Character building: How accommodating is the FE newbuild™?

Abstract

© 2018 selection and editorial matter, Pete Bennett and Rob Smith; individual chapters, the contributors. In his seminal essay Building Dwelling Thinking, the philosopher Martin Heidegger argues for a relationship between ideas about ‘dwelling’ and ‘building’, suggesting “Only if we are capable of dwelling, only then can we build” (Heidegger, 1971: 160). He suggests that the task is “to trace in thought the nature of dwelling” and to ask the question: “what is the state of dwelling in our precarious age?" (Heidegger, 1971: 161). In contemporary post-compulsory education the most demonstrative sign of investment in recent times has been an investment in ‘building’ and this chapter to some extent is an attempt to “to trace in thought the nature of dwelling” to explore the extent to which high quality accommodation is genuinely accommodating.Taking these observations as a starting point, this chapter develops a critique of recently built FE colleges in Birmingham and the Black Country.