Labor, work and action in the classroom

According to Arendt, the division of labor has resulted in a society in which workers are, "the same and exchangeable".[...]the risks are essential if children are to develop the capacity to make and keep promises, and to forgive: [Forgiveness, and making and keeping promises] arise directly out of the will to live together with others in the mode of acting and speaking, and thus they are like control mechanisms built into the very faculty to start new and unending processes. (p.246) To act and speak also requires, and brings forth, courage; we reveal ourselves through what we say and do:[...]the event constitutes the very texture of reality within the realm of human affairs, where the 'wholly improbable happens regularly', it is highly unrealistic not to reckon with it [...] (p.300) This shift in approach requires the recognition of the limiting effects of the division of labor as it manifests in schools, and perhaps tempers the current obsession with the tangible products of learning: