#051 - What Does Evil Look Like? | Dr. Evil Academic (Cathryn Van Kessel)

Cathryn van Kassel is an Associate Professor of Curriculum Studies at Texas Christian University. Her research focuses on how different conceptualizations of evil function in the context of education within and beyond the classroom, with a keen interest in youth conceptualizations as well as a variety of understandings from philosophy, psychology, and social theory. She is particularly enthusiastic about interpretations of evil that implicate ordinary people to uplift pursuits of justice. On this episode, Cathryn and I discuss the misconceptions of evil in the Social Studies Classroom and beyond, our assumptions of what evil looks like, when people think they are doing good but things that are actually evil, examples along the spectrum of evil, Worldview Threat, Terror Management Theory, the “Social Aquarium,” the subtlety of worldview challenges, Alain Badiou, bear territory, how standardized testing shapes our idea of what education means, how standardized testing is of high educational quality in certain contexts.Send us a textThoughts shared on the podcast are purely our own and do not represent the views of the Anglophone South School District or the relevant jurisdictions associated with my guests.