POSTMODERN PEDAGOGY
POSTMODERN PEDAGOGY

Summary/Abstract: The text deals with the reflections on the relation between postmodernism and pedagogy, considering the ways postmodernism has influenced pedagogic currents. The basic characteristics of postmodernism have been analysed, especially those significant for pedagogy. The relation between the criticisms of pedagogy of modern age and the main objections against such pedagogy has been considered, i.e. the differences between the pedagogy of modernism and the pedagogy of postmodernism. Being considered one of the main features of postmodernism, pluralism has significantly influenced pedagogy; as a consequence, we are facing the issue of the influence of postmodern perspectives on curriculum, with an emphasis put on the relation between philosophy and pedagogy in postmodernism. What has been noticed for pedagogy is that it has been marked by the demand for pragmatism, diminishing its scientific character and pushing it away from philosophy. Pedagogy has been expected to be used as a practical science in social-political purposes, attributing seemingly scientific determination to it. Deprived from philosophy, it has lost its scientific character and real purpose; this has been further supported by the new function of knowledge in postmodernism. Postmodern thinking raises new challenges to pedagogy and makes it express stronger inclinations towards the search for new visions and the refinement of human existence (towards better and more humane society) in order to encourage human intellectual potentials and decrease aggression, violence and poverty, having in mind that the age of postmodernism has been marked by the alarming value system shift from philosophical establishment of basic philosophical issues of existence towards narrow definition of economic interests, whose social development on the whole has been narrowed down to economic rationality, reflected in profit. The consequences refer to cynicism, despair, moral indifference and some kind ofmyoptic directedness. Knowledge has gained a character of goods, knowledge acquisition is separated from education, individualism is ruling the scene, moral aspects of education have been neglected. The ethics of responsibility of globalization has been bypassed… The first step to be made in the right direction is a turn to the philosophy of education not even yet discernable in Serbia.

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