The final postscript to this book is really a note on pedagogy, thinking
about how film might be used as an education in education (the study of
education, or Education Studies). As such, it introduces something after
the event: criticism. If films return us to the site of our learning word and
world together, then criticism is the moment at which we, as viewers, put
those words back to work, to test the ways in which our words do justice
to (our experience of) the world. While the previous chapters engage in
film criticism with the aim of seeing aspects to education on film that are
otherwise overlooked, this last section gives a name to criticism as the expressive
counterbalance to the experience of film-viewing. The kind of
criticism I have in mind involves what Cavell describes as “the persistent
exercise of your own taste, and hence the willingness to challenge your
taste as it stands, to form your own artistic conscience, hence nowhere
but in the details of your encounter with specific works” (TS, 11). Herein
lies the practical implication of considering education in terms of a conceptual aesthetics: in the Education Studies classroom, film prompts the exercise of a student’s own perception and voice in relation to the concept
of education, a conversation in which they must be just as able to
participate as any other, if they are to form an appreciation of education
and not just be informed of its various definitions and theoretical
approaches.