The pedagogical potential of classroom ritualization: Or,teaching in the subjunctive

Abstract

The overall purpose of this article is to bring the notion of ritual to bear on the corporeal, often non-verbal, and sensory gestures and ways of doing things that are deeply woven into the liturgies and choreographies of schools and classrooms, but that are given marginalized attention in educational research. Drawing on interdisciplinary ritual theory that makes a distinction between two different ways of thinking about ritualized action – the modus of the subjunctive and the modus of sincerity (Seligman et al.) – the argument is made that ritual like practices can enact a way of teaching that, in contrast to the commonly held view that rituals repeat and preserve the status quo, invites transformation and change. Methodologically, the article combines theoretical reflection with analysis of empirical data and uses examples from Education for Sustainable Development teaching (ESD) as springboard for its inquiry into the pedagogical potential of classroom ritualization. The article is divided into three parts. The first part offers a background to previous research on ritual in philosophy of education. The second part introduces the empirical material as well as the theoretical perspective, and the third part sketches the contours of what teaching in the modus of subjunctive could imply, particularly in the face of challenging and sometimes polarizing issues like climate change. The article concludes by suggesting that teaching in the modus of the subjunctive asks of teachers and educators to give to the new generation a teaching that not only focuses on facts and figures but that also takes into consideration the imaginative quality of education.

Introduction: Retrieving ritual for education

Schooling is a profoundly ‘ritualized performance’ (McLaren, 1986). Not only is schooling itself a kind of rite de passage (Durkheim, 1915) that marks the transition from the sphere of the home to the sphere of society and from childhood to adulthood. A school is also a place where many of the everyday ways of doing things – such as the beginning moments of class, how teachers and pupils enter or exit a classroom, the greeting ceremonies, where one is seated and how, when one is expected to speak and how one calls for attention – are ritualized actions and interactions. The fact that children can imitate classroom life in their play, as if it was a pantomime, gives us a sense of how ritualized an ordinary school day often is.

Even if the notion of ritual was of interest to philosophers of education already in the 1960s (e.g. Bernstein et al., 1966; Peters, 1966) it has not been given much attention in educational research, for reasons that will be developed below. In contemporary continental philosophy of education, however, there is currently an increasing interest in exploring pedagogical forms (e.g. Marin and Sturm, 2021; Masschelein, 2023; Masschelein and Simons, 2013; Vlieghe and Zamojski, 2019). Even if this research has not explicitly been focusing on the notion of ritual per se, its pedagogical rethinking of (scholastic) forms and study practices that have been deprived of pedagogical meaning in the neo-liberal appropriation of education, inspires the current article and its inquiry into drawing on the notion of ritual for understanding the everyday fabric of school life.

Given this background, the overall purpose of the article is to bring the notion of ritual to bear on everyday classroom life. The claim is made that even if ‘small’ ritual like ‘gestures’ (Bergdahl, 2010) like the ones mentioned above are rarely acknowledged in research as being of pedagogical relevance, they are nevertheless part of the pedagogical ‘housekeeping work’1 that supports and sustains everyday school life and, in this sense, they constitute the preconditions of teaching. The term ‘housekeeping’ bears connotations to the repetitive, often unpaid, bodily work that historically was often conducted by women in the home. That is, to what historian of education, Joakim Landahl (2006), has pointed out as the ‘unclean’ dimensions of education that are of lower status than the ‘clean’ and more highly esteemed work of knowledge production, often conducted by men. Hence, it can be argued that an inquiry into the pedagogical significance of ritualization as a kind of ‘housekeeping work’ brings to attention the reproductive work of education – work that has been marginalized in the privileging of the productive forces of modern education. More precisely, then, the purpose of the article is to bring the notion ritual to bear on the everyday practices of school life as a way of retrieving for educational research and practice some of the pedagogical significance of housekeeping work, that is, of the corporeal, ritualized, often non-verbal gestures and ways of doing things that are deeply woven into the pedagogical liturgies and choreographies of schools and classrooms but that have not been given much attention in research. Such corporeal and sensory ‘manual labour’ is what teaching and life in schools is dependent upon for its functioning and, thus, it deserves more scholarly attention.

