Social Efficiency and Instrumentalism in Education

"Social Efficiency and Instrumentalism in Education is a bold and engaging book, opening up much fertile ground for future work. I find it to be both insightful and admirable, and a masterly success."- George Lăzăroiu, PhD, Linguistic and Philosophical Investigations

"This is an important book. In Social Efficiency and Instrumentalism in Education: Critical Essays in Ontology, Phenomenology, and Philosophical Hermeneutics, James Magrini maps out in great detail a long and complex history, the memory and origins of which have nearly faded from explicit view. We all still suffer it, often in bewildered ways, without quite knowing what has happened to us."- Christopher Gilham & David W. Jardine, Teachers College Record

"What is education, and what is it for? What does learning authentically mean? How does hermeneutics teach us to read classrooms as living phenomenological texts? What do we learn there that can help us transcend the nihilistic enframing of education? Deeply researched and replete with insight, Magrini’s book fearlessly confronts our growing educational crisis by reopening such questions and refusing to foreclose them with premature answers or superficial solutions. In this way, Magrini shows us how ontological questioning allows us to rediscover the past, reinvigorate the present, and transform the future of education."—Professor Iain Thomson, University of New Mexico, USA

"Magrini uniquely and convincingly weaves together the broad range of topics from ontology, phenomenology, and hermeneutics in educational studies with urgent problems in education policy worldwide, which is plagued with very few exceptions by standardization and accountability measures. This erudite volume with great intellectual power is both a theoretical articulation and a healing response to the present worldwide ill-being of education systems, institutions, and individuals."—Tero Autio, Tallinn University, Estonia

"On the pages of Magrini’s book you will find a master teacher and learner who clearly lives philosophy and education. And that, I think, is chiefly the message that he imparts: that it is in the lived act of learning and questioning that another learner can be coaxed into engaging the authentic purpose of education: i.e., the hard work of building communal meaning structures for the world that presents itself to us. I wager that, like me, you will be delighted to join Magrini in that critical project and be the better for it." —Daniel T. Primozic, The Center for American and International Law, Institute for Law Enforcement Administration, USA

"In this brilliant and inspirational book Magrini shows how our contemporary approach to education is dominated by technical, instrumental, and scientific approaches that aim at the production of knowledge with a view to social efficiency which forecloses the original dimension of an authentic educational experience. Magrini demonstrates how that original dimension can be accessed through an educational approach that animates the ontological, phenomenological, and hermeneutic aspects of human existence, awakening us to our potentialities for living otherwise. This book should be essential reading for anyone concerned with where education is headed, both today and tomorrow." —William McNeill, DePaul University, USA

"Magrini has succeeded in writing a book that is a veritable Bible of references and at the same time a feat of philosophy in its own right. His book is vital for anyone seeking to know the state of phenomenology in relation to education, and also for those who are looking for alternative ways to think about education beyond the social efficiency governing contemporary education. Reading Magrini’s book, and to echo what he writes in chapter six, 'we are reminded that if we have brought the current educational systems, institutions, and artifacts into existence, we hold the power to reconceptualize, reinterpret, and ultimately change them’."—Professor Elias Schwieler – Stockholm University