Beyond Virtue and Vice: Education for a Darker Age
Karsten Kenklies, David Lewin, Philip Tonner (eds.)
The Special Issue and its individual chapters can be found HERE.
Introduction
“Maintaining cheerfulness in the midst of a gloomy task, fraught with immeasurable responsibility, is no small feat; and yet what is needed more than cheerfulness? Nothing succeeds if prankishness has no part in it. Excess strength alone is the proof of strength. A revaluation of all values: this question mark, so black, so huge that it casts a shadow over the man who puts it down — such a destiny of a task compels one to run into the sunlight at every opportunity to shake off a heavy, all-too-heavy seriousness.”
Friedrich Nietzsche Twilight of the Idols (1888)
Hardly any other subject draws quite the same degree of public scrutiny as education, in the media, in the private and the political sphere. Specific preferences with regard to education are an important part of the identity not only of individuals, but also of social groups: Being conservative, liberal or left-wing is related to what kind of education one would advocate. It therefore does not come as a surprise when much of the political agenda of any existing political party concerns itself with education, its forms, purposes organisational structures, and finances.
Of course, the positioning of education as of the utmost importance is not new. It is rooted in a long tradition of utopian thinking that came to see in education the means to salvation. Discussions of education have been an integral part of all utopian thinking since the 16th century (which drew on Plato and his model states presented in The Republic and The Laws). Education here became a primary concern, and in the form of a centrally organised formal education it was thought to pave the road for the development and progress of humanity into a bright future. Unable to resist this call, pedagogues and educators willingly accepted the challenge and the associated self-image. It was only in the early 20th century that this exaggerated view of the capacity of education and the attendant grandiose self-image of the pedagogues and educators came into question. However, voices such as Siegfried Bernfeld, remained largely unheard, and only with the rise of Critical Pedagogy and the deschooling movement, was formal education criticised with greater public effect.
Although criticised, formal education is still regarded by most as education’s saviour, with a shift to a predominantly economic vocabulary to bring about salvation. Although this could be viewed as a rationalist corruption of Christian hope, it would be hard to deny the more or less religious or spiritual foundations of modern educational discourse, with notions like attainment and achievement being more associated with economic success and prosperity of the individual and the society as a whole. But that is not the only characteristic of modern educational discourses. The critique of education and educators was at least successful enough to question the necessity of professional expertise in order to take part in educational debates. It is a feeling of a genuine and general competence, that fuels all those discussions: René Descartes was right in stating that Common Sense is the most fairly distributed thing on earth – at least when it comes to education, as everybody seems to feel called for and appropriately equipped to take part in the debates about education. That does not come without certain effects.
The blithe assumption of competence and the position of education in political discourses and debates have led to a gradual introduction of empty or shallow phrases into educational debates. Terms such as raising standards, attainment, progression, engagement, inclusion and fulfilment, are repeatedly recited as mantras in papers, documents, guidelines and frameworks – whether they be part of policy consultations, newspaper, TV and social media debates or wider public discussions. The imperatives to provide easy solutions in minimal time have led to simplifications with regard to educational cause-effect structures. This educational populism has also led to an erosion of the consciousness of education as an adventure that engages us throughout our lives, while having no guaranteed outcome or end.
The flattening of educational discourses and debates provokes reflex and repetitive responses– with the same hackneyed associations. Politicians repeatedly and earnestly pronounce their half-understood phrases, and educators and teachers absorb those notions into their vocabulary because they are part of the official discourse. In the end, everybody keeps repeating the same hollow phrases to express the same all-too simple ideas about instant educational causalities and the simple solutions for big problems those causalities seem to make possible.
The diagnosis, then, is that this flattened discourse is hostile to educational life, valuing death over life, appearance over reality, ignorance over knowledge. The diagnosis demands nothing less than an educational trans- or revaluation. The following chapters aspire to re-introduce a certain complexity that abstains from an all-too easy understanding. The authors assume positions against the usual associations and evaluations regarding certain words and phrases, employing polemics and perhaps exaggerated argumentation to revalue the educational values that are too readily accepted by those involved in the public educational discourse – a revaluation that turns the virtues to vices and the vices to virtues. In what perhaps looks like a provocation, the revaluation endeavours to open up a space of productive uncertainty – a space in which things are less clear-cut, less obvious and less natural. It is only in this realm of uncertainty where reflection can start anew and go beyond what is always already known; it is only here where criticality can be re-established and the astonishing complexity of education can be appreciated again. Or, to use another word of Nietzsche: “One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.” (Thus spoke Zarathustra, Prologue, 5)