Theoretically, article draws on interdisciplinary ritual theory that makes a distinction between two different ways of thinking about ritualized practices – the mode of the subjunctive (or an as if modality) and the mode of sincerity (an as is modality) (Seligman, 2010; Seligman et al., 2008). These two modalities will be developed more thoroughly below but if the as is modality focuses on human togetherness based on conviction, the as if modality focuses instead on what society and human togetherness could become through convention. The theory proposes that whilst the as is modality is based on idea(l)s of sincerity and authenticity – assuming that there are common values and/or a coherent meaning or message that the ritual is ‘bringing out’ and an autonomous, authentic, and self-examining subject that is performing it – the as if modality presupposes difference and performativity. It accentuates the need to partake in the creating of collective social imaginaries in spite of – or, in fact, because of – the absence of commonality and prior to moral values or convictions. Thus, the argument is made that ritual like practices can enact a modus of teaching as if, which, in contrast to the commonly held view that rituals repeat and preserve the status quo, invites transformation and change.

The contrasting between the two modalities will be done in broad brushstrokes. The idea, however, is not to replace one modus with another but to offer, as an affirmative gesture (Felski, 2015), pedagogical thinking about forms and practices that permeate everyday school life but that currently seem to have little pedagogical value. The article explores such forms through the modus of the subjunctive with the purpose to arrive at, in the third part, what teaching in the subjunctive could imply for teaching controversial issues – like climate change – in schools.

Methodologically, the article combines theoretical reflection with an analysis of empirical data that was collected within a larger research project on corporeal and sensory forms of school formation. ² The article uses some empirical material from this project as springboard for its theoretical discussion and the second part of the article begins with a glimpse from a classroom where ESD-teaching (Education for Sustainable Development) is taking place. The class is in their first year of upper secondary education in a socioeconomically well-established and homogeneous residential area, and the course they are in is a Natural Sciences course.

Ritual, ritual like practices, habits

Before moving on, however, some notes on terminology, distinctions, and disposition are in place since the attentive reader might have noticed already that I have been using both the notion of ritual and ritual like in the introduction. As well-renowned professor of religious studies, Catherine Bell (1997) has pointed out, the notion of ritual not only bears connotations to religious practices and traditions – it might also seem like a residue from a bygone era: to something “antiquated and, consequently, at odds with modernity” (138). Indeed, in many post-industrial Western societies there is a tendency to think of rituals and ritualization as special activities closely linked to organized religion and/or to the sacralities of tradition and, thus, rituals seem inherently different from daily routines and habits (Bell, 1997). Thus, there is a distinction to be made here between rituals and ritual like practices (or activities) as well as between ritual like practices and habits. Whilst habits and rituals both involve repetitive action, habits are for the most part more automatic and less coded even though they can, over time, become ritualized and part of a custom or a tradition (Frykman and Löfgren, 1996). The notion of ritual, however, Bell (1997) suggests, puts emphasis on “tradition and the enactment of codified or standardized action” … whereas “ritual like activities can be used for a larger register of practices since they are less ‘established’ and ‘codified’” (139, emphasis added). Both rituals and ritual like practices, however, demonstrate “the importance of the body and its way of moving in space and time” although, for Bell (1997), ritual likeness is a more adequate term (than ritual) for analysing, she writes, the “complex reciprocal interaction of the body and its environment” (ibid.).

In this article, the notion of ritual has been the entry point for analysing the empirical material along the lines of the theory mentioned above. As will be shown, however, this theoretical perspective on ritual has its roots in religious- and anthropological studies and it has been used for analysing religious practices. This difference in theory and practice in worth noting and even if pedagogy as discipline has roots in the thought traditions of theology and philosophy, and even if pedagogical practice in many parts of the world has emanated from religious institutions, I use ritual like practices in this article for discussing ritualized corporeal and sensory work in the classroom. Following Bell’s (1997) distinctions above, the term ritual likeness offers a looser (i.e. less established and codified) way of approaching the classroom practices without compromising the focus on embodiment and the interaction between bodies and the environment. Seeing the practices in the empirical material as ritual like (in the analysis in part three) should thus be seen as a way of emphasizing openness and a less representational approach. In this sense, ritual like practicesresemble habits even if a habit – and this is an important difference – often is less collective and more individualized in its form. In sum, the turn to ritual likeness can in this article be seen as a methodological gesture of profanation (Masschelein and Simons, 2013) in the sense that something (here: the notion of ritual) is “detached from regular use” (38) and is given a slightly new meaning. Hence, even if the notion of ritual first appeared in debates on the origins of religion (Bell, 1997), this article detaches the notion of ritual from religion as discipline and practice and brings it to bear on educational theory and practice through the notion of ritual likeness.

