SPRING 2007 CURRICULUM & INSTRUCTION SEMINAR
Course number: 975 section 001
Credits: 3 (actually 2-3)

TITLE: Seminar: Critical Systems Theory and World Education
Instructor: Francois Tochon

Time: Thursday 4:35pm to 7:15pm

Semiotics approaches the political and the cultural within the personal, analyzing the human rapport with the social the way Bourdieu did it in his 2002 book, “Ein Soziologischer Selbstversuch” on the science of science, and reflexivity. The seminar is an attempt at initiating educational semiopolitics: conceptualizing what could be meaningful politics for the educated mind. Signs and their use are the sites of sociocultural enactments that – due to their collective and contractual dimension – have a political dimension. We will start with a brief survey of Contractualism, reviewing conceptions of the social contract. Then elements from Critical Theory (CT) will open the door to Critical Systems Theory (CST) and Critical Systems Heuristics (CSH). These readings will help us address a key issue: the social contract seems partly broken. Environmentally, socially, humanely and symbolically destructive actions are being hierarchically justified with democratic arguments. This appalling situation will legitimate new reflections on world education to envision what a global mindset could and should be: reflecting on the Heideggerian notion of caring (Sorge), on biopolitics, biocosmopolitanism and deliberate “décroissance”  (postdevelopment), in the search for natural (non-dualistic) wisdom and science with conscience. Semiopolitics is politics with meaning. It places Education, cultural differences and foreign languages on the stage. To reconceptualize world peace and its conditions, we will discuss recent proposals of French Sociologist Edgar Morin. The seminar is also an attempt at discussing critically the new, role of teachers in the forthcoming world reconstruction process.

Open to students from any discipline. Since some works have not been translated in English, reading knowledge of French or German would be an asset.

e-mail: ftochon@education.wisc.edu