Hope, Achievement, and Interest in Education

Oded Zipory

For the attitude of modernity, the value of the present is indissociable from a desperate eagerness to imagine it, to imagine it otherwise than it is, and to transform it not by destroying it but by grasping it in what it is. … Extreme attention to what is real is confronted with the practice of a liberty that simultaneously respects this reality and violates it.

Foucault, “What is Enlightenment?” (1984)

Introduction

Modern education both respects and violates the present reality of students and teachers. On the

one hand, each and every move that takes place in class - speech, writing, even gestures or eye

movements - is observed, measured, analyzed and accounted for. It seems like everything

matters. On the other hand, it matters only insofar as it serves a future other than itself. Present

actions, and ultimately, the actors themselves, become means towards ends other than

themselves; education turns into training or preparation, and its here-and-now is reduced into an

empty mean-time.    

This paper addresses the enduring challenge to understand and respect students (and teachers) for

who they are at the present, and it is motivated by the belief that this respect could serve as a

pedagogical basis for students’ future flourishing. Specifically, I examine the relations between

achievements, interests and hopes as they play out in education, and I argue that meaningful

hope can be restored and expanded only by valuing the student as she is here-and-now, and not

as an abstraction, a learning-machine like entity, a future political actor, or, in general, a deficient

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or imperfect adult. Orienting the curriculum towards children’s present and potential interests

rather than towards their expected achievements could both show respect for the student as a

meaning-maker in his own right, and open up his future to unforeseen possibilities. 

First, I examine what could be described as a pedagogy of achievement, in which educational

processes are directed towards predetermined objectives. After briefly presenting the advantages

of this approach, I argue that despite the usability, or even necessity, of achievements, they still

fail to fulfill what they promise to do, namely, to advance personal autonomy. Looking at

students’ hopes, interests and view of achievements in both affluent and poor environments, I

argue that achievement-oriented schools harm children’s identity formation, disrespect students’

experience and valuation of the world, and ultimately fail to arouse hope, leading instead to

despair and to a view of the future as predetermined.1

In the second section, I lay out principles for a presentist pedagogy of interest. Following Harry

Frankfurt’s work on the concept of caring,2 I suggest that schools should pay attention to the fact

that students care about various things as well as to their specific objects of care, in addition to

focusing on children’s required knowledge and desired behavior. I argue that being interested in

something is a particular form of caring about it, and that this form is closely connected to

education and learning. After showing the importance of interests to education, I present in the

1 In a longer version of this paper, to illustrate and discuss the harms of an unrestricted chase for achievements, I read thoroughly in two detailed educational ethnographies that depict the stories of students from opposite sides of the social scale - Denise Pope’s excellent ethnography of high-school students in a Northern-California affluent suburb – Doing School: How We Are Creating a Generation of Stressed-Out, Materialistic, and Miseducated Students (Yale University Press 2001), and the classic Ain’t No Makin’ It: Aspirations and Attainment in Low Income Neighborhood by Jay MacLeod (Westview press,2009) which follows the life of a group of teenage dropouts living in a public housing project. I show that despite the huge differences between the two educational settings, the achievement ideology, as MacLeod calls it, or the grade trap as it is called by Pope, are responsible for similar threats for students’ wellbeing. Although the harms might appear differently in each setting, for both groups, achievement-driven education becomes a destructive practice that narrows, instrumentalizes, or plainly crushes children’s hopes.

2 Harry Frankfurt, “The Importance of What We Care About,” Synthese 53(2):257-272 (1982)

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third section the challenges to their implementation in a curriculum, and, following PS Wilson’s

work, strategies for coping with them.3

Finally, I emphasize that while pedagogy of interest is often conceived as a short-sighted

endeavor; as a pedagogy that is focused mainly on the present with no real concern for its long

term effects, it is exactly this ability of the teacher to see the child as she is that opens up the

student’s future, and secures this openness through the child’s autonomy.

Section I – pedagogy of achievement

When the educational process becomes suffused with tangible and “objective” outcomes for

teaching and learning, we can say that it is informed, implicitly at least, by a pedagogy of

achievement. This does not necessarily mean that all other educational goals are set aside, but

only that attaining these goals appears almost entirely in the form of concrete achievements. For

example, a student who does not hold up to the school’s academic expectations is described as an

underachiever, and striving for equality – a notoriously problematic concept – takes the simpler

form of narrowing the achievement gap – that is, a measurable practice that can be evaluated

clearly.

The advantages of an achievement-oriented pedagogy are significant, and the fact that these

advantages are so obvious and self-evident only attests to the achievement’s persuasive strength.

First and foremost, achievements have an enormous motivational pull. Desiring to achieve a

certain goal, the student is willing to put out efforts he otherwise would not have; he is

developing and using various skills and capabilities, and, once achieving, he feels that his sense 3 Patrick Wilson, Interest and Discipline in Education, London. Routledge (1971)

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of accomplishment is fully justified. The hope to achieve can certainly be a healthy one. The

possibility of achieving, as opposed to its certainty, motivates the individual to take action but

also to be realistic – develop a sober view of both his prospects and his ability to attain them.