The article is divided into three parts, and the first zooms in on why the notion of ritual has been marginalized in philosophy of education. The second part introduces the empirical material as well as the theoretical perspective, the point being to clarify the distinction between the modus of sincerity and the modus of the subjunctive (i.e. the modus of ritual). Part three discusses the pedagogical potential of classroom ritualization and what teaching in the modus of subjunctive could imply, particularly in the face of such challenging and sometimes polarizing issues like climate change.

Part I: Ritual theory and pedagogical form/s

Even if, as mentioned, the notion of ritual was of interest to philosophers of education already in the 60s (e.g. Bernstein et al., 1966; Peters, 1966), it has been a neglected and marginalized concept in educational research. One of the reasons for this, from the mid-twentieth century and onwards, has been political and historical. During the decades after the second world war, the scepticism towards collective ritualization was reasonable, bearing in mind for example the manipulative forces that historically had come with references to ‘customs’ and ‘folkways’ (e.g. Adorno, 1997). Collective ritualization, it was feared, could be stirring up devious atmospheres or moods: it was seen as reinstating the status quo and as bearing connotations to manipulation, conformism, and convention (e.g. Quantz, 1999). Another reason for the marginalization of the notion of ritual in educational research has been ethical and ideological. In modernity, as Michael Quantz (1999, 2011) and others have pointed out, collective ritualization has been seen as an outdated remainder of archaic societies and, hence, with the function to repress tension, ambivalence, and difference (Quantz 1999). In short, the exploration of ritual in philosophy of education was for some time seen as being at odds with progressive education and its guiding principles – principles that to a large extent were focused on rationality and on the flourishing of the life of the individual (e.g. Quantz et al., 2011; Warnick, 2009). In sum, then, there have been both ethical/ideological and political/historical reasons for not exploring the notion of ritual in educational research.

It is worth pointing out also that according to more general discourse in modern socitites, ritualistic modes of behaving and acting have come to signify something non-authentic and superficial (i.e. something one does by convention) or something that is done without thinking (i.e. something irrational and automatic). Ritualized practices, to put it bluntly, seem to refer to some kind of empty form/s (i.e. “empty rituals”) or to a kind of formalism detached from, and unconcerned with, content issues and the outside world. I will come back to these connotations later, but it is worth noting also that the strong connotations to socialisation in the notion of ritual is another reason for marginalizing its value in educational research: it simply does not seem to be compatible with the dimension of subjectification (e.g. Biesta, 2010).

In educational research, the interest in ritual increased with the work of anthropologist Victor Turner in the 1960s and sociologist Erving Goffman in the 1970s. Turner (1969/1995) came to question the functionalist approach to ritual behavior dominant at the time and introduced concepts like liminality, agency, and transformation into ritual theory – terms that came to impact on a pedagogical understanding of, for example, educational transitions. Some years later, Goffman’s (1990) work on the ritualized forms of everyday life in modern societies gained significant impact in educational research (i.e. in sociology of education), both as a way of understanding the dramaturgy of teacher-student interaction in the institutional life of schools, and how face-to-face interaction informs power dynamics and unspoken rules and behavior in classroom settings (ibid.). However, it was not until the emergence of the notion of performativity in the 1990s (e.g. Butler 1999), that the interest in ritual was given more significant and systematic attention in philosophy of education (Ensign and Quantz, 1997; Losito W. F., 1996; Quantz, 1999; McLaren, 1986).

As mentioned above, however, there is currently an increasing interest in the theoretical exploration of pedagogical form/s in continental philosophy of education. This research suggests that there are reasons for re/turning to some of the specific forms and practices of the school (or what is referred to as ‘scholastic’ forms) (Masschelein and Simons, 2013, 2023; Vlieghe and Zamojski, 2019) and, more precisely, to the specific forms of teaching and studying that have been neglected and deprived of pedagogical meaning in the neo-liberal appropriation of education (ibid.). This has led to a focus on, for example, the art of studying (Lewis 2014, 2015, 2023), pedagogical tact and tactful forms of awareness (Friesen, 2024; Korsgaard et al., 2024), the form of the lecture (Friesen 2011, 2014), note-taking by hand (Marin and Sturm, 2021), and repetitive and collective school practices (Vlieghe, 2013) – in other words, practices of study and exercise that are, as Joris Vlieghe puts it, “generally seen as ‘out of fashion’” (ibid.: 190). This research combines a philosophical interest in pedagogical form/s and school practices with a content driven concern for a ‘thing-centred pedagogy’ (Vlieghe and Zamojski, 2019) or a ‘world-centred education’ (Biesta, 2022). Whilst this research field is not drawing explicitly on the notion of ritual in their analyses of school practices, it is to this field that the current paper is addressed.

