Education Without Authority?

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By Jennie Han

"Education is the point at which we decide whether we love the world enough to assume responsibility for it and by the same token save it from that ruin which, except for renewal, except for the coming of the new and young, would be inevitable."

-- Hannah Arendt, “The Crisis in Education”

Education carries a heavy burden for Arendt. As in politics, we declare our love for the world, both or own and the world of future generations. To say that education is in crisis, then, is for Arendt not to lament the fact that “Johnny can’t read.” It is to acknowledge a generalized dissatisfaction with and alienation from the world that has us say to our children, “[i]n this world even we are not very securely at home….You must try to make out as best you can; in any case you are not entitled to call us to account. We are innocent, we wash our hands of you.” So alienated, one might still be qualified to teach if one has knowledge of subjects, but one has no authority to do so. For without assuming the responsibility for the world that is necessary to say to the child, “This is our world,” there can be no relationship of teaching and learning between the adult who is to introduce the child to the world and the child who is developing into adulthood to accept this responsibility in turn.

For Arendt, this responsibility lies importantly in maintaining a space of privacy for children, free from the harsh gaze of the public. Children—“human beings in process of becoming but not yet complete” require “special protection and care so that nothing destructive may happen to [them] from the world.” Children need the “security of darkness” to mature, and as such, their “traditional place is in the family, whose adult members daily return back from the outside world and withdraw into the security of private life within four walls.” The argument here, however, differs importantly from her position in “Reflections on Little Rock.” In that essay, Arendt seemed almost entirely to limit children to the private sphere of the household, giving parents exclusive control over the schools their children would attend.

In “The Crisis in Education,” Arendt’s call for “security” doesn’t imply keeping children from the adult world. Rather, it is a call for education to facilitate “the natural relationship between grown-ups and children” in order to introduce children into this world. Children are developing, and it is our responsibility, in education, to nurture this development. Indeed, she has a harsh view of those who would abdicate this responsibility. To leave children on their own, Arendt argues, would be to subject them to “a much more terrifying and truly tyrannical authority, the tyranny of the majority.” Education is for Arendt ultimately as much about our love for the world as it is a program of training children in particular subjects. Both children and grown-ups are constituent members of the world, each group in its own stage of membership and responsibility.

This gives education a gravity that goes beyond the question of whether individual students can read or not, and for students of all ages, it pushes education beyond the question of whether students are getting the “skills” they need to be successful in the world. But missing from Arendt’s highly suggestive take on education is a clear description of what “education” informed and moved by a love for the world looks like. Aside from some brief remarks about the uselessness of pedagogy, we are left with what seems to be her advocacy for a kind of hierarchical mentorship program in which learning must be guided by an authority figure. And we are left with this largely because the alternative—a realm of children in the absence of authority—is dismissed as a realm of tyranny.

In making adult authority so central to education, Arendt frees us from the responsibility of examining whether or not individuals and institutions should have this authority. She obscures both the potential that lies in an introduction to the world free from the authority of adults, and correspondingly, the pitfalls of relying too heavily on responsible adults to guide children into the world. Arendt speaks of the authority of adults as though it were simply a way that one might inspire children to become responsible for the world. However, authority potentially as overwhelming and overpowering as might be empowering, perhaps even more so for children. It is hard not to be swayed by those who have authority over us, and to rely on this relationship to help children develop into adults seems blind to the ways in which power is transmitted through authority.

I see in many of my university students in South Korea adults who, as a result of having been heavily, if not entirely, educated through relationships with parents, teachers, and tutors, continue to see their adult roles not so much as responsible authorities as individuals who need to be led by caretakers. This is not simply about students being “immature” or wanting everything handed down to them without working hard—common criticisms of university students throughout the world. The students whom I encounter are smart and talented. But as Arendt notes, education is not simply about knowledge, and it can’t be simply about intelligence. The problem here, I want to suggest, lies in an educational program that has taken Arendt’s warnings too much to heart to rely entirely on adult-child relationships. A realm of children that excludes adults might offer children lessons in responsibility that are simply not possible in hierarchical relationships.

For children, a world without adults is a world of equality, a sphere in which they might confront early on the experience of equality and with it, the experience of politics and action, as well as world making. The tyranny of the majority is, as Tocqueville noted, of course a major potential pitfall of equality. It is understandable that Arendt would try to guard against it. But if the cost of doing so is to shield children from these early experiences of equality, this might come as too high a price. It would deprive them of the elementary experiences of equality that prepare them for a life of action, politics, and responsibility, together as new adults and caretakers of an ever-renewing world.