Achievements could also serve as good indicators for worthy educational goals – getting an A in

English means that the student has indeed attained the required literacy skills, and is therefore

better at understanding written texts and at articulating himself; scoring the required grade or

above it at physical education is a good indication that the student is healthy and able to perform

various physical tasks. Achievements are also important for the teacher who by looking at her

students’ achievements, can know how effective her teaching is, and perhaps even get to know

them better.4

4 Achievements are not only instruments and signifiers. On a deeper level they answer to what economist Thornstein Veblen defined in his book The Theory of the Leisure Class (Oxford University Press, 2007) as the human “instinct of workmanship”:

As a matter of selective necessity, man is an agent. He is, in his own apprehension, a center of unfolding impulsive activity—"teleological" activity. He is an agent seeking in every act the accomplishment of some concrete, objective, impersonal end. By force of his being such an agent he is possessed of a taste for effective work, and a distaste for futile effort. He has a sense of the merit of serviceability or efficiency and of the demerit of futility, waste, or incapacity. This aptitude or propensity may be called the instinct of workmanship. (15)

Learning and teaching must, therefore, be directed towards a “concrete, objective, impersonal end,” or in other words, towards a clearly visible achievement. The question our students ask us – “what am I this learning for?” makes perfect sense, and is not just an undesired expression of utilitarian thinking.

Veblen assigns another important function to achievements, especially in societies where comparison between individuals is common: “visible success becomes an end sought for its own utility as a basis of esteem. Esteem is gained and dispraise is avoided by putting one's efficiency in evidence. The result is that the instinct of workmanship works out in an emulative demonstration of force.” (15) When a student gets an A in math, for example, her achievement proves more than the fact of mathematical proficiency. It is also a demonstration of efficiency and force that is highly esteemed.

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However, despite these advantages there are strong reasons to reject the placing of achievements

at the center of a pedagogy, and from an educational point of view, the mentality of “keeping

eyes on the prize” has serious undesired implications.

The problem begins when the objective achievement “takes a life of its own,” and is no more

conceived as mere means towards other educational ends like human flourishing, solidarity, etc. I

find three consequences of the achievement’s centrality especially concerning – (1) the role of

achievement, and specifically school achievement (grade) in identity formation, (2) the

attachment between pursuit of achievements and boredom, and (3) the achievements’ effect on

children’s hopes and conception of time.

(1) Achievement oriented self-identification

One of the more pervasive effects of school achievements is the constitution of personal identity

according to their attainment or lack of it. The achievement is understood by students not only as

an external indicator of success or as an instrumental and necessary step towards future success,

but also as a true representation of their personality, of their essential “potential” and inner self.

Even though they often see clearly that grades are external and different from their own self-

evaluation, they still identify with them. A student can describe himself harshly as “a 3.8 kind of

guy,” and another can say about herself that “being a perfectionist, I could not allow myself to

get anything lower than A’s, ’cause I knew I was an A potential person.” For these students, not

realizing their potential, means nothing less than being “bad and stupid.”5 Even worse, students

5 Pope. Doing School, 9, 83.

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who experience constant failure in school, would identify themselves as people whose character

and essence is that of failure, as weak, “brainless” persons who just “don’t have what it takes.”6

(2) Achievements and boredom

The feeling of finally achieving could certainly be exhilarating. Yet, the path towards the aspired

achievement is often boring. For kids from both affluent environments and poor ones, lack of

genuine interest in almost everything they do in school is often recognized. If we regard boredom

as a unique approach towards the bearing of time, then we can see how the imperative to achieve

leads to it. In successful, competitive schools, where achieving is unquestioned, time is scarce,

and where achieving is conceived as impossible, and there is nothing else in which time can be

filled, there is simply too much of it. Time can only be “passed” with temporary or artificial

enjoyment.7

The fact that regarding the present as meaningful seems impossible in both cases should not be

surprising as these feelings towards time (there is not enough of it and that there is too much of

it) are an expression of despair or acedia. In his essay on the importance of leisure, German 6 Macleod, Ain’t no makin it:

Chris: I guess I just don’t have what it takes.

Frankie: We’re all just fucking burnouts. . . . We never did good anyways. . . . We’ve just fucked up.

