Why is a live chicken banned from the kindergarten? : Two lessons learned from teaching posthuman pedagogy to university students

Abstract

The hierarchical human-centric paradigm has been criticized by various movements of posthuman philosophy because this paradigm forgets and dismisses nonhuman beings and entities: animals, nature, objects, and technology. When I developed a course called ‘Education and Adaptations of Animal Studies’ for university students in 2015, I learned two lessons in practice. First, many humans, pedagogues, and academics want to hold on to their anthropocentric worldview that separates them from other species. Second, in pedagogical practices humans prefer to avoid confronting the violence they do toward animals. In this article, I reflect on these two lessons learned and consider what they tell us about the dichotomies, anthropocentrism, and speciesism visible in pedagogical practices. I also discuss how posthuman pedagogy and posthuman ethics can help us ask uneasy questions that fracture the uncertain conception of human superiority.