In defense of teaching

the common and existential openness amidst digital algorithms

Abstract

The aim of this article is to contrast the subjectivity that emerges from the increasingly prolonged interaction with digital algorithms characteristics attributed to school by Jan Masschelein and Maarten Simons. To do so, we oppose the possibility of stepping out of oneself – in other words, “suspension” – and living in a common world – “profanation” –, offered to students by skholé, to what researcher Fernanda Bruno sees as the “seizure of the future” and the “confiscation of the common”, almost inevitable effects of the business model of social networks. In addition, at the end of the text, we turn to the etymology of “teaching” in order to infer some possibilities of teaching action in the contemporary scenario. Teaching, as we want to argue, is in-signare, it is to place signs, which presupposes, on the one hand, the recognition that the world and reality (and therefore the content taught) are not self-evident and, on the other, a willingness to create something common, communicable – these two dimensions, in our view, are fundamental for a school that confronts algorithmic subjectivity.