Shorty: I’d go in there, and I’d try my hardest to do the work, right? I’d get a lot of problems wrong cuz I

never had the brains much, really, right? That’s what’s keepin’ me back. (121-122)7 Ibid.:

Daily life for the Hallway Hangers [the kids MacLeod writes about] is marked by unrelieved boredom and monotony. The boys are generally out of work, out of school, and out of money. In search of employment or a “fast buck on the street,” high or drunk a good deal of the time, many are preoccupied with staying out of prison—a struggle some already have lost—and with surviving from one day to the next. (37)

The Hallway Hangers do not have the resources to “get away from it all” through conventional leisure pursuits, so they use drugs to escape the boredom, powerlessness, and despair that poverty breeds. (179)

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philosopher and theologian Josef Pieper claimed that while today being lazy is opposed to

diligence and productivity, in the Middle Ages, “sloth, ’restlessness’, leisurelessness, and the

incapacity to enjoy leisure, were all closely connected.”8 Being lazy and being over-productive

were not opposites but complemented each other, and acedia, the state in which a person is

despaired from being with himself and with others, can take the form of either common laziness

or of overwork. Therefore, being constantly occupied with boring work towards achievements

(or boring avoidance of this work) is both an expression of and a reason for despair.

(3) Achievements, despair and narrowed hopes

Marked by achievement’s dominance over education, the future is often seen by students as

primarily closed and predetermined. It is imagined only as a continuation of the present, and as

the next level in the race for success, or, in the case of failing students, as the next stage of poor

living outside of it.

Where poor students sadly despair about their future, successful ones tend to have a narrowly

defined, object-driven hope. Getting admitted to the highest ranking college possible, for

example, is understood not as an excellent opportunity for learning or for personal development

but as the necessary gateway to high-income and high-status jobs.9 Ultimately, the kids’ future

seems to them as mere continuation of the present (whether it is promising or bleak), while the

present itself is underappreciated and overshadowed by achievement. Even though some of the

kids are optimistic about their personal fate while the others are deeply pessimistic about it, they

still lack any hope that the future can be significantly different from what they already expect.

Unable to imagine a different future, students’ hopes are aimed towards goals that paradoxically 8 Joseph Pieper, Leisure: The Basis of Culture, Random House, 1963, 43.9 Pope, Doing School, 149-175.

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are both predetermined and confusingly vague. They aspire for a good, high paying job, but most

of the time they cannot specify almost anything beyond that. While it is maybe natural for teens

not to know in detail what they want to do or wish to be when they grow up, regarding this very

question as irrelevant or reducing it to a technical choice between possible rewards, is not

obvious at all and calls for attention.

The responsibility of the school

Are schools the ones to blame for shaping this approach to the future? Yes, but only by omission.

MacLeod’s terminology is particularly useful in understanding school’s responsibility. In regard

to poor students, he claims that tracking “solidifies what is often a vaguely felt and ill-defined

preference for manual work or a desire simply to be with one’s friends into a definite

commitment to a future in manual work.” In other words, the school takes the feeling of despair

aroused by seeing older neighbors, peers, and family members and turns it into a reality in the

form of the lowest educational tracks, structural underachieving, and ultimately, expulsion and

dropping out. A Similar thing happens with successful students, only with the opposite “ill-

defined preferences” and their corresponding realizations. The vague preference to become

successful on the terms of adult society is solidified through fast learning tracks, AP classes and

an unmistakable pressure to achieve a high GPA. From this point of view, the school offers no

alternative to what the kids are already exposed elsewhere, and , as MacLeod eloquently puts it:

“(school is) distinctive not for what it does but for what it fails to do.”10 The school, in other

words, is nothing but a juvenile version of the world of work, and an alienated one for that

matter. Conducted in an instrumental, uninteresting (except rarely), and competitive fashion,

10 Macleod, Ain’t no makin it, 116.

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learning in school is perhaps the best preparation for adulthood devoid of choice and personal

autonomy.  

In the choice between crushed hopes to achieve anything worthwhile in life and

“instrumentalized” hopes to achieve what is highly predetermined, the latter is undoubtedly

better. But are these really the only options available? Are children’s hopes destined to be either

reductive or non-existent? I believe that other forms of education are possible, and that education

can be conducted in a way that inspires hope yet does not determine its objects in advance or

subjugates hope to a probabilistic world view. The key for this pedagogy of hope, I show in the

next section, is paying attention to the things that students care about and interested in, and by

developing a rich and nuanced concept of interest, I hope to show that it can serve as a basis for

educational hope that is not dominated by achievements.

Section II – Towards a pedagogy of interest

In his essay “The Importance of What We Care About,” the philosopher Harry Frankfurt draws

attention to a significant lack in philosophical inquiry. He asserts that philosophy has

traditionally been occupied with two major sets of questions, and neglected a possible third one:

In the first set, which constitutes the domain of epistemology, the questions derive in one way or another from our interest in deciding what to believe. The general topic of those in the second set is how to behave, insofar as this is the subject matter of ethics. It is also possible to delineate a third branch of inquiry, concerned with a cluster of questions which pertain to another thematic and fundamental preoccupation of human existence - namely, what to care about.11

Frankfurt rightly claims that conceptual questions about caring do not properly fall within the

range of epistemology or ethics. My care for my children cannot be discussed properly as merely 11 Frankfurt, “What We Care About,” 257.

