic career was inaugurated by my

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hates to be revealed as what it is. The closer wish not to make. We attempt to freezbad faith comes to seeing itself, the more to stop the future, because tha t difficuenraged it becomes. That is because it choice lurks within the coming momen

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In some cases, the choice to be madeis not very clear, for the outcomes areunpredictable, but we know that whethergood or bad, either instantiation carrieswith it, by virtue of our decision, ourresponsibility.

Bad faith is an effort to hide fromresponsibility. For the purpose of this lecture,this anxiety brings an ethical dimensionto our epistemological

Our epistemological development, what welearn and thereby come to know, is anotherway of referring to our education. Many of usare familiar with the etymology of education, inthe Latin infinitive educare, to bring up, whichin turn is related to educere, to bring out or tolead. Both terms suggest assisting another inthe process of maturation, of growth. The goalof education, read in this way, is to transformchildren into adults. But, as our discussion of

bad faith reveals, some, ifdemands, to our theoryand practices of producingknowledge. Bad faith herebecomes our attempt to hidefrom the responsibility we haveas producers and discoverersof knowledge.

We face the first ofmany pedagogicalimperatives: to makeourselves intelligent.

not most, of us are afraidof the responsibility of adultlife. Education, then, is also astruggle against bad faith.

Although I am using the language of ethics, Ishould like to remind everyone that bad faith isnot always unethical and immoral. In a societyin which nearly everyone is afraid of judgment,the idea of being criticized as such rallies forcesof resistance, of (as is by now obvious) badfaith, but a retreat into bad faith makes sensein abusive situations. It also makes sense in aparadoxical admission: Sometimes we seek badfaith as a refuge against an unbearable fact(e.g., the loss of a loved one). The reflectionsoffered here are not condemnations of peoplewho do such. Most of us must prepare ourselvesto take on-which often involves returning to-trauma. The ethical concern here is toward ourepistemological claims and their development.

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This task of education islinked to several matters that I cannot developin this lecture but shall present in shortform in the hope of enough discussion timefor elaboration. The first is that we may betempted to reformulate this task as an effortto develop good faith. One can, however, avoidreality in good faith, as I have suggested withtrauma. One could choose in good faith neverto grow up. As instances mount, the inevitablerealization makes its appearance: Good faithis also a form of bad faith. Good faith is notthe opposite of bad faith. What is needed isattention to the critical norms of evidence, ofcriteria by which good judgment comes about.Being evidential, these norms must appear intheir nakedness, they must be revealed, whichin principle means that they must transcendthe self into its relationship with others. They

must, in phenomenological language, bei ntersu bjective.

We are drawn into a dimension of realitywhen we recognize and respect a world ofothers. We learn that our inner life echoesouter meaning, and we face bringing inlayers of reality as understood within theframework of human experience. Let us callthis intersubjective framework of experiencethe social world. In bad faith, we attempt tohide from the social world. A way of hidingfrom that world is to dehumanize it. We treaas an ossified structure, as an unyielding forcagainst which our decisions do not matter. I four actions make no difference, how, then, cwe be responsible for them? I have never beashamed to call my work humanistic. It is anadmission for which I have received criticismin the postmodern academy. My argument,however, was, and continues to be, that failuto articulate the human dimensions of humanphenomena leads to acts of evasion that oftecollapse into repression. To make humanbeings into what we are not requires rallyingour social forces against us. I characterizedthis in my first book as institutional bad faith.involves constructing norms, rationalizations,social edifices, symbols, places, and anythingthat could influence social life in ways thatfacilitate self-deception and the erosion of thhuman spirit. As expected, a prime examplethis is what has been done to many schools,but especially public ones. The recent emphaon testing, in, for example, the No Child Left

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Behind national policy, is an effort to makethought routine and devoid o f criticalreflection. The logical consequence of agenerally unthinking public is now our fate.And it is so at a time when humanity isfacing unparalleled ecological, economic, andpolitical dangers. We face the first of manypedagogical imperatives: to make ourselvesintelligent. Jane Anna Gordon and I raisedthe concept of a pedagogical imperativein our introduction to A

American philosophy or in African philosophycourses versus those listed simply as"Philosophy" or "Introduction to Philosophy"or even, as is oddly more acceptable,"Anglo-Analytical Philosophy" or "ContinentalPhilosophy" or "Ancient Philosophy." The lasttwo often require the adjective "European"and "Greek" or "Greek and Latin" to becomeprecise. In African philosophy and AfricanAmerican philosophy courses, students often

draw upon resources inCompanion to African-American Studies, whichJane Anna Gordon has alsodiscussed in her article"Beyond Anti-Elitism:

African Americanphilosophy isconsidered a subfieldof philosophy, but

philosophy beyond thingsAfrican or African American.In other words, there is aconstant reminder of thescope of the inquiry. In

Black Studies and thePedagogical Imperative."It was introduced in theCompanion to make

in African AmericanStudies, philosophyenters as a subfield.

the other approaches, thediscussion is often offeredby proponents as though the

explicit what was implicit in the outrage wenoticed many students felt toward correlateddisciplines that were subfields of AfricanAmerican Studies but of which the latter wasoften presented as a subfield. For example,African American philosophy is considereda subfield of philosophy, but in AfricanAmerican Studies, philosophy enters as asubfield. In more prosaic form, the disciplineof philosophy is supposed to be universalwhereas the field of African Americanphilosophy is supposed to be particular.What we noticed was that students wereoften surprised at the array of criticalquestions they could discuss in African

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other perspectives did not anddo not exist, or as though if they were to exist,they would be illegitimate. There, universalityis espoused through denial of its limit; it isa rejection of the "outside" by denying itsexistence. Reality, from such an approach, isconstantly contracting. The students' outrageis stimulated, however, by the realization ofwhat I shall call epistemological laziness in thecase of some instructors and willful ignorancein those of others. It is from realizing that theeducator has not made the effort to learn andappreciate the scope of reality. Rephrased:Part of teaching is learning. To teach, onemust learn, but not just learn. One must alsolearn to learn.

Research and scholarship have receivedmuch derision in American political liferecent times. There have been attacksresearch universities, especially by poliagitators demanding the reprimandingprofessors who expect students to expatheir historical and political horizons. Intypical bad faith, these agents of naysaclaim actually to be defending an expanof civic discourse through what they ca"balance." But this so-called balance isoften reduced to the political identityof professors, as though one's politicalidentity is like one's racial, ethnic, gendor sexual identity. Although an exceptiocould always be found for each rule abhuman communities, we should rememthat thinking often challenges one's poviews over time, and in other times invholding a variety of political positions odifferent issues across a spectrum. A fo"balance" promises to become a superfimposition of other factors on thought,the adjustments and at times acts of cnecessary to create such a result will dthe energies of research to begin with.in other words, a disruption of a relatioby which critical reflection may come aThat there is fear of critical thinking todmeans that these disruptions are effortsaturate our educational institutions wifaith. As many of us already know, thermany scholars who no longer discuss csubjects in their classrooms, and these often matters in which they are at time

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the leading experts. Philosophers among usmay immediately think of Kant's categoricalimperative when I speak of pedagogicalimperatives. Kant, as some of us know,thought much about maturation as well,especially in his reflection on enlightenment.I do not always agree with Kant, but I doagree with him on more matters than I oftenexpect. The question of maturation gains itscategorical character from the silliness ofposing the question to the immature. To thechild, it is a question for which appreciationand gratitude belong to the future self.Freud, by the way, in his essay "The Relationof the Poet to Daydreaming," reflected:"The play of children is determined by theirwishes-really by the child's one wish, whichis to be grown-up, the wish that helps to'bring him up"' (p. 36).

I love Freud's candor. The connection of thisobservation to the thoughts presented in thislecture should be apparent. He offers someinsight to the disruptions, to the bad faith, ofwhich I have been speaking:

[The child] always plays at beinggrown-up; in play he imitates what isknown to him of the lives of adults.Now he has no reason to conceal thiswish. With the adult it is otherwise; onthe one hand, he knows that he isexpected not to play any longer or today-dream, but to be making his way ina real world. On the other hand, some

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of the wishes from which hisphantasies spring are such as have tobe entirely hidden; therefore he isashamed of his phantasies as beingchildish and as something prohibited.(pp. 36-37).

are, is decadent. I call it disciplinarydecadence. In its various forms, disciplinardecadence involves turning away from realthrough a variety of obsessive absolutes.We could make our methods deontological,by which I mean treating them as absoluteimperatives. The problem is that our

methods are often developee see here some ofFreud's familiar concernsabout frustration andrepression. But we alsosee an insight into adultlife often overlooked: thatadulthood and maturation

