Forgotten Connections
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Introduction
Forgotten Connections (Vergessene Zusammenhänge) is a book written by Klaus Mollenhauer, and it is the basis of the course, EDEF 320 held at the School of Education, Thompson Rivers University, Kamloops. This Wiki website provides an overview of this book, and gives access to images and to translations of passages found in each of its chapters.
About the Author
Klaus Mollenhauer was born in 1928 and died in March 1998. He was professor at the University of Göttingen from 1972 and was appointed honorary doctor at the Free University in Berlin in 1993. After completing his teacher’s training he taught for a few years, and then went on to study pedagogy, sociology and German literature. He is generally seen as a representative of the the hermeneutic tradition, which emphasizes the theoretician’s responsibility for interpretation and practical application. His understanding of pedagogy was influenced by Schleiermacher, the founder of hermenutics and an educational theorist in his own right. Schleiermacher emphasized that the field of pedagogy ought to concern itself with the relationship between older and younger generations, and with the relationship between the educator and the child. Mollenhauer was intensely interested in pedagogy generally, and especially as it is manifest in society and in connection with developmental theory. With a collection of essays titled Upbringing and Emancipation (1968), he quickly established himself as a pioneer in a field of emancipatory or critical pedagogy. His later books are also influenced by critical theory, at least until the 1980s, at which time he began to develop a slightly different approach. This new approach, a synthesis of critical, social pedagogy and intergenerational understandings of pedagogy, is represented in Forgotten Connections. This pedagogy emphasizes the role of those elements in our heritage, which we, in good conscience, can promote into the next generation.
Overview of Contents
Mollenhauer's Forgotten Connections (which could also be translated as Forgotten Contexts or Forgotten Coherence) consists of five main sections, and of five main concepts or themes.
Introduction - What's the Issue?
See: Introduction: Pictures and Passages
Mollenhauer introduces his book by emphasizing a number of points:
- "education and formation is always a process expansion and enrichment, but at the same time, is also a process of construction and impoverishment of that what would have been possible. Adults not only are midwives in children's development, but also for children are powerful censors of of that which is part of their formation."
- "Pedagogy must work at the task of cultural and biographical recollection; it must find through this recollection those principles which are of lasting value; Pedagogy has to find a suitable language for this task."
- "All discussion of up-bringing is historical. Something is always said about history, and is always said in a historical(ly-conditioned) way.
- "Our culture presently reproduces itself in such a way that children are born, only when adults want them. The first pedagogical question, then, is: "Why do we have children?"
Presentation - sharing something about one's self and one's way of life
See: Presentation: Pictures and Passages
In orally-based societies, and in Europe during the middle ages, children participate(d) in cultural activities and in learning generally through informal contact with adults. Grown-ups "present" to children their adult behavioural image and allow children to observe aspects of adult behaviour simply by living with them. This method of upbringing is implicit and habitual. It generally is not consciously defined by adults. The primary presentation of adults' behavioural image takes place when the child learns her/his mother tongue. Through the acquisition of one's first language, children experience the first ordering of their universe, they acquire a systematic and structured ability to imagine and to picture things. Once the basics of the mother tongue are learned, the child will perceive the world in terms of this structure.
Representation - choosing what will be shared
See: Representation: Pictures and Passages
In societies based on writing, and in Europe and North America after the 1700's, increasing complexity and differentiation (e.g. different classes, social roles, complex forms of knowledge) make the presentation of a unified adult behavioural image impossible. What children learn through presentation of behavioural images may become narrow and confusing. It therefore becomes necessary to change the process of presentation from one that is unreflective and habitual into one that is consciously and even systematically constructed. This involves making a conscious selection among all the possibilities in the cultural heritage, and organizing the process of upbringing in pedagogical institutions. The question of educational technique becomes important, and a number of other problems and issues arise which Mollenhauer deals with in terms of 'developmental preparedness.'
Developmental Preparedness - assurance that children will learn
See: Developmental Preparedness: Pictures and Passages
That which is represented must of necessity be detached from everyday life to some extent, and may therefore seem meaningless to the children. A small child no longer participates in the adult world, for example, when it comes to the complicated language and rules that enable us to calculate and plan. This give rise to a tension, contradiction or aporia in education in which developmental preparedness plays an important role. This is the tension between the young child's mute, individual, presocial world (on the one hand) and the social world of language and its structures, categories and complexities (on the other). The contradiction or aporia for education is that it must simultaneously encourage children to enter the world of language and society, while at the same time nurturing their individuality. Developmental preparedness is the retention and development of this individuality in the child, even while the child is socialized. "Developmental preparedness" as Mollenhauer explains, "is a disposition that articulates itself in opposition to expectations"(103). The child is, in a very important way, already prepared to develop as a unique individual, regardless of the impediments or the educational representations put in front of him or her.
Self-starting - giving one's self tasks, solving one's own problems
See: Self-starting: Pictures and Passages
The way that a child realizes his or her individuality is by consciously acting on his or her own initiative, and this initiative is to be encouraged. Mollenhauer describes this as a movement from the inside to the outside (as opposed to many educational notions implying movement in the opposite direction; e.g. "internalization" and "assimilation"). Mollenhauer uses the examples of learning to speak, to draw and to walk to illustrate this process. In this connection, is important that the educator challenge the young person intellectually and emotionally, but while maintaining an air of expectation and attentiveness. But this is not a simple task. It implies that each concrete situation actually challenges our own self-starting abilities as educators.
Difficulties with Identity
See: Identity: Pictures and Passages
Identity is something that develops out of the dynamics of developmental preparedness and self-starting. But it is not something that is stable. It is instead a relationship of the self to itself. And this relationship has itself changed throughout history. "The relationship that goes by the name of 'identity,'" Mollenhauer explains, "is constituted from the difference between that which is the case empirically [in 'reality'] and that which is possible." Making the possible real, Mollenhauer explains, "is an anticipation or shaping of the future...a preliminary design of the self, an act that is becoming ever more risky." He ties these remarks back to the questions of identity and pedagogy as follows:
This 'preliminary design,' which I make of myself --and that I also try to shape from the impressions that others have of me-- and my relationship to this design, especially in view of what I could become, this is a problem for me. In this sense, for pedagogy, there are no such thing as identities, there are only identity problems.
