The school crisis and the anthropotechnical analysis: Sloterdijk's perspective on education

Abstract

Although Sloterdijk is not exactly a philosopher of education, his works offer a series of challenges for a critical analysis of the school and the educational models we have. This article seeks to contribute to this reflection. The questions that invite us to reflect and that motivate the present text start from the critique of the current and historical educational model, which is associated with the process of "domestication" as the purpose of the school, with its meaning as a technology of production of the human (anthropotechnologies), with the connection education-humanism and its failure, with what the practical dimension of learning may mean as a technique of exercise, and with the impasse in which schooling is today. Mainly two of Sloterdijk's texts with the greatest impact on the universe of education and pedagogy are considered: Rules for the Human Park and You Must Change Your Life, although other texts by other philosophers will also be referred to. The ideas of a life of exercises, with a practical nuance, but without losing the dimension of personal spiritual progress, may be some of the ways out of the current crisis of education.