I couldn't help but reflect on part of the Chomsky-Foucault debate videos Patrick has posted, this in particular seemed to brush against a contemporary itch:
"But I think that the political power is also exerted by a few institutions which seem to have nothing in common with the political power, which seem to be independent but which actually aren't. We all know that university and the whole educational system that is supposed to distribute knowledge, we know that the educational system maintains the power in the hands of a certain social class and excludes the other social class from this power."
This couldn't be more obvious given the hike in tuition fees and cuts to education in the humanities department since power was taken by the conservative party last year; we will find ourselves lead culturally by a more overtly right wing and upper class academia in years to come if things are left unchanged (or perhaps this recent change merely exaggerates what is already the case, and was obviously the case in Foucaults time).
But what do we do about this? Education can't merely be the proliferation of social stratification, it's essential. Those of us who attended Dr Haase's lecture will remember the discussion of bildung, or education as autonomous personal development rather than economic imperatives or training. There is surely only so far we can go in interpreting academic institutions through the hermeneutics of suspicion. We can all look back at our experience of school (and in this final year, of university) with mixed feelings. Of course school was 'normalizing', of course teachers are tyrants, of course the rapid development of social groups and standards of socializing affect a child's life and outlook, and naturally, power is at play, social classes can become defined, the maladjusted are told they are lazy, the unpriviledge are taught they are stupid, and the working class are given their modesty, a sense of worthlessness. But all of us here are to some extent, educated, cultured intellectuals. To what extent would we scrutinize the academic institution as an implement of power and social class? To a destructive level?
I agree with the general point of the exertion political power on the educational system but not necessarily in the way you have suggested.
ReplyDeleteI think sweeping statements of it privilaging certain social classes over others is wrong.
There are certain people that don't fall into the distinct archetypes of 'working-class' 'middle-class' etc and I think society alongside the educational system marginalise these voices.
I think most importatly the educational system marginalises those who don't conform to the norms set out by the educational system, but not due to class.. due to the way in which academia is measured.
I find it particularly silly that going to University and studying drama, rather than getting out and doing drama for 3 years particularly annoying.
Why did they feel the need to create a University degree for drama? Surely its better to enroll in a school or club and do it?
What's more, at 6th Form/College, we're told, "Go to university and do what you enjoy!' As if it can cater for everyone's needs, and as if doing what we actually enjoy is of any benefit to us on the wider scale. Patrick mentioned the other day, the question 'why?' we often recieve when you tell them you're studing philosophy.
I'd much rather go to University for something I need, that's necessary for me to obtain and to further my further my career.
It's not a 'class' problem, there are those from higher classes who don't conform to the educational system either, it just doesn't suit everyone.
You have to have a certain way of studying of writing etc that can be measured by someone reading your work. Why is that the way things are measured?
I think the best way of measuring whether you know something is if you can teach it, so why is it, for a teaching degree I must sit there and study books and write about them, learning journals etc, and THEN I have to get a teaching degree to prove I can teach at a secondary school. Why not just stick me in a classroom in front of kids and see if I know my stuff. If not, then by all means send me to university, but surely, if I want to be a teacher, I should be doing a bit of both... hands on experience and personal study of English.
I think its fair to say we've all had teachers who don't seem to relate to us in a way we can understand algebra or something... they've got the degree to prove it though, hence by norms of society, they must be able to do it.
Silliness.
Alicia
Thanks guys. I agree with both of you on this one. I do think that class does play a very important role in education in HE. For example, despite the widening participation agenda, adopted in particular in post-92 institutions such as NTU, less people from poorer backgrounds still get a Higher Education (there are a variety of reasons for this, many of which do not fall at the doors of HE). Furthermore, with the raising of the fees cap, I think this will become increasingly difficult, not least when it comes to postgraduate education. In many ways, you could be the last generation who benefits from the fees cap.
ReplyDeleteI do also agree with Alicia’s point on the role of the university. We have just talked about this in today’s seminar. In some sense, the university should be a place to hone your critical thinking, imagination, and harness your creative potential. This is beneficial in terms of the labour you will engage with throughout your life. The sad thing is that there seems a disjunct between the labour force and mission of much of HE, especially the Humanities. Ullrich Haase’s point was that the university is becoming more and more devoted to creating instrumental humans who are solely devoted to utility and profit, which can be a very destructive social force. The university as a whole is run more and more along a corporate model which is designed to provide optimum students for the employment market; in essence a graduate factory. So in that sense yes, the university is becoming more and more instrumentalised, and geared towards the needs of capitalist society and in that senses normalizes graduates into functional roles, but it is also a site of ideas, creativity and renewal, and I don’t just mean once, your university education will provide you with the capacities to negotiate many different things in life again and again. In market terms what you get here is a bargain. The importance of the university is therefore its capacity to prevent the alienating potential of employment. That disjunct, between employment and the university is one of the tragedies of the modern university. In many ways, May ’68 was the last huge symbol of the liberating power of the workers and students working in tandem. Although the recent protests might have the seeds of a similar consensus with many different groups organizing it is still to early to say.
Going back to the Foucault quote though,
ReplyDelete"[...]we know that the educational system maintains the power in the hands of a certain social class and excludes the other social class from this power."
Surely the matter is political? We're talking about fees and the exclusion of lower social classes not only from training that allows people to progress, but from cultural pursuits, or in other words, the exclusion of a social class from intellectual and cultural leadership.
Does the educational institution 'maintain' this? Essentially we're criticising the balance of power between institutions. I wouldn't say that the ideal of education is to maintain a class system; it should be of no consequence to a school whether it produces a worker, banker, leftist author or conservative MP. Surely the more ideological the educational institution becomes, the more obvious this relationship becomes, the more irrelevent Foucault's point that 'political power is also exerted by a few institutions which seem to have nothing in common with the political power' becomes?