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an ethical question, nor is my care for my favorite NBA team can be properly understood just

through an epistemological lens, as “those disciplines [ethics and epistemology] need not reflect

upon the nature of caring as such, nor are they obliged to consider what is implied by the fact

that we are creatures to whom things matter.”12  

Caring about something is important, among other reasons, because this human capability is

tightly connected to who we are and to the way we are formed. Unlike liking or desiring

something which is totally external to the self, caring signifies a much more intimate

relationship: “A person who cares about something is, as it were, invested in it. He identifies

himself with what he cares about in the sense that he makes himself vulnerable to losses and

susceptible to benefits depending upon whether what he cares about is diminished or

enhanced.”13 The individual’s will is also affected by caring because “the formation of a person's

will is most fundamentally a matter of his coming to care about certain things, and of his coming

to care about some of them more than about others.”14 While Frankfurt is aware of the fact that

caring is not entirely voluntary and we are not exactly free to choose the things we care about or

the degree to which we care about them, he does not see it as a limitation. On the contrary, for

him, caring presents us with “valuable experiences or states of fulfillment and of freedom,” and

allows us to view “our lives in ways which are creative of ourselves and which expose us to

distinctive possibilities for necessity and for freedom.”15 In short, Caring for something

“enhances autonomy and strength of will.”16

12 Ibid.13 Ibid., 260.14 Ibid., 268.15 Ibid., 267, 271.16 Ibid., 264.

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Neglect of both caring itself and of the things we care about is characteristic not only of

philosophical inquiry but also of ordinary schooling. In the typical school, most of the attention

is given to the question what should the student know and believe, and the rest is given to

questions regarding the student’s desired behavior. Almost exclusively, the questions we ask in

educational discourse are epistemological (What should the student learn? How should he learn

it?) and ethical (How should the student behave? What are the correct ways of encouraging

desired behaviors?). Students’ care for a variety of things – relationships with their families and

peers, sports, music, games, fantasies, – plays no significant role during the school day (except

perhaps during recess). What the students care about will appear in school only incidentally, or

in the case that a particular object of care could serve epistemological or ethical goals. If a

student would be willing to study math through baseball examples, then a sensitive and flexible

teacher is supposed to use this caring in the service of proper educational goals.

But as Frankfurt convincingly shows, caring is much more important than to be a tool in the

service of other goals as it contributes to identity formation, strength of will, and the richness of

our experiencing of the world. Therefore, when the school overlooks what the student cares for

or views it instrumentally, it disrespects the student as a full human being who does not only

believe and act, but also assigns meaning to things and has feelings of care towards them.

Moreover, neglecting what the student cares for also undermines the intended “proper”

educational outcomes themselves, as it detaches knowledge and behavior from the student’s will

and self-identification.

One could argue that even if people in general are to be respected as full human beings, a child

or an adolescent are simply not there yet, and as such, there are more fitting attitudes towards

them than respect. We could say, for example, that meeting the child developmental needs is

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more important than respecting what she cares about, or that providing her with necessary skills

for adult success in modern society is superior to encouraging her interests. I will later deal with

this argument, and argue that not only is the concept of needs dependent on the values we assign

to things, but that paying attention to the things children care about have an important role in

maturing into autonomous adulthood.

Caring also involves a unique kind of temporality and its neglect in schools can further explain

students’ hopelessness or narrowed optimism. Frankfurt claims that liking or desiring something

are attitudes and beliefs that

differ significantly from caring in their temporal characteristics. The outlook of a person who cares about something is inherently prospective; that is, he necessarily considers himself as having a future. On the other hand, it is possible for a creature to have desires and beliefs without taking any account at all of the fact that he may continue to exist.17

And he adds that “a person can care about something only over some more or less extended

period of time.”18 Unlike getting an A, caring about something would require students to commit

for an extended period of time, and would allow them to imagine a favorable future in which the

object of care and their relationship with it continue to exist and develop. In other words, paying

attention to the things students care about and to their caring capability could facilitate and

enrich their hopes, while neglecting the objects of care would encourage a narrowed and

desperate view of the future.    

How would an education that takes seriously the things we care about look? How should caring

join the other two branches of knowledge and behavior? In the next subsection, I suggest that

being interested in something is a particular form of caring, one that is especially relevant for

education, and that schools could embrace and develop a curriculum around. 17 Ibid., 260.18 Ibid., 261.

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Interest as a subcategory of care

Like caring, the feeling of being interested in also something that cannot be properly analyzed as

merely an epistemological or an ethical phenomenon. For example, my daughter’s interest in

WWII certainly involves knowledge (including epistemological questions about its validity) and

moral dilemmas (including ethical questions about morality itself), but both epistemology and

ethics cannot properly account for her feelings and expressions of interest themselves. The fact

of her being interested belongs to a different inquiry.

