Dialectics of resistance. Education as a process of discovering meanings

Abstract

Splitting up of educational practice into a value-free cognitive component and a cognition-free emotive component which dominated in modern account of education, has led to the serious misunderstanding of the subject and purpose of educational activities. Using the conceptual apparatus related to the exchange of services and developing the key competences has resulted in reduction of educational activities to economic factors. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the importance of the concept of resistance as a link connecting the cognitive and the emotional elements in teaching. The assumption is that developing moral autonomy by the students is the ultimate goal of educational activities. The first part of the paper analyses the concepts of self-knowledge, subjectivity and resistance in terms of G. W. F. Hegel’s "Phenomenology of the Spirit". The second section refers these concepts to the contemporary moral education. The linguistic concept of education developed by Paul Standish is presented; the focus is on the author’s view on the role of emotional factors in shaping the moral autonomy of the students. The concept of educational resistance turns out to be a necessary link connecting two important perspectives: the self-consciousness of a student and a discursive world, consisting of socially conditioned acts of speech.