In Search of Responsibility as Education

Book excerpt: Not to be conflated with systems of accountability, this book examines responsibility as a subject of educational inquiry. The author argues that responsibility in its most radical sense is not connected to a higher authority. Rather, responsibility summons the actor to do the right thing when no one else is there to announce what is right; it involves speaking the truth in a world that is increasingly characterized by organized lying and organized irresponsibility. The search for responsibility as education is explored through a wide range of issues including: studying the ways in which the bureaucratization of the world undermine ethical consciousness; cultivating the ethical imagination in education which is not only vital to sustaining democracy, but to counteracting indifference to crimes against humanity and crimes against the planet; critiquing the imperial nationalism of a wave of education legislation requiring American schools to provide instruction on genocides and other mass atrocities that take place by ‘others’ and ‘abroad’ but not at ‘home’ or by ‘us’; centralizing a curriculum of common sense in an era marked by a breakdown of common sense and disinformation narratives; and facing a reality that can never be experienced: the end of the human world. Reimagining education as an avenue for cultivating personal responsibility and global justice, this text will be of interest to students, scholars, and researchers working in curriculum studies, philosophy of education, educational policy, and teacher education.