It is important to distinguish between two common meanings of the word interest. These are (1)

interest as curiosity, attention, enthusiasm, passion or sympathy (“I have an interest in comics for

several years now”), and (2) interest as an advantage or benefit (“It is in the interest of the child

that he will be taught math”).19 While the latter meaning of interest seems close to achievements,

the first one is closer to Frankfurt’s caring, and it requires a more detailed description. Like

caring, interest cannot be enforced. A teacher can certainly make a student pay attention to

something (perhaps not without some trouble), but he cannot make him interested. After all,

paying attention while being bored is far from being a rare event in schools. Being interested is

also close to a few other feelings or inclinations, but it still is distinguished from them.

Philosopher of education PS Wilson specifically points out that interest is not “a set of

sensations, nor a mood or emotion, nor an inclination to get or repeat pleasure, nor an impulse or

a habit. It is by contrast an inclination to notice something, to pay continuing attention to it and

19 This double meaning allows Wilson to wittingly claim that “children’s interests .... are not always ‘in their interest,’ and hardly ever ‘in others’ interests’ at all,” and that teachers are usually occupied with ”making children interested in what is (by general agreement) in everybody’s interest.” Interest and Discipline in Education, 37.

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to try to enter into some active relationship with it.”20 Behaviorally as well, being interested is

close to other actions as it includes “noticing, paying attention, persisting in one’s efforts in an

absorbed or undistracted way.”21 Yet, all these activities and more are insufficient for show of

interest and can be carried out without it.

Another problem with identifying interest is that it is very difficult to grasp what exactly one is

interested in. Even something that looks relatively simple like sports could turn out to be quite

complex when interest is involved. Wilson: “most small boys may say that they are interested in

football, but what they are interested in, or what they mean by ‘football’ is something which will

vary in each individual case.”22 The point is that identifying or recognizing children’s interests is

difficult and is not reducible to either a set of activities or to a self-proclamation of its existence.

Interest as a special form of care

We can say, then, that our interests are distinct features of our lives, through which we assign

value and meaning to the world, therefore forming ourselves as whole human beings.23 Seen this

way, interests certainly share in “the importance of what we care about.” I suggest, however, that

being interested in something and caring about it are not exactly the same, and that being

interested is a particular form of care; a form that is crucial to education.20 Wilson, Interest and Discipline in Education, 49.21 Ibid., 52.22 Ibid., 45.23 Philosopher of education Eamonn Callan nicely exemplifies the importance of interests to identity and meaningful life: “Imagine what it would be like to lose all your interests. You would no longer be the same person, except in superficial respects, because your interests give your life a sense of significant continuity. A life without interests would be a life felt to be virtually meaningless.” Autonomy and Schooling, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1988, 30.

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Saying, for example, that I care for my children is not the same as saying that I find them

interesting. In fact, the latter statement, especially when coming from a parent, sounds somewhat

awkward. This does not mean that I never feel interested in my children, nor that I do not express

this interest, but that ‘being interested’ in something is more limited and precise than it is to care

for it. Two traits of interest distinguish it from care – distance between the interested person and

the interesting object and intellectual curiosity.

While interests help in shaping who we are, the objects of our interest are not part of our self. I

am interested in that which is not myself, while love or a feeling of shared fate are more

characteristic to objects or persons that are not conceived as totally external. Someone who is

interested in Manchester United does not see himself as part of the team or the team as part of his

own identity, but a truly devoted fan could lose this feeling of distance between the two. He

would then speak of love for his team; he would describe himself as the “12 th player,” and it

would not be surprising when he announces that “The Red Devils are my life!” For two people

going out on their first few dates, it would make sense to say that they find each other interesting

(hopefully, in addition to liking each other and take pleasure in the other’s presence). However,

if the two fall in love with each other, announcing interest, even if it still is a true statement, is

less important than declaring their mutual love and care. The distant two have become a couple.

Distance is also the reason that when a teacher says that he finds interest in “his” children, this is

a common, even desired statement. This is exactly because the students are “his children” only

metaphorically.

This distance invites intellectual curiosity. Wishing to know more about the object of interest and

understand it better are of the utmost importance when being interested. Philosopher of

Education Eamonn Callan emphasizes this connection between interest and understanding: “The

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development of an interest implies a deepening understanding of its object, as well as a desire for

such understanding. … If development is to occur, my deepening understanding must lead me to

discover more in the way of intrinsically valued experience.”24 When I am interested in

something, gaining knowledge about it and wishing to gain even more drive my attention and

activities. A process of expanding my understanding is internally motivated and set into place (of

course, nothing could guarantee the continuation of interest, and knowing better the object of

interest could lead to interest being diminished or eliminated).25

In conclusion to this point, while caring in general does not necessarily entail a distance between

a person and her object of care, nor does it require a desire for a better understanding, being

interested does, and as such “what we are interested in” constitutes a specific form of the more

general “what we care about.” As we saw this form of care – being interested – is closely

connected to education and learning. In the next section, I explore the possible appearances of

interest in the school curriculum, and the challenges it confronts.

