Towards an Ethics of Integration in Education

This chapter positions “learning” in the midst of the real-life experiences and events above and beyond formal instruction that still prevail in the majority of classrooms. The chapter argues that significant events in human culture should become unorthodox subject matter to be critically examined and to learn from. Applying the intellectual corpus of, among others, French philosophers, Gilles Deleuze and Julia Kristeva, to educational theory, this chapter also explores Nel Noddings’ recent call for critical lessons as a paradigm for educating in/by events and learning from experience. The chapter suggests that real-life events, such as 9/11, can become a means for creating the new pedagogy of hope paramount for our global age. The chapter introduces and develops a novel concept of the new values education as an ethics of integration in education and proposes that teachers, both at pre-service levels and in the form of professional development, be exposed to the fundamentals of these ethics so as to incorporate them in their classrooms, because classical ethical theories have become redundant in twenty-first century culture. The chapter represents a heavily conceptualized conclusion to the section on values education and wellbeing as good practice curriculum and pedagogy.