Introduction

Joan Retallack

Juliana Spahr

pp. 1-10

in: Joan Retallack, Juliana Spahr (eds), Poetry & pedagogy, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2006

Abstract

Educational institutions like to think they know where they are going and that's why the word pedagogy has an almost irretrievably pejorative cast. The old-fashioned specter of pedagogy as a kind of psychological and moral teleology marching toward ideals of compliant good citizenship had hardly been outmoded before its anti-authoritarian replacement began to look suspiciously benighted and equally manipulative. The student who must question all authority must become the ultimate skeptic and therefore, paradoxically, cannot assume a critical stance toward the pedagogy of self-expression s/he is offered as an instrument of freedom. In the maw of this dichotomy between power as knowledge and student-centered learning, the very things that matter—the informed imagination, the passionate intellect—can be swallowed whole.