In the Event of Learning: Alienation and Participative Thinking in Education

This essay begins with Karl Marx's notion of alienation, and then explores a form of alienation specific to education. It examines Mikhail Bakhtin's treatment of alienation in connection with his participative thinking theory and suggests strategies for overcoming educational alienation that are based on Bakhtin's notion of the “eventness of Being.” The essay addresses the limitations of liberal and conservative critiques of education, both of which tend to ignore forms of alienation characteristic of modern schooling regardless of the issues of educational equity and efficiency. The author proposes that we can overcome the problem of event deficiency in our schools by paying serious attention to the nonacademic side of school life.