With this as background, it is time to take the concept of ritual to school which in the next part of the paper will be done in two steps: First, empirically, by giving a glimpse of the classroom we visited in the above-mentioned project and, second, by explaining the theoretical perspective that I am drawing on for the analysis. The reader will have to bear with a double gesture that first zooms on some details in the empirical material, before it zooms out on ritual theory.

Part II. Ritual theory goes to school

ESD teaching as example

The class we are visiting is a natural sciences class in their first year of secondary school (10th grade) in an affluent area on the outskirts of one of the largest cities in Sweden. The school scores high in rankings, and even if all sixteen-year-olds in Sweden today are free to choose any secondary school, this school attracts pupils from the geographical area in which it is placed. As a consequence, the pupils are relatively homogenous in backgrounds and socio-economic resources, and most of them come from white, middle-class families. The teacher, who we can call Kristina, is the mentor of the class and a much-experienced Philosophy and Natural Sciences teacher approaching her retirement. Kristina has been working in this particular school for many years and even if she has seen many pupils come and go, she is excited about her job. A job which, she tells us in the interview, “is still very meaningful and engaging”.

When we join this class, they are quite ‘new’ both to the school and to one another. We have been told that they have been working on education for sustainability (ESD) from a natural sciences perspective for several weeks prior to our arrival, and that they are now approaching their first exam. The sequence of lessons we are visiting are addressed under the theme “Save the Planet” and the pupils are divided into smaller groups around different sub-themes.

What is of interest in this classroom, for the purposes here, is the relationship between form and content in teaching. In terms of form, every lesson begins in a similar way with only slight variation. The pupils are entering the classroom in what seems like a procession, singularly or in pairs, with books and computers neatly held against their chests. When they pass the teacher’s desk, they place their smartphones in the phone box provided before making a ninety-degree turn to take their seats. When everyone is seated and some sense of concentration has begun to descend, the teacher lets her eyes sweep across the room. She then lifts both her hands with three fingers clutched - as if she was conducting a choir - and lets out a soft and long, hushing sound: “Sssshhhh!” And then again, a second time: “Sssshhhh!” When the room is quiet enough, she walks over to the computer and starts her PowerPoint presentation.

These beginning of class moments follow an almost identical, ritual like, pattern every lesson. After the pupils have settled in, the lesson is introduced with a mini lecture of approximately 20 minutes and the pupils listen and take notes. They raise their hands on occasion, mainly to ask for clarifications and/or as a response to a direct question. It could be argued that the pupils are behaving according to protocol, or to what is typical of many well-functioning pupils in well-functioning schools, and that there is nothing really exceptional going on in the classroom landscape in terms of form.

In terms of content, the first slide in the PowerPoint presentation shows an image of the earth from outer space: a green and blue planet veiled with white clouds. There is something about the brightness of this image that conveys hope and joy but the headline “Save the Planet”, reveals that everything is not all right. The images that follow are well composed and the colours are bright but what is on display are eutrophicated oceans, of air pollution smog-shrouded horizons, acidified lakes, melting arctic glaciers, factory emissions, wildfires, refugee camps caused by environmental migration, bleached coral reefs caused by ocean acidification and heating, garbage dumps, chemically poisoned foetuses, coastal flooding caused by storms and sea level rise… The teacher talks to the images in a soft, calm, and steady voice. Her words are factual and descriptive, and each sequence of slides ends with the same final (and, indeed, fatal) message: death. “It dies”, “it will die – the oceans, the lakes, the air, the foetuses and, finally, the human cells”, the teacher concludes.

Given the descriptions above it could be suggested that content and form are in line in this empirical classroom: the teaching conveys a message of death, and the relational landscape is in some sense also void of life. It might be too drastic to say that both are ‘dead’ but, at first sight, the teaching and the interaction is conventional and mundane. Such an analysis, however, is given a complicating turn in our stimulated recall interview with Kristina some weeks later. In reflecting on the form of her teaching, her response to her own postural gestures and sounds is immediate and in high recognition:

The gestures and sounds I make in the beginning (she smiles), they are about bringing us together. The pupils have been working in different rooms and there is unrest in the air, but I want to bring us together. I want to know how things are going. I want to tell them that there will be an exam, but I also want to show them that I trust them. I am hushing them, I am, but there is trust underneath: ‘I trust you, you are doing really really well. All shall be well.’

