'Learning' and Signification in Neoliberal Governance more

FOUCAULT, RELATIVISM, AND POLITICAL ACTION ‘Learning’ and Signification in Neoliberal Governance Ingerid S. Straume When socio-political transformations take place, the field of education offers a particularly revealing vantage point from which to study those changes.1 Not only is education the institutional locus for conscious – and non-conscious – social reproduction, at times education is also set to accomplish socio-historical change, by attempting to model a new social type, as in the many versions of the European fascist or the socialist.2 Educational issues are often deeply political, always already situated within political, institutional, and moral struggles over what counts as worthwhile societal objectives, i.e., which socio-historical tendencies should be strengthened and which should be downplayed. The academic 1. Classical studies are Émile Durkheim, Professional Ethics and Civic Morals, London/New York, Routledge 2001 [1957/1904]; John Dewey, Democracy and Education, New York, Simon and Shuster 1997 [1916] (DE); and more generally, the works of Pierre Bourdieu. 2. From a Lacanian perspective, Dany-Robert Dufour claims that the educational system of late capitalism is set at producing yet a new social type, a subject that is “non-critical,” “near-psychotic,” replacing the older forms of the “Kantian critical subject” which was paired up with the “Freudian neurotic subject” (Dany-Robert Dufour, The Art of Shrinking Heads, Cambridge, Polity, 2008). From a poststructuralist perspective, Simons and Masschelein talk of the “entrepreneurial self ” that is promoted in contemporary policy discourse (Maarten Simons and Jan Masschelein, “The Governmentalization of Learning and the Assemblage of a Learning Apparatus,” Educational Theory, Vol.58, no 4, 2008. Hereafter, GL). 229 INGERID S. STRAUME discipline of pedagogy also has historical ideals of its own, such as the ancient Greek ideal, paideia, and Bildung from the German tradition, neither of which have any real correlates in the English language.3 In contemporary discourse, the leading terms are education, schooling, teaching, and above all: learning. Now, if one wants to capture the essence of education or pedagogy, some concepts appear as more indispensable than others; today, ‘learning’ seems to be that concept, since if there is no learning, there can be no education. Against this (logical) background, it seems somewhat odd that learning was not a central concept in the Bildung tradition, or in classical Greece, where morality and good conduct were seen as much more important than learning. This historical shift in focus from ‘education in a wide sense’ (Dewey) to ‘learning’ is significant in more than technical terms – it also represents an important change in the theoretical foundations, where cognitive psychology and biology have superseded moral philosophy and the humanities. Today, ‘learning’ is not only the dominant term in educational settings and theories, it is also widely used in policy discourses on (un-) employment and qualifications, e.g., in the European Union’s programs for lifelong learning, in theories of leadership and management, and in organizational reform policies. In many of these spheres, ‘learning’ has become such a ‘natural’ and ‘inherent’ element that the need to provide reasons, justifications, etc. is suspended. Such words, as we know, often play specific roles in the reproduction, preservation, and solidification of existing power structures. Accordingly, the role of ‘learning’ in Western societies today has been examined by several scholars and elaborated in their diagnoses of learning society.4 3. In the English language ‘education’ is used to cover more differentiated concepts such as paideia, Erziehung and Bildung. See for instance Dewey, DE, where a point is made to distinguish between education in a ‘wide’ and a ‘limited’ sense, and where the former includes moral ideals. To express these notions directly, one must go to the German or Greek terms. Furthermore, the term ‘pedagogy’ (German: Pädagogik, French: pédagogie) does not work very well in English. 4. See Simons and Masschelein, GL; Jan Masschelein and Maarten Simons, “An Adequate Education in a Globalized World? A Note on Immunisation against BeingTogether,” Journal of Philosophy of Education, Vol.36, no.4 (2002), 565–84 (hereafter, 230 ‘LEARNING’ AND SIGNIFICATION IN NEOLIBERAL GOVERNANCE Within the context of pedagogy, the predominance of learning over other concepts gives rise to certain concerns. At the theoretical level, ‘learning’ tends to displace other pedagogical concepts, such as Bildung and ‘education in a wide sense,’5 while at the practical level it often operates in a reductive form. Taken together, as I intend to show, these tendencies limit the political and moral scope of education and pedagogy. From the basis of this insight, several theoretical paths are possible. One is to omit ‘learning’ in favor of other concepts such as Bildung.6 This would be both legitimate and manageable – and is indeed often done in the philosophy of education, especially within language domains where notions connected to Bildung has been developed. The other path, followed in this article, is to explore and possibly broaden the ‘discourse of learning’ itself. The point to be elucidated here is, in short, that learning must be seen as learning something, because everything that exists in the world of humans exists as something. Therefore, discussions about learning must be connected to the ‘contents’ of learning in an intimate way – in terms of meaning and significations – and to the goals of education as such. Having said that, this article will not attempt a substantive discussion of the goals of education; rather, I shall discuss the pedagogical-philosophical framework for such discussions, drawing especially on the philosophical work of Cornelius Castoriadis.7 The discussion starts from what I see as a reductionist concept of learning. In the first part of the text, I outline contemporary educational policy reforms in Europe, where learning appears to be self-evident, natural and unquestionable, along with scholarly criticisms of what has been termed ‘learning society.’ I then discuss some of the theoretical limitations of this policy discourse, arguing that learning must always AEGW); Gert J. J. Biesta, Beyond Learning. Democratic Education for a Human Future. Boulder, Co., Paradigm Publishers, 2006; and Gert J. J. Biesta, “Against Learning. Reclaiming a Language for Education in an Age of Learning,” Nordisk Pedagogik 25, no.1, 54–66 (hereafter, AL). 5. Dewey, DE. 6. Cf. the (somewhat polemic) title of Biesta’s article, “Against Learning.” 7. Cornelius Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, translated by Kathleen Blamey, Cambridge, MIT Press, 1987. Hereafter, IIS. 231 INGERID S. STRAUME be seen as learning something and, indeed, as learning by someone. This argument draws on philosophical arguments, especially Cornelius Castoriadis’s notion of social imaginary significations and Charles Taylor’s ideas of what it means to be a subject. These ideas are discussed in relation to the so-called ‘socio-cultural perspective on learning,’ which holds an ambivalent position in the discourse of ‘learning society’. Finally, I discuss the political and normative questions that are at stake in this investigation, where a restricted view of education and pedagogy serve as an instance of the general tendency of depoliticization in Western civilization. The Dominance of ‘Learning’ First, let us consider the notion of ‘lifelong learning’ as understood by such transnational policy programs as the European Higher Education Area (regulated by the Bologna Process), the Lisbon Strategy of the EU, and the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). In the following, I shall explore the features common to these policies rather than their differences, in order to outline the ideological background against which contemporary discussions of ‘learning’ unfold in educational institutions like colleges, universities, schools, and preschools.8 The Lifelong Learning Programme is the umbrella under which the European Commission began integrating its various educational and training initiatives in 2007. The Commission’s homepage states that: “The programme enables individuals at all stages of their lives to pursue stimulating learning opportunities across Europe.”9 The Bologna Process aims to establish one coordinated and coherent educational system in European higher education, under the motto lifelong learning.10 Now, in order to coordinate educational standards and infrastructure in different 8. Even though this section is based on European policy programs, the tendencies are not unique, but can be found in, e.g., the USA. 9. http://ec.europa.eu/education/lifelong-learning-programme/doc78_en.htm 10. In 2010, 47 nations had joined the Bologna Process, according to the official website. 