Albert Camus and Education

Book excerpt: This book continues the story about education and the absurd. Its specific focus is on the work of Albert Camus. It tries to summarise the ways in which his writing has already inspired and influenced educational thinking and practice, and it offers a new set of educational interpretations of six of his major works. These set out the exciting challenge about how we might think about the purposes and practices of education in the future, how to talk about these, plan and deliver. Using the work of Albert Camus in this way is an attempt to bring him and his ideas closer to educational discussions. This is a deliberate attempt to show the synergy between some of his major concepts and those that are already cornerstones of educational discourses. Read from an educational perspective the work of Albert Camus also provides guidance and invigorates the imagination as to how education can respond to those increasingly complex, existential crises it finds itself connected to. For educational people interested in these questions this book will hopefully motivate a re-reading of Camus and a brave, new lens on practice.