ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I argue when online education misrecognises the importance of iterations, autonomous action and the possibility for disagreement, such a form of teaching and learning would be highly flawed. And, if university managers presume that such a form of education can easily be learned and strategically implemented to cope with a loss in face-to-face tuition, they would be unable to crack open opportunities for authentic teaching and learning. Authentic education is linked to the idea that humans (teachers and students) can alter thought and practice, say in educational matters, where the narcissism of some teachers would be replaced by the emancipation of students from dominant discourses (Rancière in Genel & Deranty, 2016, p. 154). One has little optimism in such a form of liberation unfolding and that education will remain in a crisis or a state of nihilism is not merely talk about the apocalyptic turn certainly online education has come to present. As Nietzsche (1997, p. 17) so cogently reminds us, there are no eternal facts just as there are no absolute truths. The danger of misrecognising the presence of no facts and truths forever is that university teachers and students would have failed to have given credence to such a reality. I say this in light of online education having already assumed a mantle of absolute facts and truths that dare not be questioned and interrogated. And, as it turns out, students will continue to be herded. Finally, unless the PhD student will riddle herself away from herding, it would not be unjustifiable to claim that doctoral work in South Africa is limping. And, if such a situation arises it would not be inappropriate to claim that there is an educational crisis on our hands. The educational crisis has deepened primarily because indoctrination has assumed the mantle of herding that further exacerbated the dilemma about teaching and learning in South Africa. Herding is wrong because the assumption that university teachers make is that students need to be told what to do all the time and that they are not capable of thinking for themselves. I have good reason to be conscious of the practice of herding in South African universities and would appeal that pedagogical relations among teachers and students be rethought.