24 Eamonn Callan, Autonomy and Schooling, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1988, 62.25 A clarification is needed about the scope of intellectual curiosity as it lends itself easier to interests that are connected to verbal and written articulation. If one is interested in philosophy, for example, it is only natural to assume that she is intellectually curious about it. She wants to read more philosophical texts, listen to more lectures, talk more about them, and perhaps even experience in writing philosophically. But what about interests such as dancing or soccer? Could we identify intellectual curiosity in such interests? Of course, interest in these objects can still be verbally articulated – one could be interested mainly in the history of soccer or with its statistics, and another could be occupied with theories of dance. A more difficult case, and probably a more common one, is where a person is interested mainly in practicing soccer or dance. Wouldn’t it be more true to say that these individuals simply like to dance or play soccer? Where liking philosophy usually means being interested in it, dancing is different. Enjoying it without a thread of interest is possible and quite common. But this is not always the case. As said before, interest could not be identified strictly on the basis of the activities carried out and a person could dance or play soccer out because she is genuinely interested in them. Could this be considered an expression of intellectual curiosity? I believe that it can, but only if we do not insist on curiosity’s association with verbal articulation, and emphasize instead the will to understand that is found even in a corporeal activity. The person interested in dancing, unlike the person who simply enjoys it, wants to know more about the mechanics of it, the works of the body (others’ and his own), and about the things that could be expressed by dance. Although not an art form, same thing could be said about soccer or any other kind of sport. In both, the body, usually perceived as an obvious part of the self, is distanced. It is an object that can be controlled, manipulated and studied. Knowing more about it, understanding it better, and desiring to continue this exploration are not primarily sensual or emotional (although senses and emotions are involved), but at their core intellectual and closely tied to learning.

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Section III – Implementation of interest in schools

So far we have seen that the things we care about are important for our formation and for our

experience of the world and our freedom. We also saw that caring allows us to hopefully imagine

a favorable future. Interest, as a particular form of care, shares all of these tributes and in

addition it constitutes an opportunity for learning that is intrinsically motivated. If this is true

then the school as the place where both learning is taking place and identity of children is being

formed should therefore be an important place for interest to be respected, encouraged and

developed.

This conclusion could hardly be contested, and I believe no one will object to school being

interesting. There are, however, three problems with the implementation of children’s interests in

school that make pedagogy of interest challenging in an institutional context – (1) the personal

nature of interest, (2) the judgment of undesired interests, and (3) a possible contradiction

between the child’s current interests and his needs.

The first problem has to do with the nature of interest itself as a highly personalized and not

easily recognized inclination. Unlike achievements or subject-matters that are part of the

mandated curriculum, there is nothing in a specific interest that makes it applicable for all kids.

Each kid could be truly interested in different things than another. And even when many students

admit to sharing an interest (soccer, dinosaurs, etc.), they do not necessarily mean the same

thing. Moreover, because interest is not identifiable only by activities (attention could be given

without interest and persistence could be due to extrinsic motivations), even if a teacher wishes

to encourage the students to learn through their interests, knowing when and in what exactly are

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the children interested is challenging. On top of that, there is also the impossibility of making

someone interested in a new object. In short, interest seems like a very shaky ground for a

curriculum or a pedagogy to be based on. It is certainly not as stable and reliable as achievements

are.

What could the teacher do if she wishes to respect and the children’s interests and help them

develop them? First of all, she needs not use the child’s interest as a tool for tempting him into

learning what is otherwise uninteresting. Not only is this method far from being truly respectful

of the child, it is also a failing one as the object of teaching would eventually remain boring. Or

as Dewey puts it: “When things have to be made interesting, it is because interest is wanting.

Moreover, the phrase is a misnomer. The thing, the object is no more interesting than it was

before. The appeal is simply made to the child’s love of something else.”26

Once interest is not trivialized but respected as an end in itself, there are a few things that a

teacher can do to facilitate the children’s interests. Wilson suggests that although interest cannot

be demanded, it can nevertheless be aroused and supported. He mentions four strategies of doing

so. First, the teacher can introduce new objects of possible interests in addition to building upon

the ones already existing. This could be done by teaching the uniqueness of the new object: “you

cannot make me acquire a taste for stout and oysters, or an interest in Shakespeare or cricket, but

you can try to teach me the distinctive point of these things.”27 And more in general, Wilson adds

that “the only way of engendering interest in anything is through helping the child to see

something of its significance.”28 Shakespeare, for example, could become interesting if the

teacher “communicates his view of what is interesting in an intelligible way.”29 In other words, 26 John Dewey, Interest and Effort in Education, Houghton-Mifflin Company, 1913, 11-12.27 Wilson, Interest and Discipline in Education, 57.28 Ibid., 60.29 Ibid.