In the interview, we come to understand that Kristina is well aware of the hushing she makes and that it might come across – to the pupils and to us as researchers – as a silencing gesture. In her view, however, the hushing is meant to create a sense of belonging and it is important to her to transmit to the pupils a sense of encouragement: “All shall be well”. She trusts them to pass their exams which is, despite the climate emergency, an important thing to do.

We also come to understand through the interview that the form of her teaching is deliberate and performed to touch and engage the pupils. It is of utmost importance that the content, she says, “touches them [the pupils] and speaks to them in a deeper sense” and this is why she uses images in her teaching. Images have the potential, she says, “to say more than words” and she explicitly makes a point of combining what she calls “strong images” with factual descriptions and open questions. It is important “to not be prescriptive”, she says, “so instead of using imperatives like ‘Care about the environment!’ I want the pupils to respond, and I do this by using images and by asking open questions: ‘Should we care?’ and ‘What kind of society do we want?’”.

Let us now zoom out from the classroom with this discrepancy in mind between, on the one hand, the conventional form of the teaching and a content focused on the death of the planet, and, on the other hand, the teachers intention to transform and touch the pupils. Let us zoom in, instead, on the theory of ritual action mentioned above and the distinction it offers between the modus of the subjunctive and the modus of the sincere, before we return to the empirical example in part three with the theoretical distinction as lens for our analysis.

Theory: two modalities of ritual action

If one was to paint the historical lines of ritual theory in large brushstrokes, there are two main poles around which ritual theory has revolved. If one pole emphasizes the social work of ritual and its homogenizing and cohesive functions (emanating from Durkheim, exemplified by Radcliffe-Brown), the other pole (emanating from Saint Augustine, exemplified more recently by Ervin Goffman and Clifford Geertz), emphasizes the meaning of ritual through a relationality between form and content. This latter view is perhaps the most common in many parts of the West today and it can be exemplified by the eucharist that, for Augustine, is a “‘visible sign of an invisible grace'” (quoted in Seligman et al., 2008: 4). This view on ritual suggests that the “’thing itself’ always resides beyond the ritual, and the ritual act is only its instrument” (ibid.). Seeing ritual in this way, that is, as a form through which the sacraments are mediated and encoded, leads to an analysis of ritual focused on finding and clarifying its message or content - a message (content) that is revealed in and through the ritual act (form). This way of identifying a coherent connection between inner meaning and outer form links ritual to the domain of morality – a well explored theme in contemporary social theory and philosophy on ritual, as well as in ritual practice. It comes to the fore, for example, in Iris Murdoch’s (1971) The Sovereignty of Good where she suggests that ritual is “an outer framework which both occasions and identifies an inner event” (16). ³ One can think also of the (inner) meaning of a rite de passage that usually marks a young person’s (external) transmission from one group to another or from one stage of life to another – a ritual that often involves a shift in status and/or an advancement in moral maturity.

Against this Augustinian view, the perspective suggested here is formulated by the sociologist of religion Adam Seligman (Seligman, 2010; Seligman et al., 2008) and his interdisciplinary research group at Boston University. Their point of departure is taken in the idea that in many parts of the Christian West there is a disinterest in ritual, or, in what they articulate as “an overwhelming concern with sincerity at the expense of ritual” (ibid. 2008: 9). In such a culture, they argue, collective ritual action has a poor reputation ⁴ and with the disinterest comes also weakening resources to deal with ambiguity and difference (ibid.). In contrast then to a modernity that is unappreciative of ritual and often “absolutizes boundaries” (10), they argue, ritual action presupposes “a gentle play of boundaries that requires both their existence and their transcendence” (ibid., emphasis added). This playfulness in ritual action is related to the fact that ritual practices according to their theory are not tied to an inner morality. This further implies that both positions above – that is, both the focus on social cohesion and the focus on meaning/morality – suffer from unifying tendencies either by proposing social unity or by proposing the unity of meaning (Seligman, 2010; Seligman et al., 2008). To be fair, the consolidating work of ritual action is not completely absent in Seligman’s theory, but they clearly point out that its function is temporary, open, and in flux. A ritual, they write, “creates and re-creates a world of social convention and authority beyond the inner will of any individual” – it creates a “temporary order through the construction of a performative, subjunctive world” (Seligman et al., 2008: 11).

