Editor's Note

I am pleased to offer for your insight the latest issue of Education and Culture. As I write this editor's note, citizens across the United States and many people across the world are coming to understand the motivations of a mob that stormed the Capitol building in an act of insurrection on January 6, 2021, coming to terms with the futility of former President Trump's second impeachment trial, and watching closely as President Biden's administration attempts to restore and renew democracy within our governing bodies. But for the progressively minded among us, there are already signs that Biden will likely not be able to deliver what many deem necessary to right the wrongs of past and present. The moment is defined by the realization that we are living through a disorienting, liminal space in history. Somewhere between echo chambers and epistemic bubble—the extreme consequences of fake news and the war on truth—citizens are sorting out how to move forward.

C. Thi Nguyen defines an epistemic bubble as "a social epistemic structure in which some relevant voices have been excluded through omission," where members of the bubble "lack exposure to relevant information and argument."¹ On the other hand, an echo chamber is a "social epistemic structure from which other relevant voices have been actively discredited," where members have been taught to "systematically distrust all outside sources" of information.² The echo chamber phenomenon has led to a radicalized segment of US citizens holding personal beliefs demarcated by wild conspiracy theories (e.g., QAnon). Beliefs buttressed by a dangerous brand of disinformation have created alternative realities that are no longer just the outcome of interpretative disputes. Understanding the epistemological roots of these belief systems is akin to mapping the ties that bind members in a cult, but this work must be done if we have any interest in a democratic future.

Dewey wrote "Beliefs are personal affairs, and personal affairs are adventures, and adventures are, if you please, shady,"³ and although his use of "shady" predates the common use of this phrase today, I think he captures the certain hidden qualities of experience that become an impenetrable structure that deflects all attacks against belief. Thus, reclaiming a shared reality will require far more than simply correcting the historical record. Literal education and awareness campaigns will remain impotent if we do not attend to the difficulties of belief. Those of us dedicated to the practice of philosophy are likely "shocked at the frank, almost brutal, evocation of beliefs by and in reality, like witches out of a desert heath—at a mode of production which is neither logical, nor physical, nor psychological, but just metaphysical."⁴ Instead we may long for philosophy's dream of knowledge to "fix" the difficulties of interpretation and experience. Dewey argued: "Philosophy has dreamed the dream of a knowledge which is radically other than the propitious outgrowth of beliefs, developing aforetime their ulterior implications in order to recast them, rectifying their errors, cultivating their waste places, healing their diseases, fortifying their feeblenesses—of a knowledge which has to do with objects having no nature save to be known."⁵

As we feel our way through this murky liminal space—what could more accurately be described as the blinding light of consequences wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic, racial injustice, and climate catastrophe—the task before educators and citizens alike is that of reconstructing a shared reality that can in turn (re)build a common belief in democracy, social ethics, and each other. Rather than looking only to large works and tasks to get us there, the proverbial war to rebuild a common, democratic, social ethic may more likely require small acts of interconnectedness with neighbors, family, and friends to forge a new imagined future. In this way, we all become belief workers rather than "just" teachers who correct whose reality is true or false. If we have learned anything, it is that facts alone cannot undo beliefs—objects require more than simply being known in this moment.

Turning to the contents of Education and Culture, two articles and two book reviews make up...