Speaker: David Lewin, Strathclyde Institute of Education

This talk uses popular cinema to examine the idea of existential education as an underexplored educational concept. Existentialism generally concerns the contingency and freedom of the human condition. Existential education, then, concerns those educational activities designed to confront students with their own freedom. But the idea of cultivating freedom has presented educational theory with a paradox. While it may be hard to capture the idea of existential education in general theoretical terms, it can be powerfully illustrated in popular cinema most obviously in the genre of bildungsroman – or coming of age stories. After surveying the field of existential education, I focus on Biesta’s concept of existential education and argue that his own attempts to illustrate this concept are a little too direct. I suggest that the indirectness of popular cinema is better equipped to bring existential education to life.