On education

James Lund

pp. 137-164

in: James D. Marshall, Michel Foucault, Berlin, Springer, 1996

Abstract

As Foucault wrote and said little explicitly on education, it might appear somewhat of a daunting task to write a book on Foucault and education. If it is, it is not merely for that reason, but because of the complexity of his thinking, the changes in direction which his work appears to take on several occasions, the problems of understanding where he is coming from and why, and the general lack of knowledge and understanding of continental philosophy and social theory, in Anglo-Saxon educational literature. Arguably it is Pierre Bourdieu's work that is best known to educationalists, and not Henri Lefebvre; or Descartes and Kant to philosophers of education, and not Sartre and Merleau-Ponty; Freud rather than Lacan, to psychologists of education; and so on.