The teacher's word as a reply to natality

Abstract

Discussions about the necessary conditions for the exercise of the teaching profession are frequently present in pedagogical debates. They question the greater or lesser adequacy of the technical training provided to teachers, the public policies to be implemented, the material resources available to teachers, the teaching methodologies used, the number of students in the classroom, etc. However, the exercise of teaching is not reduced to the simple sum of these elements. As a work of speech, a place of enunciation must be possible for the teacher. That is, a place of authority from which the teacher can address a speech to a child in his own name, as a gesture of responsibility for the common world. It is observed, however, that this place is systematically silenced by the hegemonic ideal that reduces education to a set of behavioral methods and techniques whose execution would depend only on a qualified applicator. The reflections developed in this article are based on the writings of psychoanalysis and philosophy of education, as well as on the thought of Hannah Arendt.