Education-for-Myself and Education-for-the Other: The Right to Freedom of Education and Mikhail Bakhtin’s Experience

Abstract

The article contains reflections on the problem which has arised in Eugene Matusov's article on freedom of education, and considers the experience of Mikhail Bakhtin as an example of the way the right to the freedom can be fulfilled. Not only Bakhtin's life and ideas play a significant role in contemporary social and educational theories and practices, but they reveal how education becomes a result of selection of particular knowledge and one's conscious choice. The core of the article is a correlation of notions “Education-for-myself” and “Education-for-the other” which are taken by the authors as derivatives of the terms of Bakhtin’s early philosophy “I-for-myself” and “I-for-the other”. Thus ideas of “Education-for-an individual” and “Education-for-the society” result from the reflections and can be evidence of the need in mutual understanding and dialogue in order to achieve freedom of education.