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the teacher can create a possibility for Shakespeare being interesting if he shares his own interest

and his view of what makes it special. This, of course, does not guarantee that Hamlet will

become an instant hit in the classroom, but this is all the teacher can do.

Secondly, the teacher is responsible for “enabling environment which contains resources to

pursue interests with.”30 This recommendation is pretty simple and is not surprising – in order to

become interested in something or develop an interest, the environment should be supportive

materially and socially.

Thirdly, the teacher should help the student understand how to develop an interest once this has

been identified by the child. Wilson claims that “a child, and often an adult, cannot simply see

what to do in the furtherance of his interest.”31 An interest does not come with a manual, and the

teacher should help the child understand what the interest means, and how to “practice more

effectively some of the things which they find interesting, and thus get a measure of the value

intrinsic to them.”32

The fourth and final teacher’s task with regard to interest brings us closer to the second problem

of undesired interests. For Wilson, the teacher is supposed to evaluate the child’s interests and

encourage only those which are beneficial and not superficial or amoral. For him, interest-based

curriculum does not mean that all children’s interests are to be followed: “It is plain that of the

interests that children would like to follow, many are wildly imprudent, many trivial and many

ill-chosen on moral grounds; and that in any case they cannot all be followed at once. Some

selection, then, must be made.”33 Callan joins this precaution, and while calling for the

30 Ibid., 61.31 Ibid.32 Ibid., 66.33 Ibid., 62.

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incorporation of interests in schools, he is still concerned about the uselessness of some of them:

“children who are interested in cartoons will be absorbed in watching television from time to

time, but they are hardly investigating as they gaze vacantly at the television screen, and it is

unlikely that their absorption reflects a desire to learn about anything whatever.”34 But what are

the grounds for this selection, and how exactly do we distinguish between “good” interests and

“bad” ones? I suspect that if this vagueness shall remain, eventually the interests recognized as

worthy will be the same or very similar to what already appears in the regular curriculum.

A more nuanced look at children’s “bad” interests could offer a way out of this conundrum.

Regarding the cartoons example - I could not agree more that “gazing vacantly” at the TV, and

many other things children do, have nothing to do with learning of any sort. But is this really an

expression of interest? I believe that this kind of activity serves more as a distraction or a habit

than it is driven by interest. No doubt there could be such a thing as an interest in cartoons. But if

it is an interest and not something else, it needs to be an “active relationship”35 between the

interested child and the object of cartoons. This interest could be expressed through various

activities – watching cartoons, talking about them, learning about their creation and production,

getting to know their history, memorizing and reenacting them, perhaps even creating original

ones. Attention to the television would most likely take place, but it would not be a vacant gaze.

Children, like adults, have all kinds of activities, habits and ways of distracting oneself – gazing

vacantly at a screen is one of them - but if these do not entail a desire to know more about a

certain object and a desire to prolong the relationship with this object, they simply should not be

regarded as interests at all. Therefore, the questions that the teacher should ask are: is the

student’s activity an expression of interest or is it something else? And if it is not an interest,

34 Callan, Autonomy and Schooling, 61.35 Wilson, Interest and Discipline in Education, 49.

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could it turn into one? There is no easy way of answering these questions, but I believe these are

more respectful to children, and could also be more practically fruitful.

Another kind of “bad” interest is the morally problematic one. If a child hurts animals out of

curiosity about their reactions or a teenager wishes to experiment with hallucinatory drugs, there

is no doubt that these interests should not be encouraged or allowed. It does not mean that the

interests here are not genuine; they could very well be (although, in both examples, other, more

probable motivations come to mind). The point is that even if the interest is clearly recognized,

pursuing it has negative, immoral, and potentially dangerous outcomes that outweigh any respect

for the interest itself. This kind of evaluation is not at all unique for interest, but happens

constantly with all kinds of human activity. Some actions, habits, and addictions are socially

acceptable; some come at a certain price, and some are completely forbidden. There is actually

no need involve interest in what is in itself an important, but different, discussion. In fact,

dragging interest into this discourse of danger and immorality only serves to delegitimize it as

not only useless but also dangerous, thus make way for the more easily controllable achievement.

I suggest, then, that teachers will develop a sensitivity for recognizing children’s real interests

and in distinguishing them from children’s likings and habits. In addition, they should continue

to prohibit activities that they judge as morally wrong or dangerous, with or without regard to

interest.

A final challenge with pedagogy of interest remains, and it is the possible contradiction between

what the child is interested in and what he needs. More in general, this question addresses the

uniqueness of children, as they are indeed different from adults, with regard to their needs.

