Collaboration: Philosophy of Education in Practice

Collaboration is widely celebrated as an ability schools should teach children to practice. Yet collaboration has a darker side, as its use to refer to those complicit with Nazi occupiers and with colonial oppressors of many kinds suggests. In effect, “collaboration” is a contranym, a word that can mean something or its opposite. To collaborate can mean to work with one's friends and colleagues for the common good. It can also mean to sell out one's friends and colleagues for the sake of pe...