232 ‘LEARNING’ AND SIGNIFICATION IN NEOLIBERAL GOVERNANCE countries, it is imperative to measure, that is, to quantify. Examples of quantifiable factors are workload, academic level, learning outcomes such as skills and competences, and above all, credits.11 The Bologna Process is meant to promote mobility and control – but not too much control; the idea is that mobility, utility, and competition will be combined with academic freedom and institutional autonomy: Building on our rich and diverse European cultural heritage, we are developing a [European Higher Education Area] based on institutional autonomy, academic freedom, equal opportunities and democratic principles that will facilitate mobility, increase employability and strengthen Europe’s attractiveness and competitiveness.12 In the process of assigning and comparing credits, formerly coherent educational programs are disaggregated and broken down into modules. In Norway, for example, ‘the credit transfer model’ is accommodated through a new grading system in higher education, student exchange programs, and a national system of measuring performance at educational institutions.13 But even though the London communiqué, quoted above, emphasize the importance of institutions maintaining their freedom and uniqueness in the process, it seems clear that too much uniqueness would hinder mobility, employability, and competitiveness, as pointed out by education policy researcher Berit Karseth: [T]he Bologna Process represent[s] a curricular standardisation, whereby the management of credit transfer and accumulation becomes the salient task. The aim is to develop a highly reliable space of higher education 11. Measured by the European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS). 12. London Communiqué, May 2007, http:www.cicic.ca/docs/bologna/2007London Communique.en.pdf 13. Berit Karseth, “Curriculum Restructuring in Higher Education after the Bologna Process: A New Pedagogic Regime?,”Revista Española de Educación Comparada, no. 12 (2006), 255–84 (CRHE). The Norwegian Government White Paper nr 31 (2007– 2008), Kvalitet i skolen [Quality in the School], promotes a range of indicators for measuring learning outcomes in primary education, including detailed instructions for the management of the educational sector. 233 INGERID S. STRAUME which is manageable and predictable; [hence,] the flexibility has to be regulated.14 As already mentioned, several policy processes can be read into a greater policy picture. For example, the structure of the EU’s Lisbon Strategy resembles that of the Bologna process; both see harmonization and streamlining (i.e., rationalization) as means to accomplish greater mobility and competition. In May 2009, the EU Council endorsed a Strategic Framework for European Cooperation in Education and Training. The aim is for the European Union to become the “the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world”.15 To follow up the efforts set out in the mentioned policy documents, measurement and constant monitoring is needed: The periodic monitoring of progress towards a set objective provides an essential contribution towards evidence-based policy making. The strategic objectives outlined above should accordingly be accompanied during the period 2010–2020 by indicators and by reference levels for European average performance (‘European benchmarks’).16 The educational objectives set out by the EU can be summarized very accurately as “key competences and learning outcomes”.17 Once again, measurability is the prevailing principle. A central concept of the Bologna process is employability, which has a double meaning by pointing towards the utility of the education itself, 14. CRHE, 274. 15. Council Conclusions of May 12 2009 on a strategic ramework for European cooperation in education and training (‘ET 2020’). Official Journal of the European Union, http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:C:2009:119:000 2:0010:EN:PDF , 2. 16. Council conclusions, 3. 17. The European Framework for Key Competences for Lifelong Learning defines eight key competences “necessary for personal fulfillment, active citizenship, social inclusion and employability in a knowledge society.” 234 ‘LEARNING’ AND SIGNIFICATION IN NEOLIBERAL GOVERNANCE and towards the individual who is supposed to become employable. By means of education, students will become qualified for employment; while utility is the goal to which all other factors must conform. In these processes ‘learning’ is conceived not only as the actual learning that takes place, but just as often in terms of the willingness, readiness to learn. In 1995, the EU Commission put forth a vision of the society of the future, a “learning society.” “It is clear,” the Commission wrote, “that the new opportunities offered to people require an effort from each one to adapt, particularly in assembling one’s own qualifications on the basis of ‘building blocks’ of knowledge acquired at different times and in various situations.”18 In the Commission’s “society of the future,” [e]ducation and training will increasingly become the main vehicles for selfawareness, belonging, advancement and self-fulfillment. Education and training [ … ] is the key for everyone to controlling their future and their personal development.19 Indeed, the person who does not wish to learn, nor improve his or her skills, forsakes a great deal. The demands on the individual also affect interpersonal relationships, where [t]he individual’s place in relation to their fellow citizens will increasingly be determined by their capacity to learn and master fundamental knowledge. The position of everyone in relation to their fellow citizens in the context of knowledge and skills […] will be decisive. This relative position which could be called the ‘learning relationship’ will become an increasingly dominant feature in the structure of our societies.20 As noted by Simons and Masschelein, these documents call upon a type 18. European Union’s White Paper on Education and Training, “Teaching and Learning – Towards the Learning Society,” Brussels, Commission of the European Societies, 1995. 19. White Paper, 2. 20. White Paper, 2, emphasis in the original. 235 INGERID S. STRAUME of subject who is responsible for his or her own well-being, as well as that of the country or region in global competition, through the subject’s willingness to learn, adapt, and manage human capital such as skills, competencies, and knowledge. The implications of this ‘subject position’ – “the entrepreneurial citizen”21 – will be discussed below. There is, however, little reason to believe that the intentions of transnational policy reforms merely trickle down to ground level where they are implemented accordingly. ‘International competition’ is hardly an ethos fit for primary schools – although this, of course, could vary from nation to nation. In a social democratic context, for instance, this kind of strategic rhetoric challenges the traditional self-understanding that has guided teachers and educators in their work, where solidarity, Bildung, and the fostering of a critical attitude have been central. It is therefore all the more troubling to observe the rapidity and depth of the changes affecting the educational sector in many of these countries. Most strikingly, a new language is adopted for describing – and justifying – educational practices, the key term of which is learning in the form of ‘learning outcomes,’ connected to assessment, accountability, etc. More subtly, the systems erected for control and assessment have evoked a pervasive atmosphere of stress and pressure throughout the sector, where institutions and employees face a ‘permanent tribunal’ whose standards one can never be sure can be met.22 In terms of assessment, a policy with apparent impact on Western school systems over the past 10 15 years is the PISA evaluation system, initiated and conducted by the OECD. The PISA tests are designed to rank participating nations’ educational sectors relative to the input/ output vis-à-vis the goal of the OECD: competitiveness. The tests measure 15-year-old students’ competencies in reading, natural science, and math. 21. Simons and Masschelein, GL. 22. The term ‘permanent tribunal’ stems from Foucault and is used by Simons and Masschelein, GL. Also see Mark Fisher, who, in similar cases, makes vivid comparisons to Kafka and the impossibility of acquittal; only postponement is possible. Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, Winchester, UK/Washington D.C., Zero books, 2009 (CRe). 236 ‘LEARNING’ AND SIGNIFICATION IN NEOLIBERAL GOVERNANCE To be comparable, the competencies measured must be independent of national curricula, culture, and other contextual factors. In order to measure ’pure skills,’ the material to be interpreted by the students is provided by the tests themselves. The only background knowledge needed is specific skills and competence in the relevant subject matter. Typically, the test is about understanding a given text, where understanding requires insight into the basic structure of the subject matter itself. The vocabulary and logic of the PISA tests, which also permeate the European Union’s Lifelong Learning policy, enter national school systems via the national curricula, white papers, large and small reforms, and the national media that typically have paid significant attention to the results of the PISA rankings. Measures are taken in local school development programs as well as national and regional research programs, generating a massive interest in evaluation and assessment throughout the sector. In setting the agenda and transforming the vocabulary by which schools – and, much more reluctantly, universities – describe themselves, these transnational policy processes have been extremely successful. Indeed, skepticism about these trends seems to imply a certain backwardness; for what is wrong with children learning basic reasoning skills, reading, writing, digital literacy, and math?23 The rhetoric in support of testing is often rights-based, the rationale being that children can always learn more, and better – and since they are obliged to spend a lot of time at school, this time should not be wasted, which it would be if pupils did not have ‘learning outcomes.’ This is substantiated by reports showing that many children leave school without proper reading and writing skills. It seems impossible to oppose these aspirations without seeming unreasonable. After all, education is a human right. Still, I want to argue that the turn towards basic skills is part of a deeper current, whose gravest impact concerns the meaning of education itself. The term ‘learning outcome’ provides an important clue. In 2007, the OECD noted the progress of certain nations under 23. The five basic skills in the newest Norwegian national curriculum are: to be able to read, write, express oneself orally, do math and digital skills (Kunnskapsløftet, 2006). The EU uses eight. 237 INGERID S. STRAUME the PISA system (which started in 2000), in terms of increased learning outcomes. The criterion of success was to achieve a reasonable balance between the money invested in education (expenditure) and revenue – in terms of learning outcomes – as reported on the OECD’s homepage: “However, across the OECD area as a whole learning outcomes have generally remained flat, while expenditure on education in OECD countries rose by an average of 39% between 1995 and 2004.”24 The formula underlying this argument is derived from classical business management. National education policies are assessed by the OECD in terms of economic criteria and international competitiveness – economic competitiveness – and not rivalry in qualitative, educational terms, such as which country has the most stimulating thinking, the most intriguing literature, the most vital public sphere, the wisest population, the leading art scene, or the most humane politics. In a contemporary context, these qualitative terms seem strangely outmoded. Nor is competitiveness geared towards increasing pupils’ skills at questioning the existing power structures, organizing political resistance, creating new institutions, and so forth. Qualitative and (especially) political concepts clearly belong to a different discursive repertoire – of a more humanist bent, if you like – whereas today’s transnational policy reforms treat knowledge (learning outcomes) as neither normative nor contextual. Value-laden terms, such as beauty, significance, or any kind of socio-political critique, hardly count as relevant descriptions of knowledge in this context. And perhaps rightly so: it would certainly be equally wrong of the OECD to describe and measure knowledge in qualitative terms; nor should the European Union standardize ‘the meaning of education.’ When the aim is to compare different nations on the relationship between investment and output in education, quantitative measures are required; and this invariably leads to an empty and sterile concept of learning. Today, terms like ‘learning outcome,’ ‘learning product,’ etc., saturate the educational systems of most Western countries. They are found in teacher education, educational research, national policy plans, locally instigated school development programs, and in face-to-face conversations 24. OECD’s homepage. 238 ‘LEARNING’ AND SIGNIFICATION IN NEOLIBERAL GOVERNANCE between teachers and pupils or students. But something goes awry when national agendas are set according to these empty criteria. For instance, where is the space for critique, and creativity? Indeed, in a regime where benchmarking, auditing, and measurement constitute a ‘reality’ that is not open to discussion, the system could only include such notions by objectifying and quantifying them. However, according to Mark Fisher, systems ostensibly designed to assess performance and activities that are, by their very nature, unquantifiable do not really measure performance and output at all; rather they measure their bureaucratically produced representations. “Inevitably, a short-circuiting occurs, and work becomes geared towards generation and massaging of representations rather than to the official goals of work itself.”25 Representations and symbols of benchmarking become the ‘real’ goals, while the institutional ethos of former days are put on ice, and eventually forgotten. Only That Which Can Be Counted, Counts Another important term, around which the entire reform discourse is organized, is accountability – a key term in the Lisbon Strategy. Like so many other terms in this sector, accountability has a double meaning:26 first, it assigns responsibility to the partners involved in an enterprise, and second, it signifies an obligation to keep accounts (in the sense of keeping records).27 Accounting in the educational sector specifies the partners’ obligations to honor a ‘learning contract’ where objectives, time frames, 25. CRe, 42. Fisher goes on to claim that the cherishing of symbols of achievement over actual achievement is an element that late capitalism “repeats” from Stalinism, in a “fusion of PR and bureaucracy,” CRe, 42–43, 50. 26. The double meanings facilitate implementation of control mechanisms, partly through co-optation and partly by obscurity and new-speak. There is a permanent uncertainty as to what terms ‘really mean’ which enables agents in power positions to switch meaning contents when facing critical interrogation, thereby keeping others in (perpetual) uncertainty as to whether one has understood ‘properly.’ 27. Cf. the large apparatus of ‘benchmarks’ launched by the EU; see, for instance, EU Commission Staff Working Document, “Progress towards the Lisbon Objective in Education and Training, Indicators and Benchmarks,” http://ec.europa.eu/ education/policies/2010/doc/progress06/report_en.pdf 239 INGERID S. STRAUME responsibilities to act on assessments, self-assessments, etc., have been established. In schools, teachers, pupils, and parents enter into agreements that specify the objectives – learning outcomes – that the pupil can be expected to achieve within the timeframe specified by the ‘learning contract,’ with lesson plans and assignments distributed every one or two weeks. In short, reporting and keeping accounts has become one of the most important tasks for teachers. Naturally, the school management and public administration are among the most accountable.28 Accordingly, assessment has become a main activity for the whole educational sector, and this is reflected in educational research and school development programs. Better assessments, where students are involved in the planning and monitoring of their own learning processes, are seen as central to improve the efficiency of learning. To complete the picture, a final trend worth mentioning is ‘evidence based research’ in education; an approach meant to ensure that investments are not spent on policy measures that do not work. All the notions mentioned above – learning outcomes, basic skills, competences, accountability, assessment, evidence based research, etc. – may be included in a certain meta-discourse where these elements become factors, that is, they become computable, mathematically expressible, and thus are incorporated in a ‘meta-account of education.’ Theories of learning also have a part to play in this account, since ‘learning’ is one of the few concepts in pedagogy that can be operationalized into quantifiable data such as ‘learning outcomes.’ Now, if this account should become the real account of education, i.e., the only ‘realistic’ account, the idea of education could be in danger. This concern is voiced by philosopher of education Gert Biesta in a formidable critique of learning programs and the ‘new language of learning,’ which to him imply the notion of buying and selling. While ‘learning’ has gained its current, strategic position, ‘education’ has been pushed to the periphery and this is also true of ‘teaching’, as pointed out by Biesta: “Teaching has, for example, become redefined as supporting or facilitating learning, just as education is now 28. In these matters, the USA is far ahead of Europe. 240 ‘LEARNING’ AND SIGNIFICATION IN NEOLIBERAL GOVERNANCE often described as the provision of learning opportunities or learning experiences.”29 When education becomes a quest for learning outcomes, it is turned into a commodity, i.e., a good to be purchased and paid for either directly by the consumer or indirectly by the taxpayer. If the product does not meet the consumer’s expectations of utility – employability – he or she should be able to complain; hence, the importance of accountability. ‘Value for money’ has become the main principle in many of the transactions between the state and its taxpayers. This way of thinking lies at the basis of the emergence of a culture of accountability in education and other public services, which has brought about ever-tighter systems of inspection and control, and ever-more prescriptive educational protocols.30 The logic of the system posits the recipient of education as a certain kind of customer, called the learner – a term that is now replacing the child, pupil, student, etc., in educational institutions. In the new language of learning, states Biesta, education is adaptable to the customer. Educational institutions and teachers become providers; hence, they must adapt to the market – the market of learning – and ‘education’ is reduced to technical concerns like efficiency, effect, provision, learning environment, etc. More profound and more fundamental questions concerning the aim or meaning of education can hardly be raised in this framework. The heart of the matter, Biesta argues, is not only a restriction on the professional judgment of the teacher, but more importantly, a weakening of democracy. A similar concern can be found in the works of Simons and Masschelein, especially in their critique of the governmentality of ‘learning society.’ 31 In ‘learning society,’ the foremost asset of subjects or citizens is their 29. AL, 71. 30. AL, 73. 31. GL, 391. The term governmentality (French: gouvernmentalité) comes from Michel Foucault. 241 INGERID S. STRAUME ability – and willingness – to learn, that is, to take responsibility for their lives and “do something about it.”32 This willingness and individual responsibility defines a certain sociological type that Simons and Masschelein call the ‘entrepreneurial citizen,’ or the ‘entrepreneur of the self,’ pointing out another key element in the new language of learning. The term entrepreneurship, which figures increasingly in educational policy documents, is about “using resources and producing a commodity that meets needs and offers an income.”33 But entrepreneurship is not only a technical matter, it involves certain attitudes: “… an ‘element of alertness’ – that is, a speculative, creative, or innovative attitude to see opportunities in a competitive environment.”34 As Simons and Masschelein note, the entrepreneur of the self is aware that the self is the result of a calculated investment and that the ‘success’ of the self is not guaranteed as such but depends on whether it meets needs. These could be the needs of a particular environment (a calculated investment in human capital through education or self-organized and self-directed learning) or the needs of oneself as a consumer (a calculated investment in human capital to meet the need of self-realization).35 Following Foucault pace theorists of modernity like Jürgen Habermas, Simons and Masschelein claim that, in the entrepreneurial regime, there is no ‘colonization’ of the social sphere (life world) by the economic sphere (system) because there is no purely economic sphere: all is management. Accordingly, education is no longer set within a “social regime of government” whose rationale is socialization and social norms, or a welfare state where the economic sphere is conceived apart from, or against the social sphere. In entrepreneurial regime, the governmental rationality is characterized by “the economization of the social,” where problems of governance are conceived in terms of “investment in human capital 32. GL. 33. GL, 406. 34. GL. 35. GL, 407. 242 ‘LEARNING’ AND SIGNIFICATION IN NEOLIBERAL GOVERNANCE and the presence of a ‘will to learn’,” that is, the “presence or absence of entrepreneurship.”36 The “strategic components” of ‘learning society’ are ‘inclusion,’ ‘capital,’ and ‘learning.’37 The ongoing transformation from the social regime of modernity to entrepreneurial governance and ‘learning society’ also resonates with Zygmunt Bauman’s diagnosis of the ‘society of consumers,’ where no one can become a subject without first turning into a commodity, and no one can keep his or her subjectness secure without perpetually resuscitating, resurrecting and replenishing the capacities expected and required of a sellable commodity.38 While the regime of entrepreneurship denotes commoditization and economization, it is first and foremost a type of total management, where control permeates all socially instituted practices. In the entrepreneurial regime, this control is effectively carried out by the subjects themselves, who, according to Simons and Masschelein, are put before a ‘permanent economic tribunal,’ where – in the name of ‘personal freedom’ and ‘selfrealization’– they are submitted to governmental technologies which operate through the notion of ‘freedom.’39 The entrepreneurial self experiences learning as the force to guarantee a momentary emancipation in environments through delivering useful competencies. Learning, therefore, is experienced as a force to deal with the ‘mancipium’ or the hold of the environment (such as limited resources or needs). Hence, for the entrepreneurial self, learning and living become indistinguishable.40 36. GL, 408. 37. GL, 406. 38. Zygmunt Bauman, Consuming Life, Cambridge, Polity 2007, 12. 39. GL. The influence of Foucault’s works on governmentality and biopolitics is clear. The authors also make good use of other studies in the same tradition. 40. GL, 409. 243 INGERID S. STRAUME The regime of learning is lifelong – like an “indefinite postponement,” as noted by Mark Fisher: Education as a lifelong process … Training that persists for as long as your working life continues … Work you take home with you … Working from home, homing from work. […] The carceral regime of discipline is being eroded by the technologies of control, with their systems of perpetual consumption and continuous development.41 Since there is no way of knowing whether one may ever be able to fulfill its standards, the ‘tribunal of learning’ is permanent. To Fisher, the difference between the old/heavy and new/light inspection systems correspond to Kafka’s distinction between ostensible acquittal and indefinite postponement, where “[i]ndefinite postponement […] keeps your case at the lowest level of the court, but at the cost of an anxiety that never ends”.42 The standards are unclear, and often the criteria need to be worked out by the subjects themselves. In European educational systems, this self-auditing now starts at a very early age. As already mentioned, the proliferation of ‘learning’ is not limited to the sphere of organized education, it is also used to denote and address various problems like unemployment, poor health / mental health, social exclusion, etc, which in the entrepreneurial regime are conceived as the inadequate management of learning resources, that is, the subject’s (deficient) willingness to adapt and learn. Similarly, at the political level, problems concerning social unrest are recast as the need for ‘citizenship education,’ consisting in ‘democratic knowledge, skills, and competencies’; or more generally, as the need for ‘organizational learning.’ Facilitated by the ‘new language of learning,’ a great ideological displacement from ‘education in a wide sense’ to accountability and computation can be witnessed in European welfare policies. The depoliticizing effects of these reconfigurations are massive, as management and self-management replaces the need for politics. 41. Fisher, CRe, 22–23. 42. CRe, 51. 244 ‘LEARNING’ AND SIGNIFICATION IN NEOLIBERAL GOVERNANCE Learning in Terms of ‘Something’ While I endorse the critical points voiced by Biesta and Simon and Masschelein presented above, I also want to develop the discussion somewhat further by widening the analysis to include the ‘meaning’ of learning. In much of the literature on learning, the learning content, subject matter, knowledge content, etc., are often treated as matters set apart from the learning process itself. This perspective separates ‘learning’ from its content, and from the social practices in which learning takes place. Here, I want to argue that we cannot understand a particular learning experience unless we look at what the learned content is learned as. The twentieth century’s classical theorists of learning, Piaget and Vygotsky, both knew this. For instance, Vygotsky strongly emphasizes the notion of culture in his psychology of human learning, and in his descriptions of children’s development through play, he insists on the importance of the notion of meaning.43 Piaget, for his part, had a welldeveloped stage theory concerning children’s developmental ability to learn different concepts, such as object permanence or reversibility. Even so, in discussions about learning, the ‘meaning aspect’ of the ‘learning content’ is often poorly developed, as learning is portrayed as form divorced from content. For instance, when the ‘social group,’ the community etc. are treated as factors that enhance learning – offering ‘learning environments’ – the cultural meaning itself remains unthematized in the background. Of course, there are scholars who do not follow this script. One is the Norwegian cultural psychologist Karsten Hundeide, who uses anthropological field studies actively in his ‘socio-cultural’ perspective on children’s development. Using his own studies in Jakarta and other anthropological studies, Hundeide has developed a conceptual framework for understanding children’s development in terms of ‘structures of possibility’ and ‘socio-ecological tracks of development.’44 Central 43. Lev S. Vygotsky, Mind in Society. The Development of Higher Psychological Processes, Harvard University Press, 1978; Lev Vygotskij, Tenkning og tale, Oslo, Gyldendal, 2001. 44. Karsten Hundeide, Barns livsverden: Sosiokulturelle rammer for barns utvikling, Oslo, Cappelen, 2003. 245 INGERID S. STRAUME to Hundeide is the notion of children’s life world as an experienced, hence real, universe of possibilities. He rejects the one-dimensional, linear metaphor of development that has been so central to Western developmental psychology; instead, he pictures children’s development as a landscape with several developmental ‘tracks,’ impregnated with significance and meaning.45 Hundeide’s research cultivates an empiricalphenomenological orientation within the social sciences that promises a richer notion of what it means to develop and learn. To go further, it would be interesting to discuss the meaningdimension of ‘learning’ in more depth. A path to follow is found in Castoriadis’s notion of ‘social imaginary significations.’ When this concept is introduced into a discussion of learning, it becomes clear that everything that can be experienced, learned, realized is experienced/ learned/realized as something – and therefore that the central aspect of a learning experience is its signification, or, at a deeper level, its meaning (French: sens). This claim, however, will need some elaboration. By way of an introduction, let us first consider Castoriadis’ concepts. By ‘social imaginary significations’ Castoriadis wants to elucidate that in the always-instituted world of humans – society, history, and culture – all phenomena appear, stand out, and exist as something, namely as themselves. Everything we understand and perceive, we understand and perceive as something – and this something, in the simplest terms, is a signification: For a society, to say that a term is means that it signifies (is a signification, is posited as a signification, is tied to a signification). Once it is, it always has meaning […], that is it can always enter into a syntax or can constitute a syntax in which to enter. The institution of society is the institution of a world of significations – which is obviously a creation as such, and a specific one in each case.46 Social imaginary significations are socially instituted, that is, they are 45. Hundeide, Barns livsverden, 28. 46. IIS, 235. 246 ‘LEARNING’ AND SIGNIFICATION IN NEOLIBERAL GOVERNANCE instituted in and by society, and not constructed by the individual. The clearest example of such a social institution is language. Since everything that exists for a society, exists as signification, nothing is insignificant; that is, nothing cannot not mean anything to us – not even the signification of ‘nothing,’ which also means something. Furthermore, a society also consists of significations that have no referents in the real (what Castoriadis calls ‘the first natural stratum’), such as gods, spirits, or ideas; and each society also institutes in its repertoire of significations of things that do not exist; that is, they exist as non-real, non-existent: [T]he being of non-being, or non-being as such, always exists for society; into its universe of discourse enter entities whose being is or has to be negated, positions that must be asserted by means of explicit negations or that are presented only to be negated. The possibility of ‘this does not exist’ or of ‘it is not like that’ is always explicitly posed in the institution of society.47 Even the outside of society, that which is absurd and meaningless, is instituted precisely as that. Each society, like each living being or species, establishes, creates its own world, within which, of course, it includes ‘itself.’ […I]t is the proper ‘organization’ (significations and institution) of society that posits and defines, for example, what is for that society ‘information,’ what is ‘noise,’ and what is nothing at all; or the ‘weight,’ ‘relevance,’ ‘value,’ and ‘meaning’ of the ‘information’ [ … ] and so on. In brief, it is the institution of society that determines what is ‘real’ and what is not, what is ‘meaningful’ and what is meaningless.48 47. IIS, 234. 48. Cornelius Castoriadis, “The Imaginary: Creation in the Social-Historical Domain,” id., World in Fragments. Writings on Politics, Society, Psychoanalysis and the Imagination, edited and translated by David Ames Curtis, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1997 (WIF), 3–18, 9. 247 INGERID S. STRAUME The principle that everything is conceived as something is called representation, indicating not so much that things stand for or appear as something else – although this can also be the case – but more fundamentally that things take part in the social institution of significations, where things appear as themselves. To Castoriadis, the implication is that every analysis of human activity must take its point of departure in the social-historical. I shall return to this point below. Now, let us see what he has to say about learning. To Castoriadis, ‘learning’ is a biological category, a capacity shared by all animals, but since the human animal is distinct from other animals, human learning needs to be distinguished as such. What, then, distinguishes the human animal? The decisive difference, according to Castoriadis, concerns the radical imagination (l’imagination radicale) which other animals to not possess. The radical imagination of the human being enables us to produce representations, significations, and ideas – with or without reference to the reality we share with other animals – which are the essence of the genuinely human world. Even if learning is a biological category, human learning is special. The key, again, is the notion of social imaginary signification. To Castoriadis, ‘true’ human learning – or rather, pedagogy – means to invest emotions in significations, in the teacher’s person, in knowledge itself, and, in some cases, in the very idea of education.49 To make this point, Castoriadis draws on the psychoanalytic notion of sublimation, which involves emotional investment (kathexis) as well as recognition of the cognitive contents of the issue at stake, that is, legitimacy, in a broad sense. There is no pedagogy if the pupil does not have any investment, in the strongest sense of the term, both in what she learns and in the learning process; and she can only make that investment – that is a fact, human beings are that way – provided she invests a concrete person, through a platonic Eros.50 49. Cornelius Castoriadis, “Psyche and Education,” id., Figures of the Thinkable, translated by Helen Arnold, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2008, 165–87, (FT). 