14 July 2008
we do napoleon
Stephen Bayley in yesterday's Observer writes:
'Academies must respect key stage testing, but do not have to follow the national curriculum. This ventilates both the style of teaching and the plan of the building. The way it was explained to me was: we don't do French language and history, we do 'Napoleon'. This way, pupils learn about motivational leadership and acquire French language and history at the same time.'
and:
'The cant expression is: education must be competence-based, not subject-based'
Ventilates? Motivational leadership with a smattering of French and history on the side? Why not just fit all students with USB ports in the back of their heads so they can download ideology directly to their cerebral cortex?
The contemporary rhetoric of 'competence', well analysed by Virno in particular, demonstrates that education well understands that its role must be purely formal, and must avoid engaging the subjective will of its pupil under any circumstance: keeping the communicative, linguistic and numerical capacities ticking over, but for God's sake, don't put anything in there - what if they start making comparisons between the past and the present? The present and the future? The 'competencies' they're supposed to possess and the structure of the job market?
It occurs to me that we may seriously and increasingly need to turn to well-organised extra-curricular forms of education, using Illich's basic model of the learning network. Reading groups, discussion groups, free history classes, I don't know - anything, anything. The isolated reader is a start, of course, but not enough: communication itself must be reclaimed from its repetitious exploitation in business-speak, call centres and rote conversation.
The future of education increasingly resembles the factory-line producing cans of nothing - 6,000 students on a single course called perhaps 'Studies Studies', sponsored by McDonalds, Blue Arrow and PriceWaterhouseCoopers. They could then take their cut: top 'Studies Studies' students could work in the city, middle 'Studies Studies' students could do clerical agency work and lower-end 'Studies Studies' students could bear the brunt of customer ire in the fast-food joints of our miserable cities. Everyone will feel terrible, but never work out why, and the end of history will plough mindlessly on until there is no longer anything to say.
'Academies must respect key stage testing, but do not have to follow the national curriculum. This ventilates both the style of teaching and the plan of the building. The way it was explained to me was: we don't do French language and history, we do 'Napoleon'. This way, pupils learn about motivational leadership and acquire French language and history at the same time.'
and:
'The cant expression is: education must be competence-based, not subject-based'
Ventilates? Motivational leadership with a smattering of French and history on the side? Why not just fit all students with USB ports in the back of their heads so they can download ideology directly to their cerebral cortex?
The contemporary rhetoric of 'competence', well analysed by Virno in particular, demonstrates that education well understands that its role must be purely formal, and must avoid engaging the subjective will of its pupil under any circumstance: keeping the communicative, linguistic and numerical capacities ticking over, but for God's sake, don't put anything in there - what if they start making comparisons between the past and the present? The present and the future? The 'competencies' they're supposed to possess and the structure of the job market?
It occurs to me that we may seriously and increasingly need to turn to well-organised extra-curricular forms of education, using Illich's basic model of the learning network. Reading groups, discussion groups, free history classes, I don't know - anything, anything. The isolated reader is a start, of course, but not enough: communication itself must be reclaimed from its repetitious exploitation in business-speak, call centres and rote conversation.
The future of education increasingly resembles the factory-line producing cans of nothing - 6,000 students on a single course called perhaps 'Studies Studies', sponsored by McDonalds, Blue Arrow and PriceWaterhouseCoopers. They could then take their cut: top 'Studies Studies' students could work in the city, middle 'Studies Studies' students could do clerical agency work and lower-end 'Studies Studies' students could bear the brunt of customer ire in the fast-food joints of our miserable cities. Everyone will feel terrible, but never work out why, and the end of history will plough mindlessly on until there is no longer anything to say.
