New Education and Novism in Education: the New as Needed Illusion

A Educação Nova e o Novismo em Educação: O novo como ilusão necessária

Abstract

In this article, we point out the utopian and ideological aspects of New Education educational vision, distinguishing between a totally new self-enclosed perspective, that absolutizes itself and seeks to establish a totally different world, and a relative new perspective, which recognizes parts of the novelty that are “there” waiting for a systematic formulation that recognizes and accepts them giving them the meaning of a whole. This whole is never complete and therefore unmistakable with the field of experience and open to other parts of the novelty which the whole may lack, even if it ignores it. We also discuss analytically and critically the nature of the “new” that the “newness” of New Education would be supposed to convey, and discuss whether it is not an illusion provoked by the belief and desire of the founders of New Education, a substantive and radically innovative fact as they intended to make people believe. Finally, considering the mutual exchanges between ideology and utopia as figures of the imagination and recognizing the incorporation of parts of the New into the Traditional School, we recognize the (lack of) power of New Education and reaffirm the New as a necessary illusion to renew the pedagogical movement.

Keywords: Hope; New Education; Traditional School; Rupture