Education as Dialogue: Its Prerequisites and its Enemies

Although talk about dialogue is common, nothing clear, significant, and educationally useful has been written about the nature of dialogue and the principles and conditions that support or undermine it. Education as Dialogue argues that true dialogue and education require beliefs, rules, virtues, and habits that facilitate learning while preventing the acquisition of doctrines. Tasos Kazepides shows that the prerequisites for dialogue and education are similar to Ludwig Wittgenstein's concept of "river-bed propositions" - propositions that are the foundation of our ability to think and to reason. He argues that understanding education as genuine dialogue ought to become central to educational theory and practice because it is the most appropriate and effective way to motivate and engage students and the best way to guard against indoctrination. The pivotal importance of education as dialogue is emphasized for its capacity to encourage critical thought, in contrast to indoctrination, which arrests, limits, or frustrates thought. Taking a unique approach to thinking about education, Kazepides provides a welcome and instructive work that stresses the importance of seeing education as dialogue.