Art
Pedagogy- Measurement ,Speculation and Subjectivation.
‘Now, what I want is,
Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in
life. Plant nothing else and root out every thing else’. Location 31.
So
speaks the character of Thomas Gradgrind ‘a man of realities’ in Charles
Dickens Hard Times.
Pedagogy today is enmeshed
in seeming realities and an institutionalised addiction to the need for
measurement and a drive to produce evidence.
Educators are caught in a tension between the banking culture modes of
thinking on education and those who are deemed as progressive. The ‘independent
learner’ is no longer the prize- ultimate purported goal- of many a system. In
reality it has actually become the passive ‘dependent learner’. The
introduction of the new National Curriculum as John Steers says (2014)
‘[W]here neoconservative ideology is being
imposed on the education system without any attempt to seek consensus or proper
dialogue with the teaching
profession. p.7’
Foucault(1977) might put it
thus that the reactionary pedagogical approaches are in keeping with the way he
describes the value set of the military that it:
‘…measures in quantitative terms and
hierarchizes in terms the value, the abilities, the level, the nature of individuals.
It introduces through this ‘value giving’ measure the constraint of conformity
that must be achieved’ p.184
According to the
reactionary, child centred learning is now outmoded and in the mind of those
who believe in the banking system of education it never worked. Children do
not contain solutions embedded in them -selves nor does proscription lead to
understanding.
The normalisation of the
idea of a child captured as ‘data portrait’,
their futures mapped out in flight- paths and patterns is now accepted truth
and seemingly unchallenged by those who have the responsibility of gatekeepers.
A whole industry –in plain sight- has sprouted; in methodologies, evidence
driven approaches and also software to ‘enable’ teachers and pupils achieve
their shared goals. How do these images, with their pseudo scientific console
of bright lights and colours, reminiscent of Fritz Langer’s dystopian Metropolis or a kitsch rendering of
a control panel that might have been seen on the set of Flash Gordon- actually inform those who
interface with it.
How ironic is it then that
it is the use of the visual elements of line, colour, tone and pattern are used
to distil this data. The language of the pictographs, charts and diagrams and
various other devices are used to reinforce ideas of moving forward and
measuring progress? How sinister is the appearance of private companies taking
public money to create these mechanisms of measurement and prediction. What do
these patterns actually indicate and what do they reveal about the spaces in
society in which we conduct our pedagogies?
Teachers are compelled to
assess against a backdrop pattern of
probabilities often to use Foucault’s term ‘subjectivised’ and purported as
fact or truth. Truths that up until now were based on tests taken at the age of
just ten years old that determine the child’s place in life. Now not content with that regime, pupils will
now be tested from the age of four years old during the EYFS so their
educational pathways and the way they will be treated in the classroom. How
they will be assigned to various streams will be established at this early
stage of their development and will follow them throughout their school
experience. Teachers feeling obliged to bend assessments to a learning curve.
To create ‘Facts’ as Dickens’ character would have put it.
Per capita payments drive
the decision making and strategy in schools in the UK
Do we want our schools to
become/ remain a place where we produce unquestioning ’drones’ to administer
and maintain a status quo? Should
children be unquestioning consumers of facts and unconscious of their power and
potential to innovate, freedom to create, to change and improve the society
which they will inherit?
As Noam Chomsky states in a
lecture which can be found in the archives of YouTube when describing teachers
who want to inspire and challenge their students:
‘You have to tread a narrow line. There are
plenty of people who don’t want students to think. They are afraid of the
crisis of democracy. You know if people started thinking you get all these
problems I was quoting at the beginning. They won’t have humility enough to
submit to a civil rule.
You know or they’ll start trying to press
their demands in the political arena. They’ll…have ideas of their own believing
what they’re told and privilege and power typically doesn’t want that’
0:40-1:22
Within the national notion
of education- creativity seems to be valued only in terms
quantifiable and measurable outcomes. Unless it is useful in
its aesthetic it is held with the same regard and affection towards
a rhizome or weed trying to push through the black tar-macadam of the
playground. Beautiful to
look at but ultimately doomed -chanced upon by the ‘overseer’ (as Freire
might state it) tasked with maintaining that space of practice. Enclosed, at
best surviving in the margins, hidden in its own concrete framed flower
bed, alien from the purely functional aesthetic.
As
this flyer from a college in South East London (I have removed the name of the college)
illustrates, the arts must be commoditized and sold to prospective learners in
language like this:
‘……. (The Creative Industries) are the most
exciting – and fastest growing – sector of the British economy. If people tell
you there aren’t jobs in the Creative Industries – they’re wrong! Did you know
that the creative sector makes
more than £8m an hour, and
employs nearly 1.7m people? And 35.5% of the UK ’s
creative businesses are based in London
When I first began to draft this
proposal Mr. Michael Gove was still the Secretary of state for education. His ability
to believe in his views on the progressive education as all that was wrong with
education was something to be perhaps envied in the strength of conviction and
their conviction but as far back as 1946. Russell (2008) puts it:
‘Most of the greatest evils man has inflicted
upon man have come through people feeling quite certain about something which
was in fact false. To know the truth is more difficult than most men suppose,
and to act with ruthless determination in the belief that the truth is the
monopoly of their party is to invite disaster’ p.157
I want to further explore
the idea of the ‘subjectivation’ of data/data management systems and physical
patterns they produce. Represent and interrogate the veracity of them in
dialogues in collaboration with a colleague. To see if in fact they do serve a
function or contain any unseen truths.
Reference
List
Chomsky,
N. Most Teaching is Training for Stupidity and Conformity:On Education //www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsEgCQyE9qE
Dickens,
C. (2012) Hard Times. Harper Collins. Kindle Edition.
Foucault
M. (1977) Discipline and Punish the Birth of the Prison.Penguin. London
Russell
B. (2008) Unpopular Essays Ideas That Harmed Mankind Routledge Classics. Oxon Kindle Edition.
Steers,
J.(2014) International Journal of Art and Design Education Reforming the School Curriculum and Assessment in England
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