The re-childed teacher and the desirable curriculum

Over the last few years, the need for a recovery of teaching has been reclaimed after decades in which “the constructivist metaphor” had led to its marginalization, as it has been mostly reduced to a facilitation of learning. Joining in this debate, from a philosophical-educational perspective, and by taking my cue from some ideas of Gert Biesta, I endeavour to examine the dynamics of re-childing in teaching –thus complementing his very welcome emphasis upon grown-up-ness – and the role that the curriculum can have in that “non-coercive rearrangement of desires,” the triggering of which he has proposed as one of the tasks of teaching. As the title would like to suggest, the talk aspires also to represent a critical engagement – from a reverse angle, so to speak – with the issues raised by a classic like Dewey’s The Child and the Curriculum.