50. FT, 178. 248 ‘LEARNING’ AND SIGNIFICATION IN NEOLIBERAL GOVERNANCE The person of the teacher is a kind of emotional catalyst: “If teachers are incapable of inspiring love in children, love both for what they are learning and for the very fact of learning, they are not teachers.”51 The basic idea is that the learning subject becomes emotionally attached to the contents, that is, to the social imaginary significations, in such a way that these significations become part of the subject’s proper world (Eigenwelt). In other words, the learned and experienced contents become the learning subject’s own world. And as previously mentioned, the human world is an instituted world of imaginary significations and meanings. This becomes very clear when we try to understand what a society is. To Castoriadis, a society consists of, and exists by, significations, significations embodied in institutions: The being-society of society is the institutions and the social imaginary significations that these institutions embody and make exist in effective social actuality [effectivité sociale]. These are the significations that give a meaning – imaginary meaning, in the profound sense of the term, that is, spontaneous and unmotivated creation of humanity – to life, to activity, to choices, to the death of humans as well as to the world that they create and in which humans must live and die.52 Examples of social imaginary significations are manifold, from the more obvious cases: God, spirits, virtue, sin, freedom, and justice – to the less obvious ones like nation, citizens, state, market, interest rates, capital, and human rights – and the terrible ones: Gulag, fascism and so on.53 Everything that exists to human beings exists first and foremost as significations: complex, irreducible phenomena that have no other ‘ground’ than themselves. Imaginary significations are created by the human imagination, and human beings attribute meaning to everything in their world. But, at the same time, it is important to realize that the social imaginary significations are 51. FT, 179. 52. Cornelius Castoriadis, “Democracy as Procedure and Democracy as Regime,” Constellations Vol. 4 (1, 1997), 1–18, 2. 53. See WIF, 7. 249 INGERID S. STRAUME operative on the collective plane, i.e., society – they are not made or created by individual human beings. All this, to Castoriadis, indicates that society first and foremost must be understood as socially instituted imaginary significations. Everything that can be learned is woven into a background or framework – a society and a culture – that is kept together by its core significations by the ‘infra-power’ of (imbued) meaning. My contention is that these ideas should somehow be mirrored in theories of human learning – not in order to say anything definitive about what we learn, experience, and so forth, nor to dictate what we should learn in each specific case, but, rather, to elucidate that what we learn and experience is always learned and experienced as something. The social, historical and cultural dimensions of that which is learned should, in other words, be seen as something more than a context and environment for learning. For instance, the specific ‘learning’ in a capitalist context should be seen as exactly that, not as ‘pure’ learning, learning in abstracto. From this perspective, learning theories without additional dimensions are apolitical. This important insight should be elaborated much further than can be done here. The implications reach beyond a traditional critique of positivism – that there can be no neutral, objective, value-less knowledge – in pointing out that the very ideas of neutrality, objectivity, and value-lessness are in themselves social imaginary significations. Still, the fact that such notions have no ground or foundation outside the human world of significations makes them no less real. For all their ‘neutrality,’ these notions are strongly invested with meaning, as Castoriadis notes: … everyone knows today, or everyone thinks they know, that the alleged neutrality, the alleged instrumentality of technique and even of scientific knowledge are illusions. In truth, even this expression is inadequate, and it masks the essential aspect of the question. The presentation of science and of technique as neutral means or as instruments pure and simple is not a mere ‘illusion’: it is an integral part of the contemporary institution of society – that is, it partakes of the dominant social imaginary of our age.54 54. Cornelius Castoriadis, “From Ecology to Autonomy,” id., The Castoriadis Reader, 250 ‘LEARNING’ AND SIGNIFICATION IN NEOLIBERAL GOVERNANCE In modernity, neutrality, value-lessness, and objectivity have been set as standards to characterize technique and science – yardsticks by which other phenomena and significations can be measured. This may explain the current obsession with auditing and benchmarking at the expense of meaning and signification. Furthermore, as Charles Taylor argues, representations of objectivity, neutrality, etc. support the notion of a ‘disengaged’ individual subject possessing freedom, dignity, and power.55 These significations mark a very specific – modern, allegedly free and independent – subject Taylor’s notion of what it means to be a subject can also be connected to our discussion of the concept of learning. To Taylor, being a subject means to ‘interpret’ oneself as someone. This does not necessarily mean to be someone specific, or some determinate ‘thing,’ but rather, that to exist, for a human being, means to exist as someone – and this someone is something. As in the case of representation, the idea of our existing ‘as someone’ does not point to something else, something outside of our selves, but rather to the fact that everything – here, subjectivity – is ‘tied to a signification.’ To be a self, then, means to be part of certain social practices imbued with humanly created meaning. Taylor also attaches a moral dimension to this, since to become a ‘moral subject,’ to Taylor, means to reflect consciously upon the values (i.e., the significations) to which one is committed, and also to ask oneself whether we want to endorse these values, i.e., whether they are worth our endorsement. This comes close to Castoriadis’s ideal of autonomy, where autonomy means to reflect consciously upon one’s values – which are normally collectively instituted – and ask oneself whether these values are valid, not only de facto, but also de jure.56 In Castoriadis’s case, it is translated and edited by David Ames Curtis, Oxford, Blackwell, 1997, 239–52, 240. Hereafter, CR. Still, according to Mark Fisher (drawing on Žižek), as long as we confess to know this to be an illusion, we can go on practicing as before (CRe). 55. Charles Taylor, Philosophical Papers, Volume I, Human Agency and Language, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1985, 6. See Ingerid S. Straume, “The Political Imaginary of Global Capitalism,” in this volume, where I cite and discuss Taylor’s position on these issues more extensively. 56. CR, 384–98. 