Challenging Student Satisfaction through the Education of Desires

This article challenges the practice of encouraging teacher educators to strive and raise the levels of student satisfaction in their classes as if such a criterion provides a measure of good teaching. Such a practice involves what Giroux describes as ‘corporate pedagogy’ which conforms to the neoliberal inclination to meet the demands of the customer in the market. However it is argued in this paper that educative teaching, as especially described by Dewey, ought to challenge and re-evaluate the expectations and desires that students bring with them to class. Rather than aiming to satisfy customer expectations, teacher educators ought to lead the tertiary sector by challenging the notion of good quality teaching through educating the desires of students. Perhaps this may involve educators aiming to ‘dissatisfy’ students as per Mill’s ‘dissatisfied Socrates’.