Nineteenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

Metaphors for teachers abound. Plato presents Socrates as a gadfly to sting the student to action and a midwife, aiding in the birth of knowledge. Freire eschewed the traditional “banking” model of education and Ruzich and Phipps decry the economic model of education where the student is consumer or customer and the teacher is, by turns, a salesperson, customer service rep or checkout clerk. Metaphors contain arguments; they are not mere adornments or window dressing for otherwise plain language. This means that metaphors for education argue for a particular view of the teacher, student, the student-teacher relationship, and knowledge. I argue that the classroom be considered a carnival and that the teacher a foolosopher (morosophous), or wise fool. Traditionally, the fool is deranged, insane, outside the order of things, and therefore has a perspective that cannot be gotten from inside the dominant culture and can therefore provide another perspective on how things could be or might be or might have been. The foolosopher helps students become fools as well, and turns the classroom into a ship of fools that embarks on adventures for destinations rarely visited by the typical college class. And where better to celebrate carnival than in the classroom, virtual or face to face, where, ideally, all points of view should be considered without prejudice.