251 INGERID S. STRAUME a democratic society that asks itself whether its laws are valid de jure – valid in principle – and the same question is posed by the individual subject in Taylor’s case. Now, if we leave the notion of neutral and valuefree knowledge, the question of ‘learning’ also becomes a moral question, since everything we learn will – or should, if we follow Taylor – enter into the self-reflective processes of the subject’s becoming a self. Or, if this is too strong, at least we can say that learning something, no matter what, does something to us as subjects – and therefore, that, as learning subjects, we would do well to judge whether a certain education makes us better or worse persons. This, of course, is a paradox, since we can hardly know the answer in advance – for to become capable of passing judgment over one’s own education is, in essence, connected to the paradox of becoming an autonomous subject through a temporary submission to someone else’s judgment and authority. 57 If, at this point, one asks how these thoughts relate to the discourse of ‘learning society,’ outlined in the first part of this essay, the differences in discourse appear overwhelming. Without going into a detailed analysis, my contention is that the underlying logic of the two sets of thinking is radically different. ‘Learning outcomes,’ ‘accountability,’ etc. make use of the logic of computability, where means and results can become measurable factors, and – in principle at least – compared. ‘Education in a wide sense’ draws on a discursive repertoire of reflection, meaning, critique, problematization, trust, paradoxes, and creativity – processes that seem completely beyond the logic that quantifies and measures. The Socio-Cultural Perspective on Learning – Politicized I have argued that, in the current Western educational policy regime, the dominant concept of learning stands in a rather problematic relationship to notions such as significance and meaning. As already mentioned, the socio-cultural perspective on learning, inspired by Lev Vygotsky, could be a way out, as a theory that takes context, culture, and meaning seriously. A major point in the reception of Vygotsky’s thought in educational 57. See e.g. Alexander von Oettingen, Det pædagogiske paradoks, Århus, Klim, 2001. 252 ‘LEARNING’ AND SIGNIFICATION IN NEOLIBERAL GOVERNANCE studies is that the ‘locus’ of learning is the social sphere, whose meaning is internalized, as described here by Ivar Bråten: Higher psychological processes are formed by the culture developed through history, coming to expression through a series of signs and symbolic systems of varying complexity. And these systems of signs and symbols are transferred to the mind of the individual where they become psychological tools of thought, because they permeate the interaction between the individual and the social context.58 The processes of internalization consists of a series of transformations, Vygotsky states, where [e]very function in the child’s cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first, between people (interpsychological), and then inside the child (intrapsychological). […] The internalization of socially rooted and historically developed activities is the distinguishing feature of human psychology, the basis of the qualitative leap from animal to human psychology.59 Vygotsky’s interest in the social aspects of the developmental process is evident, and he frequently uses terms like meaning, history, culture, etc. It is therefore all the more striking that the ‘socio-cultural perspective on learning’ has become dominant in teacher education, the literature and the universities during the same period in which the ‘new language of learning’ and the discourses of ‘entrepreneurial society’ have become dominant at the level of policy. Somehow, the two currents are increasingly merged at various (practical) levels, based on the notion that knowledge is something actively constructed by individuals engaged in practices within a socio-cultural 58. Ivar Bråten, ”Om Vygotskys liv og lære” in Vygotsky i pedagogikken, edited by Ivar Bråten, Oslo, Cappelen, 1996, 23, author’s translation. 59. Lev. S. Vygotsky, Mind in Society. The Development of Higher Psychological Processes, edited by Michael Cole, Vera John-Steiner, Sylvia Scribner, and Ellen Souberman, Cambridge, Mass / London, Harvard University press, 1978, 57. 253 INGERID S. STRAUME environment. Hence the importance on creating an environment for learning, where, in Biesta’s words: ... the activity of the teacher is no longer orientated towards the transfer of knowledge but geared towards the provision of environments that facilitate and stimulate [...] autonomous and self-directed learning. 60 In order for the two perspectives to merge successfully, a certain shortcircuiting is required, a main element of which is the reductionism from ‘meaning’ to ‘learning.’ Instead of pursuing this discussion, however, I want to argue that Vygotsky’s insights could be elaborated further by drawing on Castoriadis’s notions of social imaginary significations, discussed above, and politicized by drawing on his distinction between the ‘instituting’ and ‘instituted society.61 Unfortunately, there is only room for a brief outline of how this might proceed. Vygotsky and Castoriadis agree that symbolic systems, significations, and meaning are not the products of individuals, but social in origin, and both are interested in language as a case in point. Language and culture are, to Vygotsky, constitutive for the individuals’ thinking – ‘thinking tools’ – not vice versa: Verbal thought is not an innate, natural form of behavior but is determined by a historical-cultural process and has specific properties and laws that cannot be found in the natural forms of thought and speech.62 This is clearly in line with Castoriadis’s view, that language is the foremost example of a social institution, and that the social-historical has primacy over the (always-already socialized) individual. When Vygotsky says that 60. In Masschelein and Simons, AEGW, 568. 61 For a presentation of these concepts, see Ingerid S. Straume, “The Political Imaginary of Global Capitalism,” in this volume. 62. Lev S. Vygotsky, “The Genetic Roots of Thought and Speech,” in Thought and Language. Edited and translated by Eugenia Hanfmann and Gertrude Vakar. Boston, Mass, MIT press, 1962 [1934]. 254 ‘LEARNING’ AND SIGNIFICATION IN NEOLIBERAL GOVERNANCE thought development is determined by language, i.e., by the linguistic tools of thought and the socio-cultural experience of the child, one could easily identify socio-cultural experiences with the notion of social imaginary significations, such as religion, rationality, democracy, capitalism, etc.63 Now, to be socialized, employing Castoriadis’s terminology, means to embody the social order of significations, and insofar as we endorse and find pleasure in these significations, the socialization process is successful.64 The social imaginary significations become standards by which individuals interpret their experiences; making communication and thinking possible. The distinction between the ‘instituting’ and ‘instituted society’ – where the instituting society is the creative dimension, ‘that which’ creates a society65 – further highlights the creative aspect of the institution of society, setting a task for education, among other things, to enhance the (individual and collective) ability to create new meanings and institutions.66 Today, scholars who adopt the socio-cultural perspective tend to focus on the tools and processes of learning such as information and communication technology and the media – where ‘culture’ is being studied (if at all) in terms of ‘cultural artifacts’ – and informal learning arenas, social groups and networks; but steer clear of properly political discussions about the significance and meaning of learning and education in a specific culture. This is of course legitimate, since culture, 63. In fact, in “The socialist alteration of man” (The Vygotsky Reader, edited by René van der Veer and Jaan Valsiner, Oxford, Blackwell), Vygotsky talks about the socialist ‘type of individual’ in much the same way as Castoriadis talks about various social types in different social-historical regimes; see, e.g., Castoriadis, IIS, 318. 64. IIS, 315. 65. “Society is self-creation. ’That which’ creates society and history is the instituting society, as opposed to the instituted society. The instituting society is the social imaginary in the radical sense.” Cornelius Castoriadis, Philosophy, Politics, Autonomy. Essays in Political Philosophy, edited and translated by David Ames Curtis, New York, Oxford University Press, 1991, 84. 66. “An autonomous society, as a self-instituting and self-governing collectivity, presupposes the development of the capacity of all its members to participate in its reflective and deliberative activities.” Castoriadis, WIF, 132. 