CERC was honored to host Dr. Karsten Kenklies’ seminar on the 14th of May. The title of the talk was “Unfused Horizons: Challenges of an Intercultural Theorising of Education”. The talk was well-attended with both in-person and online audience.
In this talk, Dr. Kenklies called attention to the increasing inclusion of “non-Western” philosophical resources in recent studies of philosophy of education. Acknowledging the values of such approach, Dr. Kenklies was also concerned about the lack of methodological/disciplinary reflection behind the inclusion, and about the risk of presenting a false dichotomy of “the West” and the rest. To illustrate the diversity within the West, Dr. Kenklies discussed the difference between the Anglo model and the Germanic model of constructing the field of educational studies and positioning the role of philosophical studies in the field. In the Anglo model, educational studies are defined as the studies of educational institutions, i.e. schools, and philosophical arguments are utilized to discuss especially normative issues relevant to schooling. On the other hand, the object of interest in the Germanic model of educational studies is the pedagogical relation, i.e. influence with intention of improvement, which can happen both formally and informally, within and outside schools. And in the later model, philosophies are used to reflect on the nature and boundary of the pedagogical relation. Emphasizing that these are only two models among many and there is no better or worse model, Dr. Kenklies concluded that the intercultural approach in philosophy of education should not stop at the level of adding different perspectives on pre-defined issues, but rather should facilitate a deeper comparison and conversation among different models of imagining “education”.
The rich talk by Dr. Kenklies sparked vibrant discussion both in the seminar room and online. Audience appreciated the speaker’s scrutiny over the difficulties of intercultural approaches, and discussed with the speaker possible ways of moving forward, especially in the context of East Asian and Hong Kong. This talk provided profound insights for the CERC community since intercultural approach has long been the emphasis of research here.