The ability to knowand understand usas a response to problemsposed by reality. But thepiece of reality addressedby a method, especially onethat generated a particular

without harmingus is a profoundact of love. discipline, may only be

are not always identical.A difference between an adult and a childis that the former is responsible for her orhis maturation. The child wants it ; the adultmust, often begrudgingly, accept it. Thisis so for the adult because of the everincomplete reality of being human. Thechild knows that it must become she or hewho in turn is to become something more.But the adult is always not-quite-there, andthe determination of what it is to becomemust be taken on more than given. Reality,the adult discovers, is always bigger thanany of us. Save G-d. But we do not have todiscuss that here since this is a human story,not a theological or metaphysical one.In more recent writings, I have argued thata failure to take heed of the pedagogicalimperative of expanding our horizons, oftaking heed of reality being bigger than we

part of a larger puzzle, orworse, may cease to exist, which wouldmake attachment to the method impracticaat best and neurotic at worst. In the caseof the latter, the method has become asubstitute for reality, and the practitionerattempts to squeeze reality into the methodand the discipline, or even more perverse,the subfield of the disciplines. One'sperspective, in this instance, becomes theworld, and more extreme: all of reality. Itlogically ceases to be intersubjective. FrantFanon, the revolutionary philosopher andpsychiatrist from Martinique, identified thismethodological problem as entailing a formof epistemological colonization. It involvesthe generation of colonizing practices at thlevels of presumed validity of methods.Thinking through S0ren Kierkegaard, one omy favorite writers and, although he would

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espouse otherwise, philosophers, I offer ateleological suspension of disciplinarity asan alternative. This means being willing tosuspend (not get rid of) one's discipline orperspective for the sake of reality. It meansrecognizing there is a there that enableseach of us to announce a here. This atfirst complicated expression reminds usof purpose, that we should, for example,understand how reality places limits on ourways of learning about

of the many failures of private-controlledinstitutions of public resources, of theirinefficiency and corruption, the public iscalled upon by ideologues to place morefaith in those institutions than thosethat, by virtue of being extensions ofthe government, are accountable to thecitizenry. As we know with such matters, thecollapse of reasoning that leads to the sameevidence presented for the future of an

institution in one contextand living it. That weare part of that realitymeans that we should

A difference betweenan adult and a childis offered for its successin another. The rhetoricin support of the latteroften conceals importantconsiderations that would

also take seriously therole we play in ourown pursuits. Since Ihave argued for thepedagogical imperativeof teachers beinglearners, which is the

is that the former isresponsible for heror his maturation. subject it to the samecriteria of the former. How

can we defend regulatoryand de-regulatory practiceswhose purpose was to

The child wants it;the adult must, oftenbegrudgingly, accept it.spirit of research, it

follows that a teleological suspension ofdisciplinarity is a pedagogical imperative. I toffers learning not only for the researcher,but also for whom he or she educates.Recent political conflicts, especially thoseregarding the rhetoric of politicians, haveled to much public distrust of politicalinstitutions, especially government. Criticswarn against inefficiency and other supposeddangers of public (i.e., government-run)institutions such as public schools andnational health funded hospitals. Yet in spite

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make "us" wealthier as theymake most of "us" poorer? How can we

do the same when it makes most of "us"less educated, less physically healthy, andmore psychologically confused? The hiddenanswers rest on the meaning of "we" and"us," and this rhetoric is sometimes maskedin the language of "understanding." I recalltwo colleagues arguing over the generalstupidity of the American public who seekpoliticians who are like them. The critic saidintelligent people would prefer someone whois not like them, someone from whom theycould learn something. The other colleague

at first agreed, pointing out what at firseem similar to my point about educarone should not aim at remaining the saMy response, however, was that what msupporters of such politicians are sayinthat people who are more like them arlikely to understand them and may betable to serve their needs. This at first sgood, but it is only so through presumthat the politician who understands theis not simply an opportunist. As many know about situations of abuse, it is thwho know and understand us most whcan harm us the most. Think of how mworse it could be if what they understais our stupidity. The ability to know andunderstand us without harming us is aprofound act of love. It is no doubt thefor the profound devotion and overwhesense of gratitude Christians have for tgod. To walk among humanity with sucpower and not destroy most around onrequires extraordinary forbearance whoeffortlessness could only be explainedlove. (Some might add disinterest, butwould contradict the whole point of waamong humankind.) Intelligence demanthen, more than a call for understandinWe return here to the argument aboutcritical norms of evidence, about whatto be teleologically suspended, about timperatives of learning, about pedagogimperatives.

