ABSTRACT
Mikhail Mikhailovitch Bakhtin, the Russian critic of language and literature, was fundamentally a philosopher of responsibility. In Bakhtin's case, what he had to say was almost lost, as Michael Holquist reminds us in the dedication to his edition of The Dialogic Imagination. Bakhtin's philosophy is founded on neo-Kantianism, in his classical erudition and in his profound understanding of Russia, its tradition of philosophy, and its cultural history. Bakhtin's point of philosophical departure was, however, Neo-Kantianism. This chapter considers Bakhtin and education in three ways. First, for the philosophy of education generally; secondly for practice in some key educational areas; and, finally, the use of Bakhtin in contemporary Russian education. The use of Bakhtin in educational theory is said also to represent 'a large and significant section of the Russian "Bakhtin industry", though there are practitioners of this approach in the West as well'.