Simply speaking, if a teacher wonders whether focusing on children’s interests should come at

the expanse of dedicating herself to what children need, there seems to be very little to argue in

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favor of the former. After all, if basic developmental needs are not met, how could one care and

be interested in anything? Or so, at least, common sense thinking leads us to believe. Indeed,

mandatory schooling is commonly justified by claiming that school is the place (not the only

one, of course) where children’s needs are met and, hopefully, satisfied.36

Wilson’s critique of the notion of “need” reveals a much more complex picture of the

relationship between needs, interests, and values, and ultimately leads to a rejection of the

common-sensical belief that needs are more important than interests. For him, the basic problem

with needs-oriented education is that it conceives needs as detached from valuation, making

them nothing but an empty concept. Reading in psychological attempts of devising a

specification of individual needs, Wilson finds “vagueness about the goals for which the so-

called ‘needs’ are said to be required, and ambiguity about the nature of the ‘needs’ themselves,

and about their relevance to education, specifically, as the means to their satisfaction.”37 Because

no specific description of needs is available for teachers, they unfortunately tend to view the call

for an education that “meets children’s needs” as “carte blanche to proceed in any way they

personally happened to think ‘needed’.”38 Examples are abundant. From “basic” needs to those

that serve the goal of “psychological health” and through all kinds of vague “developmental

needs” or “growth needs,” the picture remains deceivingly simple – children’s needs are

universal, identifiable and of utmost importance for the transition into adulthood. And it goes

without saying that education is the key to meeting these needs.

36 I do not deal in this paper with the now not-so-popular claim that even more important than children’s needs are the needs of society. In general, the following critique of the basic concept of needs applies to the alleged needs of society as well. 37 Ibid., 10.38 Ibid.

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For Wilson, any discussion of need must include the valuation of the goals of which they are

prerequisites. When a drug addict says that he needs heroin, and his doctor says that he needs to

go to rehab, they clearly evaluate “need” differently.  Wilson: “What ‘drives’ the individual

whether it is food or independence that he is seeking, is not his ‘needs’ but his sense of what is

important and valuable. It is from his evaluations that his needs derive, not vice versa. A hunger-

striker, though hungry enough, would not agree that food was his ‘basic need’.”39 He concludes

that “’needs’ have no existence, in abstraction of the valuation of goals,”40 and, that therefore, a

needs-satisfaction approach is necessarily limited and misleading.

If Wilson is correct in his critique, then the “needs vs. interests” dilemma disappears, and we are

inclined to examine valuation itself since it is through the value we place on things that needs are

determined. In other words, what needs to be addressed is our caring for some things more than

for others, and schools should be interested in the ways that students value. This, unfortunately,

does not happen enough as the students “acquire, not a more educated sense of values, but just a

temporarily useful set of norms.”41 Moreover, even if the school is attuned to value-based needs,

the process of coming to value something is still likely to be neglected, as it is much less stable

than simply following existing values and norms.42 When a school puts children’s needs first

39 Ibid., 21.40 Ibid., 16.41 Ibid., 29.42 Philosopher Agnes Callard distinguishes between two kinds of personal change that are in involved in valuing. The first change towards what Callard calls “valuational progress” involves the realization or consolidation of one’s existing value: “I might see that what I value calls for me to relinquish some desire, habit or emotional tendency. In these ways, my values might generate rational requirements with respect to some attitude or disposition. If I make the relevant change, I value better, which is to say, more consistently and rationally.” (1) If one values academic success, then valuational progress will take the form of dedicating time and effort for learning, prioritizing school tasks over other activities and so on. This, of course, is the kind of change common and expected in schools. The second kind of valuational progress is more radical because it is the process of coming to value something. It involves “leaving the orbit of old values,” and coming to believe that some things are valuable and worthy of care, interest and proper changes in attitude. Becoming a vegetarian after coming to value the life and wellbeing of animals is an obvious example. “Liberal Education and the Possibility of Valuational Progress,” forthcoming in Social Philosophy and Policy.

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with no attention to the ways in which these needs come into being, it both relies on “needs” as

an empty concept, and disrespects children’s will and ability to try out new objects to value and

care about. In doing so, schools ultimately produce adults that have not had the important

experience of wondering about their character, of trying to change their values, and of achieving

an identity that is not determined only by external pressures.

Conclusion

Optimism is now a political tonality indissociable from the promises of consumption. ‘Future’ exists only in the stock-exchange plural. Hope is no longer given for the sake of the hopeless: it has mutated into an endless political and economic micawberism.

TJ Clark, “For a Left with No Future” (NLR 74, 2012)

I argued in this paper that focusing on children’s current and possible interests instead of, or at

least in addition to work towards their expected achievements, is both respectful and promising

in regard to their future autonomy. This last point in not obvious as interest-based curriculum is

often dismissed as a “soft” and short-sighted educational endeavor, as a pedagogical crowd-

pleaser. I hope that I showed that the opposite is true. If we wish for the student to hope for a

favorable future that is truly open and not a predetermined, commodified one, then a return to

interest is a must. Paradoxically, the educator, by looking away from future achievements and

making the present meaningful, will allow the interested student to become autonomous and to

practice the liberty of imagining her future and that of those around her.

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