torsdag, juli 30, 2009

Artikeltips till Tobias Krantz

I en äldre artikel med namnet Schools of Thought - Why the State should´t fund MBAs skriver James K.A. Smith om statens ovilja att finansiera teologiska utbildningar på ett sätt som ger ett uppfriskande perspektiv på Högskoleverkets ifrågasättande av flera universitets och högskolors rätt att examinera studenter i religionsvetenskap och teologi.

Isn't there something quite indoctrinating about many of the programs in business at state universities, which function as a kind of novitiate, orienting students to a set of doctrines and a new worldview? Indeed, one could suggest that much that goes under the banner of "secular" education is, in fact, a kind of religious formation where students are initiated into a particular worldview -- a set of commitments that govern how they see the world and act within it. As Thomas Kuhn put it, even in the objective world of the sciences, what counts as "normal science" is really a kind of orthodoxy.

What the court's decision fails to question is the very idea of the "secular." It assumes that the secular is neutral and non-religious, whereas in fact the secular commitments of the market and political liberalism constitute a different religion. As such, the very notion of the secular is a kind of modern hangover in our postmodern world. In postmodernity, there is no secular, because there is no neutrality. Every vocation is religious in a formal sense of being committed to a particular worldview. So the supposedly radical distinction between religious and other secular vocations breaks down when we reject the very notion of the secular.

Då Högskoleverkets kritik ju långtifrån endast är en fråga om utbildning och vetenskapssyn, utan även handlar om demokrati och mångfald, så hade det varit kul att höra, inte bara hur Tobias Krantz ser på saken, utan även Nyamko Sabuni.

Missa inte Joel Halldorfs post på samma tema!

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