ABSTRACT
In The Question Concern Technology, Heidegger points out that human beings are themselves reduced to resources in the technological age. In this chapter, I examine the extent to which higher education in the western world facilitates this reduction, and then propose an alternative approach to pedagogy that treats human beings as more than cogs in a system of technological production and consumption. Specifically, I examine the current disciplinary model of education whereby student development is guided by a specific scientific paradigm that defines reality and enables students to manipulate and control the world around them. Against this, I develop an existential-model of education in which specific scientific paradigms are not so much didactically taught but challenged and called into question to the point at which students see that there are other ways of engaging with reality than those currently espoused our technological age. This existential model of education is what Heidegger calls an education in thinking, and he believes it is essential if we human beings are to resist being reduced to resources for production and consumption.