Seligman’s theory builds on a for our purposes important distinction: the difference between ‘the sincere’ and ‘the subjunctive’. Whilst the former is based on idea(l)s of sincerity and authenticity (below the as is modality) – a position that assumes that there are common values and/or a coherent meaning or message that the ritual is ‘bringing out’ as well as an autonomous and authentic, self-examining subject that is performing the ritual – the latter (below the as if modality) presupposes no such things. The as if modality, by contrast, presupposes flux, difference and transformation and accentuates the need to partake in the creating of collective social imaginaries in spite of – or, in fact, because of – the absence of prior value foundations and moral convictions.

Let me explain the differences between the two modalities in more detail.

The modus of the subjunctive

The subjunctive modus (or the ritual modus, according to Seligman et al., 2008; Seligman, 2010), connotes to the grammatical term for expressing desires and hypothetical situations, wishes, and hopes. It comes to the fore in language in, for example, phrases like ‘if you were here’ or ‘if I were you’ and in this sense the subjunctive modus is non-factual and visionary. The modus of the subjunctive (or the as if) suggests that the participants of ritual action are creating a shared, imaginary, world at a certain distance from the social world: they share in a world that is not yet but that can be/come. Hence, the participants of a ritual are in this (subjunctive) sense sharing in a potential world and they are acting as if the potential world can become reality. The community that is created in the modus of the subjunctive can be understood as an ‘imagined community’, to borrow from Benedict Anderson (2016), constituted by people who have little in common in terms of values, beliefs, and intentions.

A critical question to ask is of course what becomes of the individual in the modus of the subjunctive? Does not participating in ritual like practices imply a rejection of autonomy, subjecting the individual to socialisation, discipline, and constraint?

Indeed, partaking in ritual like practices in a modus of the subjunctive is about subjecting the individual to a certain kind of collective convention in order to get people to act as if the imagined community or world can become a reality. In the modus of the subjective, then, collective convention trumps individual conviction and what is important is shared acting based not on moral conviction or shared values but on the anticipation of a shared ‘could be’ future. This kind of acting, however, and this is important to point out, is not done in order to deceive or to lie but to make an anticipated future possible already here and now. In other words, acting as if in the modus of the subjunctive reverses linear time in acting so that the anticipated future becomes enacted in the present.

Suggesting that the individual subject is expected to join in shared collective acting according to convention and without shared values is not to say that content, values, or shared understanding (i.e. conviction) is unimportant.⁵ However, what is in focus in the modus of the subjunctive is that convention and form is not “empty” (as in empty ritual). Rather, the enacting of a shared ritual form is about constructing a shared symbolic universe or a ‘could be community’ even if the individuals that partake in the ritual like practices do not share the same values. Thus, the main concern or question for the ritualistic or subjunctive modus is not how people can share one another’s thoughts, values, and experiences (i.e. a what ‘is’) but how they can act as if what is not yet shared can become shareable.

The modus of sincerity

The modus of sincerity or the as is, by contrast, is an antiritualistic modus. In its extreme form, Seligman et al. point out, it “discourages all ritual-like behavior” (2008: 104) and it aims at creating a shared world through conviction. The distinction between conviction and convention is key here, and if convention is about expecting shared practices, conviction expects shared values and morals (ibid.). More precisely, the modus of sincerity seeks to replace convention (seen as empty form or empty ritual) with conviction and self-examination (seen as meaningful, moral content) which suggests that at the centre of human relatedness in the modus of the as is lies a seeking out of peoples’ intentions and motives (i.e. the depth or degree of sincerity in their intentions). Its purpose, to put it bluntly, is to get behind the veil of (ritual) pretence in search for sincerity and authenticity. Seligman et al. (2008) write: “The sincere mode of behavior seeks to replace the ‘mere convention’ of ritual with a genuine and thoughtful state of internal conviction. Rather than becoming what we do in action through ritual, we do according to what we have become through self-examination” (103).

The modus of sincerity looks at ritual action as “a system of meaning” … “rather [than] as a set of relationships” (34) which suggests, Seligman et al. (2008) continue, that a “stable and unquestionable as is, rather than a common as if, becomes the projected basis for the intersubjective world” (105, emphasis in original). In this sense, the sincere mode is concerned with the purity of intent, something that contrast to the subjunctive modus described above which aims at a sharing of a ‘could be world’ based on the idea that the world is “fragmented [and that] there is no foundation” (34). In many Western societies, the Augustinian modus of sincerity (the as is modus) dominates thinking on ritual action, but what the theorists above have been suggesting is that what is enacted in ritual action is an intersubjective world and an imagined, as if community.

