Foucault taught to Y12. I need some help please

@lollylo I can remember more than one of us going to officd hours of our Philosophy professors to talk about our concerns with “postmodernism” it seemed like tautological nonetheless and dangerous sophistry. Everyone was told in turn essentially to calm down, it was really only a movement in architecture and for analysing literature from a new angle. It wasn’t serious philosophy and it would go anywhere. 👀

They got that wrong!

Yes, I studied Philosophy at degree level and we started with Plato. You have to understand the history and development of philosophical thought in order to assess and test out any new model. All thought systems are a product of their time and under the influence of what went before.

To be honest the main thrust of post structuralism was that things weren’t linear and there weren’t foundational concepts for the whole of philosophy that you can study in stages. It also emphasised how meaning and theory was not driven through philosophic tradition itself but lots of other structures such as language, linguistics, art, praxis. There are also lots of philosophic traditions that don’t emanate from Plato.

Yes, I studied Philosophy at degree level and we started with Plato. You have to understand the history and development of philosophical thought in order to assess and test out any new model. All thought systems are a product of their time and under the influence of what went before.

To be honest the main thrust of post structuralism was that things weren’t linear and there weren’t foundational concepts for the whole of philosophy that you can study in stages. It also emphasised how meaning and theory was not driven through philosophic tradition itself but lots of other structures such as language, linguistics, art, praxis. There are also lots of philosophic traditions that don’t emanate from Plato.

Is Foucault now more important than the trinity: Marx, Weber, Durkheim?

When I was studying social sciences in the early 90s, Foucault was considered a short cut for people who weren’t serious. Times do change! We still studied statistics and research methods. Most of what I see as evidence in social sciences these days would not have passed muster.

For me, the rise of Foucault, is symbolic in the drop in prestige of the social sciences amongst the public. All that power and relative stuff just comes across as gaslighting.

Yes, but for what it's worth, a very basic introduction to Foucaultian power relationships is unlikely to go beyond
a) power is relational rather than always being top down
b) power is about creation/shaping rather than always being destructive.
There's unlikely to be much chance to go into anything juicier, let alone Foucault's hugely controversial views on sex. I mean, maybe at a push they'll introduce his distinction between "liberation" and "freedom"-which is, of course, the source of much iffy modern thinking, but I doubt it. Even if they do it'll likely descend into a discussion about who has power over whom and why. That's usually what happens with undergrads and I can't see this being different.

He was a paedophile and if studied should not be slipped in under the guise of a lunchtime club to school children.

It seems so silly. He isn't that well-regarded a philosopher, and even to the extent that he has something worthwhile to say (which may well be zero), his style of writing (and the whole tradition in which he wrote) is so deliberately opaque, grandiose, incomprehensible to all but the initiated, that he actually teaches anti-philosophical values.
Philosophy needs to be about clarity and communication, otherwise it is itself a power game. Introducing him to children more or less tells them to shut up and agree because there will be no moderately accessible way for them to assess and reflect critically on what he wrote.

I don't really understand why anyone would start teaching real philosophy to young people with a complex 20th century figure?

Why not start with the pre-Socratics? Something more foundational?

I mean, “childhood as a social construct” is very well represented on this thread. This entire thread is about whether or not it’s concerning to teach a certain philosopher to 16/17 year olds-who we, as a society, have decided are “children-, when that exact same philosopher is taught with virtually no scaffolding, let alone safeguarding, to 18 year olds because we have decided that they’re “adults”. This is despite there being no real physical or mental difference between these two groups of people, just an arbitrary legal line…

Y12. So 16/17 year-olds studying A-levels. Hardly impressionable adolescents.

"As I write that, I'm beginning to think that that is quite an advanced level of analysis for 16 or 17 year olds, and maybe it would be better to focus on generic skills of critical thinking and analysis, which they can then carry forward into future, more detailed studies of writers like Foucault if they go on to university and take courses that include post-structuralist theory?"

Particularly for a 'drop-in lunch time session'.

@AlbertCamusflage Yes, I was about to reply pretty much that. I do firmly disagree with you, in that I find Foucault much easier to understand than pretty much any of the analytic English language postwar writers-but, then again, my background is solidly continental. The point is though that these young people don’t yet know what philosophical traditions (if any!) they will ascribe to, and I find Foucault a nice introduction to that way of thinking-plus it’s unlikely they’d interact with much of the original text anyway.

I already have, it's about what she says in her post? https://savageminds.substack.com/p/was-foucault-a-paedophile

Have you read it?

I'll leave you some random excerpts (not taken out of context, emphasis mine):

"Although childhood is demonstrably a social construct (throughout history different cultures have defined childhood differently), it is also a materially real stage of human development and dependence"

"Moral outrage at “paedophiles” would not have helped all the other peasant girls across France in the 19th century when “paedophile” was first coined as a medical term. And its denomination has not helped the generations of girls since. For example, the working-class girls in our own communities in the 21st century such as those in Rotherham were sexually abused with impunity before the very eyes of the police and social workers"

"Although it might feel like safeguarding, crying “paedophile!” does not get to the root of men’s sexual predation. It places the locus of responsibility onto routing out the “perverts” and the “sick” from our society and it deflects us from recognising the sex of those carrying out the abuse. It throws a veil over the truth, namely that the men who sexually abuse children are often in all other respects “normal blokes.” "

Lol, no, it doesn't, and it's like the racism of low no expectations: nonces are still very much abnormal even among men.

"Empirical evidence of the predation of girls by men is ignored by the Left."

Well, by some in the left and the right, and also the predation upon small boys. Absolutely no surprise there.

"I had hardly begun to speak when an esteemed professor fled the room vociferously deriding me for using the work of a paedophile. She collapsed in the hallway outside, fearing, as she told those who rushed to her aid, that she might be about to have a heart attack.
Inside the conference room, the delegates found me culpable of causing “distress by Foucault.”"

I'm sure it all happened as she described it.

She's a right feminist and a brill thinker.