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In this chapter, the authors explore the “hidden curriculum” that is enacted when the teaching-self transmits to the learning-self, the being aspects of the teacher. It is proposed that these aspects are communicated through discursive and nondiscursive materials. The latter includes energetic, emotional, and gestural “languages.” An argument is made that the current, modernist conceptions and practices of education that predominantly focus on covering and downloading curriculum materials do not create openings for exploring the being aspects of teachers and learners. Moreover, acknowledging Avraham Cohen's thesis, “We teach who we are, and that's the problem,” the authors explore the hurtful and damaging influence of the teachers' “Shadow materials.” An argument is made for the moral imperative of teachers' (or anyone who is in a position of influencing others) self-study to minimize or prevent hurtful and damaging influences that could have a long-lasting impact on the students' or learners' self-formation. The authors propose the method of inner work, integrated with contemplative inquiry and practices, as a way for educators to work with the materials of consciousness. Inner work largely involves working through psychological projections, introjections, and entanglements that permeate one's inner world. Some details of inner work are offered, including how to facilitate a dialogue between the parts or subselves in one's inner world that are in tension and conflict. It has been further proposed that this kind of inner work would lay the necessary foundation for becoming kinder, caring, and more compassionate human beings.

The post-truth moment comes at a time of deference for epistemic authority, which has serious implications for democracy. If democracy implies an epistemology, attempting to live a democratic way of life implies a theory about the nature of knowledge among other theoretical aspects (e.g. political and ethical). At the time of ‘fluid modernity’, the post-truth politics of renouncing truth damages the foundations of democracy, for how could we proceed with a democratic way of life without truth as a common denominator for deliberation? While a defining feature of the post-truth era is its intrinsic relativism, Gellner (2013) warns this could lead to ‘cognitive nihilism’. Thus, it is imperative to (i) find our way back to reasonableness (based on both reason and emotions) based on a Freirean dialogic middle ground, instead of renouncing truth (that is any notion of truth), and (ii) critically discuss possibilities for various approaches to truth-seeking. While it is important to question the foundation and reasonableness of truth, two crucial issues arise: which theory of knowledge and whose theory of knowledge should be accepted as the epistemological basis of truth? Moreover, this chapter will argue that a more plausible notion of truth is neither one that is based on intrinsic objectivity nor intrinsic relativism, but one that is based on the relationship between objectivity and subjectivity; that is a relational (nor relative) and dialectic understanding of truth which does not rule out the existence of facts but questions the political constructs of facts. The final section of the chapter focuses on the application of the understanding of truth as a relational dialogical epistemology. While arguing for a dialogical theory of truth, the chapter also problematizes the predominant view of evidence-based research and policy and offers an in-depth discussion of how our understanding of the relational dialogical notion of truth can be utilized in the analysis of cases involving pro-active discrimination and affirmative action.