The 'crisis' in education, modernity, counter-modernity, and enchantment

More than half a century ago Hannah Arendt described education as being in a state of crisis, and identified two factors responsible for this: the loss of authority and the impulse to control the future; both emerge from the distinctive dogmas of modernity. Understanding a number of troubling characteristics and practices of contemporary education in relation to these ideas opens up ways of critiquing what is and imagining what could be. Turning to the notion of counter-modernity, in particular enchantment as an oppositional mode in relation to the concept of child, this paper explores some possibilities that might disrupt or impede the fundamental prejudices that enable the dominant instrumental thinking in educational contexts.