255 INGERID S. STRAUME language, community, etc. can either be talked of as context, tools, and prerequisites for something, e.g., learning, or as specific significations and meaning, with political aspects. Choosing the former, however, involves a reductionism that has implications for the notion of learning and for the theory itself. In my view – following Castoriadis in particular – the term ‘culture’ can hardly be understood in the sense of ‘pure context.’ Culture is the framework from which everything else begets meaning, including the terms we use to describe these issues (this is why the discourses of ‘learning society’ and the ‘entrepreneurial subject’ are of such great cultural importance). And, according to Castoriadis, meaning keeps a society together; meaning ensures that a given society is perceived as one society, a functional unity, even though it consists of different and particular institutions: [T]his unity is in the last resort the unity and internal cohesion of the immensely complex web of meanings that permeate, orient, and direct the whole life of the society considered, as well as the concrete individuals that bodily constitute society. This web of meanings is what I call the ‘magma’ of social imaginary significations that are carried by and embodied in the institutions of the given society and that, so to speak, animate it.67 If Castoriadis is right in saying that human beings maintain their institutions in so far as they offer meaning, then meaning becomes the most important dimension of any culture; and this implies that our notion of ‘learning’ should be more attuned to ‘meaning’ than it currently is. If we take the socio-cultural perspective on learning seriously, we must also question the contents and meaning of education in specific socialhistorical cases. This is not just a theoretical project; it is also a political one, as I shall argue in the last part of this text. But first, let me draw the preceding parts more closely together. I have argued that ‘learning’ should be seen as specific learning; learning of something and, following Taylor, learning as someone. To talk 67. WIF, 7. 256 ‘LEARNING’ AND SIGNIFICATION IN NEOLIBERAL GOVERNANCE of learning as ‘pure process,’ ‘elements,’ or ‘modules,’ are just some of the many reductionisms in the field of education. The Bologna process has followed this path by breaking up formerly coherent educational courses into modules that can be compared and evaluated against each other.68 ‘Education’ is conceptualized as choices between schools that offer various learning outcomes. In this scenario, notions representing cultural meaning are absent, while education and schools/universities become pure, transparent ‘context.’ In this scenario, the significance and meaning of that which is learned is inaccessible to, or not worthy of, any deeper reflection. The principle of sublimation of the learned ‘contents’– so central to practices of teaching and learning – has become theoretically extinct. Sublimation means that individuals adopt society’s significations and make them their own. Through sublimation, we are socialized as members of a culture, into our professional roles, etc. Learning, in this connection, implies more or less conscious choices of who we want to be. Henceforth, the processes involved in learning market economics and the discography of a musician I really like are only superficially similar. Learning involves intent as well as sublimation, where emotions are – sometimes deeply – involved. The Problem What is the problem with a concept of learning that does not include the socio-political dimensions outlined above, such as meaning, signification, and specific cultural reflections? In and of itself the concept may not pose any serious threat; some may even claim that my concerns represent an elitist critique, with little regard for practical realities and political necessities. In my view, however, there are good, political reasons to worry when collective notions of education and its raison d’être are impoverished, as my examples have shown. European educational policy is dominated by a general reductionism and, more specifically, an instrumentalism where interest in the means of education replaces discussions about educational objectives, i.e., meaning. In many settings, learning is talked of as pure 68. Karseth, CRHE, 267. 257 INGERID S. STRAUME process; learning becomes the only objective of education; but learning of what, learning by whom? The general response is: ‘Basic skills’ and ‘competencies’ – ‘goals’ against which no sensible person can be opposed. In this instrumentalist framework, the only yardstick of education is efficiency, i.e., what ‘works’ and ‘how well does it work’; orientated around categories like outcomes, evidence, accountability, etc. Again, these are categories that seem harmless enough in themselves; for what is wrong in knowing whether public money is well spent, according to the intentions? And who would want a public education where pupils do not learn, i.e., with methods that do not work? It would seem that those who are critical of these statements are also critical of quality in education itself. An interesting detail, though, is that quality assessment regimes never seem to employ qualitative language. As I have shown, substantial, phenomenological, and normative issues are non-existent in this discourse; indeed, the regime of quality assessment avoids qualitative issues. So where is there room for discussing normative issues, e.g., the justifications and legitimacy of educational policy practices? As far as I can see, matters of efficiency in effect trump legitimacy and justifications by totalizing the discursive field. The most important thing is to find out whether something works: ‘if it doesn’t, the discussion ends, and if it does, we should be able to measure it.’ Tragically, the time to ask questions of significance, importance, and justification never seems to enter into today’s educational policy discourses. In the region from which my examples are derived, mainly the Nordic social democracies, national developments seem to be increasingly dependent on international policy processes aimed at the standardization of educational policies in a large geographical area (the European Union). These processes conceal the fact that decisions over schools and the education of new generations are profoundly political matters – they are everybody’s concern, since schools, colleges, and universities affect the larger society and its future by way of social reproduction, and possibly, by facilitating breaks with the dominant social imaginary from which new social forms may arise. In the end, the overarching question is what 258 ‘LEARNING’ AND SIGNIFICATION IN NEOLIBERAL GOVERNANCE and who we want to be, as a society. If discussions about education are not framed so as to engage in moral-political discussions of this kind, this is a democratic problem. Furthermore, an impoverished notion of education obscures the various possibilities in human life; opportunities to live a life as someone, a life imbued with meaning and significations, making for a richer social and personal reality, and on a deeper level, for socio-political creativity. If we would start speaking of learning in terms of significations and meanings, new opportunities to reclaim the language of education may arise. As I have argued, discussions about schools and education should make use of words that make these activities meaningful, allowing us to ask: What is the political, moral, and global significance of this education? We would need to look for words that allow us to express and see the importance of our activities, as individuals and collectives. This will allow for strong evaluations69 of the educational systems, but also, strong critiques and new creations. In short, it should be possible to raise questions of why we have schools; questions that can hardly be raised under the current regime, where ‘learning’ is seen to be self-sufficient, yet curiously empty.70 Most importantly, when contents, significations, and meanings are included in discussions of the educational systems, these discussions become a part of society’s reflection upon its own norms and institutions. And finally, this enables us to talk of an education that aims at autonomy and political agency. 69. Charles Taylor, Sources of the self, Cambridge, Cambridge University press, 1989. 70. Dufour (The Art) and Fisher (CRE) both argue that in neoliberal capitalist societies, there is a fear of, or refusal of, education. 259 INGERID S. STRAUME 260