Uppeldi og menntun - 01.07.2015, Page 73

UPPELDI OG MENNTUN/ICELANDIC JOURNAL OF EDUCATION 24(2) 2015 73
ÓLAFUR PÁLL JÓNSSON
(a) Where does the authority come from?
(b) How is authority exercised?
(c) For what end is authority exercised?
Traditionally, schools require students to obey intellectual authority whose origin is
in the teacher as a professional (his position) or in the textbook as an unquestioned
source of legitimate knowledge. If students are to share genuinely in the creation
of knowledge; that is, if schools are to cultivate reason and not promote acceptance
and conformity, they must abandon such traditional sources of intellectual authority.
Rather, intellectual authority must be supported by reason and be the product of a
mutual search for truth and understanding, for instance through dialogue. In this
respect, Socrates’ practices, as he rose against the authority of tradition and men in
power by subjecting whoever was in his way to open questons, is a good example.
A school which bases its practices on the authority of reason rather than on
authority of tradition or position, and which emphasizes students full participation
as moral and rational agents, is likely to become a democratic learning community
where the cultivation of both moral and rational capacities go hand in hand. A demo-
cratic learning community in this sense differs in important ways from a professional
learning community, which has received much attention in recent years. In a demo-
cratic learning community the students are included as full members and moral
agents and not only as moral patients. This idea of a democratic learning community
goes much further than recent ideas about a professional learning community. The
latter is a community of professionals only and although such a community certainly
has the good of the students as an objective, the students themselves do not share in
its learning processes.
A school which is a learning community where students and professionals are
included as moral agents is a genuinely democratic community and the democratic
character is inextricably related to its function as an educational setting.
Keywords: Democracy, education, learning community, Socrates
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Olafur Pall Jonsson (opj@hi.is) is a professor of philosophy at the University of Iceland,
School of Education. He holds an MA degree in philosophy from the University of
Calgary and a Ph.D. degree in philosophy from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
His main research interests are philosophy of education, democracy and social justice.
These subjects are discussed in his book Lýðræði, réttlæti og menntun (Democracy,
justice and education, 2011). He has also written on philosophy of language and legal
philosophy and has published the book Náttúra, vald og verðmæti (Nature, authority
and value, 2007) on the philosophy of nature.