The Pedagogical Contract: The Economies of Teaching and Learning in the Ancient World

185 Pages·2000·8.013 MB·English

by  Yun Lee Too

THE BODY, IN THEORY
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Constructions of the Classical Body edited by James 1. Porter
An Utterly Dark Spot: Gaze and Body in Early Modern Philosophy
by Miran Bozovic
The Pedagogical Contract: The Economies of Teaching and
Learning in the Ancient World
by Yun Lee Too
~
THE
PEDAGOGICAL
CONTRACT
The Economies of
Teaching and Learning in
the Ancient World
BY
YUN LEE TOO
Ann Arbor
The University
of Michigan
Press
Copyright © by the University of Michigan 2000
All rights reserved
Published in the United States of America by
The University of Michigan Press
Manufactured in the United States of America
® Printed on acid-free paper
2003 2002 2001 2000 43 2
No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
or otherwise, without the written permission
of the publisher.
A CIP catalog recordfal this booh is available
from the British Lihrary.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Too, Yun Lee.
The pedagogical contract: the economies of teaching and
learning in the ancient world / by Yun Lee Too.
p. cm. - (The body, in theory)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN o-472-11087-X (cloth: alk. paper)
I. Teacher-student relationships-Social aspects.
2. Socrates-Contributions in education. 3. Critical
pedagogy. 4. Education, Greek-Philosophy. T. Title.
IT. Series.
LB1033 .T66 2000
37o.11'S-dc21 00-023485
ISBN13 978-0-472-11087-2 (cloth)
ISBN13 978-0-472-02322-6 (electronic)
PREFACE
The Cartesian Body and Its Discontents
T
eaching and learning, which constitute the activity
named in this book as "pedagogy," are often regarded as
being wholly or largely concerned with the mind and
perhaps, when ethical issues become relevant, with the soul.
While acknowledging that these are indeed spheres of teaching
and learning, this study treats the pedagogical scene as one em
bodied by individuals who occupy the roles of teachers and stu
dents variously and fluidly and who frame the intellectual with
any number of contexts and inflections defined by emotion,
Cself-)interest, desire, social identity. The pedagogical scene, as
this book reads and portrays it, is a playing out of any number of
all-too-human dramas with concerns not so distinct from those
of what is otherwise everyday life. It has its economies, institu
tions, and persons and the problems and benefits they generate.
The Pedagogical Contract treats narratives and discourses that in
form and structure the teacher-student relationship in order to
affirm its capacity to sustain a shared project of intellectual in
quiry.
This book is in many senses the product of shared discussion
and inquiry. I would like to thank an anonymous reader for in
Sightful criticism and suggestions and Mary Lamprech for her
support. Sally Humphreys, in particular, and readers for the Uni
verity of Michigan Press are owed gratitude for their support and
enthusiasm. For their faith and support in the project I would
also like to thank Tom Habinek, who showed me the value of my
initial investigations, and Jim Porter, who welcomed the book
into the Body, in Theory series. Finally, the individuals who have
been my "students" have given my thoughts important and rich
substance, and from them I have learned and continue to learn.

CONTENTS
Introduction:
Socratizing Pedagogy
1 The Pedagogical Contract 13
2 The "Disinterest" of
Social Contract 37
3 The Economy of Desire 63
4 Teaching Out of Context 89
5 The Ends of Pedagogy II9
Conclusion 145
Notes 149
Bibliography 161
Index 173

INTRODUCTION:
SOCRATIZING PEDAGOGY
TI
he Pedagogical Contract is in many senses a counterin
tuitive book. It argues that pedagogy ideally must ignore
the imperatives of the conventional marketplace - for
relevance, utility, and productivity - because teaching and learn
ing most enrich a community when the immediate material con
cerns of the community are disregarded. The book emphatically
maintains this apparently perverse conviction, in the belief that
this understanding of pedagogical economy liberates teaching
and learning from history and the anxieties that history en
genders. At the same time the book insists on the need to engage
with antiquity and its powerful pedagogical iconographies as a
means of defending its paradoxical argument.
In the Western tradition Socrates is the figure who is most
powerfully identified with intellectual inquiry. This study is in
many senses a Socratic one despite rejecting the temptations to
become a study of the representations of Socrates produced by
his ancient and more recent biographers, or a history of the So
cratic as a quality essential to pedagogy. It is Socratic in the lim
ited, yet also daring, sense of encountering some of the plural
legacies of Socrates as the individual who both stands for and
problematizes any number of pedagogical ideals. Socrates serves
in this study as a reference marker that assists in revealing and
dismantling discursive structures that define teaching and learn
ing: among them teacher and student, mind and body, knowledge
and ignorance, selflessness and self-interest, past and present,
play and technicality, ideological left/liberal/radical and right/
conservative/traditionalist.
Because the Socratic is fluid and questioning, the terms I list as
structuring the discourse of pedagogy do not suggest any particu
lar set of priorities that must be either affirmed or denied. In other