The differences between the two modalities are, at this point, plain to see but what are their consequences for teaching? If we return to the classroom with these two modalities in mind, what can be seen and said about the teaching above? Or, rather, what are the pedagogical implications of the as if modality in everyday school life in general and in this context of ESD-teaching in particular?

Part III: Teaching in the subjunctive

In this third and last part of the paper I would like to turn to a discussion about what the as if modus could offer our analysis of the classroom above. Let us therefore also return to Kristina and her class and see whether what I initially described as conventional and mundane can be understood differently. Can a shift in perspective from an Augustinian view of ritual as coherence in the modus of sincerity to an analysis of ritual in the subjunctive, that is, in the as if, offer another view?

The classroom, once more

If we look at the classroom above once more, through the modus of the subjunctive, the ritual like form of the teaching that initially seemed ‘empty’ or ‘dead’ could point in another direction. It could point, or so I wish to suggest, to an enactment of pedagogical life in the context of a school or classroom as if a future is possible and as if the planet is possible to sustain. In other words, what I initially saw as a form of teaching that had turned a blind eye to the urgency of climate change and that in content was signalling a repetitive and mundane “business-as-usual” kind of approach, could be given a different reading. When I return to my field notes I find the following remark regarding the conventional form of the teaching:

Both teacher and pupils act according to “protocol” as if nothing is really at stake. Hands are raised and questions are asked but there are no signs of bafflement, worry, or anxiety. No visible turbulence. The teaching is ritualized and of a “business-as-usual kind”, despite the urgency of the content being taught.

We know from the interview with the teacher, however, that it is important to her to touch and engage the pupils for saving the planet and to enact transformation and change. It is important to her also to convey – despite the focus on death – that they will pass their exams and that life will go on.

From the perspective of the subjunctive, the ritual like form of the teaching above does not have to be read in coherence with the content being taught but it can, to put it bluntly, ‘speak for itself’. In this sense, what might at first sight seem like static, repetitive, or ‘dead’ forms of teaching can be seen as an enactment (beyond knowledge and conviction) of a living-on of the world and the things in the world that are worth preserving. Thus, the ritualized form of the teaching that goes on as if nothing is really at stake and as if life goes on can be seen as a provisional enactment in the present of what is not yet possible. Given what was suggested above that collective acting in the as if modus makes an anticipated future possible already here and now, the form of the teaching above does not have to be seen as devoid of life or mundane (i.e., from the perspective of the sincerity and coherence) but it can be seen or understood as a way of acting in the present as if a future is possible. In other words, it can be seen as a collective and embodied performance or manifestation of a future – as if there is one – beyond knowledge and conviction. Which is also, in fact, what the teacher is pointing towards in the interview when she says that she wants to convey to her pupils that “all shall be well”. A statement that should not be understood as an as is statement (i.e. as a promise) but as an utterance in the subjunctive that anticipates the future: may it all go well, despite everything.

In sum, the modus of the subjunctive invites an understanding of ritual like classroom work – and what I initially discussed as the pedagogical housekeeping that constitutes the preconditions of teaching – beyond a repetitive and mundane “business as usual” perspective. Teaching in the subjunctive suggests that the ritualized corporeal and sensory practices that teachers and pupils ‘do’ in the classroom on an everyday basis, day after day, over and over, are not empty. By contrast, they are practices that are enacting a kind of ‘living on’ of school life and, eventually, life in the world. This suggests that ritual like forms of teaching also hold possibilities for change and, hence, that the “housekeeping work” in schools and classroom is not only reproductive but can also be productive.

In a previous article on ESD teaching, I discussed what it might mean to see the classroom as a ‘holding environment’ [Bergdahl and Langmann, 2022], a pedagogical space at some distance from society where things can be both existentially ‘held’ and cared for but also dealt with and explored without the immediate need to come up with (political) solutions and answers. The idea was an educational response to political theorist Bonnie Honig’s (2015) call for creating ‘political holding environments’ in democratic societies where political ‘things’ can be cared for and discussed. Honig’s notion of ‘holding environments’ was in this article translated into education and it was argued that one characteristic of a ‘pedagogical holding environment’ (which can be created both inside and outside formal schooling) is that it offers pupils and teachers the possibility to “ritualize rather than catastrophize radical change” (Bergdahl and Langmann, 2022: 412). The point was made that in times of turbulence and radical change, ritualization, as a quality of a pedagogical holding environment, has two functions; it can offer “some sense of ‘infrastructure’ or material/physical permanence” (ibid.) and it can offer “a space for inventing, together with others, new ways of sustainable living” (ibid.: 413). Reading the classroom above as a pedagogical holding environment and through the modus of the subjunctive suggests that the small ritual like ‘things’ that are done again and again, day after day, might in fact be canalizing – instead of catastrophizing – grief and loss. In doing so, they can enact an imagined community of what is not yet but that can become. Because what if there is a future to sustain?