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I could very well have chosen examplesfrom a variety of other disciplines andsocial practices, as I have in DisciplinaryDecadence, but the context of this lectureis education, so I have focused on that.Education is politically charged todaybecause our society has placed it as apublic good. In many

"Politics and the English Language," GeorgeOrwell concluded with the following counsel:

.. . the present political chaos isconnected with the decay of language,and that one can probably bring aboutsome improvement by starting at

the verbal end. If youother societies, especiallyancient ones, what is tobe learned by most issimply to take the placeof their parents, and whatis available to few, whichis often connected to

Bad faith here becomesour attempt to hidefrom the responsibilitywe have as producersand discoverers ofknowledge.

simplify your English, youare freed from the worstfollies of orthodoxy. Youcannot speak any of thenecessary dialects, andwhen you make a stupidremark its stupidity will

replacing their parents,is knowledge of how to rule. When all, orat least most, are expected to play a role insome dimension of ruling, which amountsto learning how to rule themselves as eachother, intersubjectively, taking the place ofone's parents is not always clear.One may take on one's parents' social rolebut with different tasks. The range of thingsto learn includes activities to master, andamong them is clear thinking. Such thinkingrequires mastery of a list of related thingsthat include language and writing. Theseaffect an essential element of political life,namely, speech. I t also affects one's abilityto decipher what others are saying, whichmeans knowing, for instance, when one isbeing had. In a wonderful essay entitled

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be obvious, evento yourself. Political language-and withvariations this is true of all politicalparties, from Conservatives toAnarchists [we often forget thatleft-wing extremism is not socialism butanarchy]-is designed to make liessound truthful and murder respectable,and to give an appearance of solidity topure wind. (p. 120)

I began this discussion with some reflectionson bad faith because, as I am hoping isnow clear, I am arguing against the evasionof reality. An aspect of reality that humanbeings seem especially to be afraid of ishuman reality. We seem to be so ashamedof ourselves that we attempt to concealourselves from our institutions. The effort to

construct human institutions that could takeon the pedagogical imperative of liberatingour pedagogical imperatives in manydimensions of human life is an option we arefortunate to have as our choice. It means,echoing Orwell's understated optimism, thatthere is still much that can be done and,thus, much to do.

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References1. Fanon, Frantz. (1967). Black

skin, White masks. (trans. CharlesLamm Markmann). New York:Grove.

2. Freud, Sigmund. (1963). Therelation of the poet to day-dreaming (trans. I.F. Grant Duff),in Character and culture, ed. byPhilip Reiff. New York: CollierBooks, 34-43.

3. Gordon, Jane Anna. (2010).Beyond anti-elitism: Black studiesand the pedagogical imperative,The Review of Education,Pedagogy, and Cultural StudiesStudies 32, Issue 2: 1-16.

4. Gordon, Lewis R. (1995). Bad faithand antiblack racism. Amherst, NY:Humanity Books.

5. Gordon, Lewis R. (2006).Disciplinary decadence: Livingthought in trying times. Boulder,CO: Paradigm.

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6.

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Gordon, Lewis R. and Jane AnnaGordon. (2006). On workingthrough a most difficult terrain, inA companion to African-Americanstudies. Malden, MA: Blackwell, xx -XXXV.Kant, Immanuel. (1959). Whatis enlightenment? in Foundationsof the metaphysics of morals(trans. Lewis White Beck).Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill,85-92.Kierkegaard, S0ren. (1983). Fearand trembling/repetition:Kierkegaard's writings, Vol. 6(trans. Edna H. Hong & Howard V.Hong). Princeton, NJ: PrincetonUniversity Press.Orwell, George. (1984). Politics andthe English language. In Why Iwrite. New York: Penguin Books,102-119.

Lewis R. Gordon is the Laura H. Carnell Professor of Philosophy at Temple Universitywhere he is also the founding director of the Institute for the Study of Race andSocial Thought and the Center for Afro-Jewish Studies. Professor Gordon earned hisB.A. in philosophy and political science through the Lehman Scholars Program atLehman University of the City University of New York and his Ph.D. in philosophy wdistinction from Yale University. He is the author of eleven books to date, and hisscholarship has made significant philosophical and sociological contributions to thehumanist tradition focused on philosophy of existence and phenomenology, Africanaphilosophy, and social and political philosophy.

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