Pedagogy without a project: Arendt and Derrida on teaching, responsibility and revolution

When, in 1958, Hannah Arendt diagnoses a crisis in education, it is a crisis brought on by the disappearance of authority from the modern world. The word of God, or the law of nature, or Platonic ideals no longer provide the authority to make legitimate. the exercise of political power, and with authority thus gone from the political realm, educators can find no grounds for maintaining it in the realm of education. The result is a disaster: progressive education is the order of the day, teachers are no longer experts in what they teach, children are too often left to their own devices and students graduate without being able to read, What is to be done? The answer,surprisingly, lies in the reestablishing of authority, albeit a new authority that is dispersed rather than centralized, restricted to pedagogy and still banned from politics, and based on responsibility rather than, Arendt claims, on received laws.