The relationship between the ritual like practices and the world is key here and as we have seen above, the ritual modus is performed at a certain distance from the world (by which I mean both the social world and the world outside the school). Ritualization, it could be argued, temporarily suspends the world (e.g. Masschelein and Simons, 2013) but it also enacts a subjunctive world in the sheltered place of the classroom for the sake of the world. In this sense it creates a temporary community in the realm of the school where the members (i.e. the pupils and the teacher) might not share one another’s beliefs, values or as is experiences, but where they come to relate to one another as if they share a common world. This does not mean, however, that the outside world does not affect the classroom and, as Sharon Todd (2023) points out in her recent book The Touch of the Present, there is a distinction to be made between socialisation and enculturation. Whereas the former “depicts a process of inserting students into an existing social order” … “the latter involves engaging students in practices of cultural translation” (11). In Todd’s view, “habits, ideals, principles, convictions, civilities, and social behaviors are living, bodily engagements with the world, not intellectual abstractions” (121). They are “ways of living and leading a life with others” which is why the process of enculturation always also involves a process of transformation (ibid.). In this sense, I suggest, the pedagogical potential of classroom ritualiztion lies not in the suspending of the outside world but in the enactment of bodily engagements with a “could be world” that is not yet.

Important to point out here is that even if the modus of the as if puts focus on convention, conventional behavior is here not based on predefined convictions and moral values (i.e. it does not strive for socialization). In the theory above, ritual action seeks to create a community that is provisional and temporary based not on a shared convictions but on shared embodied practices. Thus, if pedagogical ritualization is to be pedagogical in the sense of being open to transformation and change, it needs to remain in transformation and keep its ritualized forms unfixed and open to modification and alteration. As a process of transformation, pedagogical ritualization asks of teachers and educators to remain sensitive to the particular interaction that is going on in each unique classroom between the teacher and the pupils, so that the forms do not become sealed and closed.

Conclusion

Looking at the classroom as a landscape of collective, ritualized, practices and choreographies decenters the rational and moral individual as basis for education and puts the collective body center stage. Or, to put it simply: the modus of the subjunctive enacts a collective living on of the pedagogical life of the school at the face of conflict and tension in an educational culture that is increasingly focusing on metrics and measurement (e.g. Biesta, 2010).

Furthermore, teaching in the modus of the subjunctive challenges teachers and educators to give the new generation a teaching that not only focuses on what is, that is, on facts and figures, but that also takes into consideration the imaginative dimension of teaching as if.

In this way, the modus of the as if gestures towards the notion of play, but also towards the notion of imagination although in a rather loose and indirect way, without knowing what is imagined or anticipated. Teaching in the subjunctive points here to the kind of imagination that historian of education, Erik Hjulström (2025), in a recently published article describes as the “Einbildungskraft in Bildung” or the quality or “force in education” that is crucial, he writes, “in the relationship between generations … [and] that makes these generational relationships educational” (ibid., emphasis in original). This ‘intergenerational force’ is in its most profound sense not about being inventive or creative or about focusing on certain political, cultural, and moral issues. Rather, it takes place in the “everyday practices of teaching and in relation to educational problems” (5) and, in doing so, it connects generations to “the past, present, and future of humanity” (4). Following Hjulström, then, pedagogical ritualization can be seen as an intergenerational sharing in an imaginative force where the teacher (the old generation) and the pupils (the new generation) together act as if a future (albeit undecided in terms of content) could become possible.

Teaching the subjunctive does not imply, of course, that teaching as it is is unimportant. It does imply, however, that the modus of the as is is not enough. As most teachers know, teaching needs more than facts and figures if it is to touch and engage the pupils. It also needs the visionary and imaginative gesture that is embedded, as I have tried to show through the modus of the subjunctive, in classroom ritualization. Ritual like forms of teaching might seem mundane and conformist at first sight, but they might hold more (and other) pedagogical potential than what has hitherto been acknowledged.