The Teachers’ Pascalian Wager. The Reasonable Folly of Education as a Public Good

In this paper, against the backdrop of the debate in political philosophy about the commons and the public, I make a case for the importance of vindicating the public role of education. In particular, through a revisitation of some Deweyan tenets and elaborating a tripartite theory of the officium, I reclaim, in a philosophical-educational key, the role of the teachers as public officers against the mounting assault of neoliberalism. In the final part, the latter is interpreted as a factor of increasing infantilization, the impact on the teaching profession is investigated and a Pascal strategy is indicated to maintain the faith in the public in the era of its apparent hiddenness.