Education
I was going to say I didn’t choose, but I did choose to teach at OISE, because for me it was a wonderful opportunity to be in a larger university, the largest in the country. It wasn’t just for OISE. It was to be part of the U of T and to be in Toronto. I
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EDUCATION
QUESTION 52
In spite of your background in philosophy and despite the fact that you taught hermeneutics and Frankfurt School critical theory in the department of philosophy at U of T which, as you said “was a wonderful opportunity to do that because it allowed me to teach both without any reference to education… which I couldn’t have done at OISE,” why did you choose to teach at OISE? Misgeld I was going to say I didn’t choose, but I did choose to teach at OISE, because for me it was a wonderful opportunity to be in a larger university, the largest in the country. It wasn’t just for OISE. It was to be part of the U of T and to be in Toronto. I also felt comfortable coming here because of the way I was received and how I was recommended. The person that recommended me was Albrecht Wellmer, who was a very close associate of Habermas. You may have seen his work on modernity. I was then in Sudbury. My escape from Heidelberg had been to get into a place that I didn’t even know existed until I had the contract in my hand. It was a French Canadian colleague who had studied in Heidelberg and who said, “why don’t you come for a couple of years?” Then I was certainly getting worried about being stuck in Laurentian University, which was for me very difficult because it didn’t really have that much academic life. It was too small. The students are very pleasant, but the larger European world from which I came was mostly not known to them. It was very difficult to communicate. This was an opportunity to be somewhere else in Canada. I already knew Toronto because I’d been there quite often because Habermas was here a couple of times and I got together with the group around him, and certainly the Canadian colleagues. I noticed that there were interesting people here whom I hadn’t known about before. And Albrecht had an offer from the New School for Social Research in New York then, and he said he wasn’t sure what would happen there, so could I get a leave from Laurentian University and be here for two years and then we could see. If he came back then I wouldn’t be able to stay, and if he didn’t come back then I might have chance of staying. And he didn’t come back, and actually then went to Berlin, which had been his plan all along. As intelligent and sensitive as he is, and typical of the theory he had in common with Habermas, he said, “one has to admit to one’s own interest.” The open admission of what his interest was, so I could take a position on what his interest was and look at it in terms of my interest. I really liked 151
CHAPTER 6
the way he approached that. It was very well considered. I actually asked him about education, and he said, “Well, I hadn’t really paid much attention to that. But I haven’t had a problem.” It seems they were very open and they seemed to want to have a wider range of things. That made me feel confident. That’s how it was. I wasn’t actually made to teach Philosophy of Education. Someone I owe some gratitude to are two people who are not here any more, though one is in the Institu
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