The scene of the classroom

Abstract

Prakash Nair has made comments about the kind of spatial planning that educationists should make for the purpose of improving, and refining the architectural model of the school that can be adopted in the twenty-first century. These remarks imply that an “old” and out-dated architectural model needs to be replaced by one that is better suited to the kinds of workers that children will become when they graduate, so that schools can more effectively prepare students for the workforce to come. In this article, I argue that his proclamation that “the classroom is obsolete” should be interpreted in the context of neo-liberalism, alongside similarly hyperbolic claims by Francis Fukuyama in 1989 that the fall of the Berlin Wall signified the “end of history”. By addressing the rhetorical structure of such remarks, I deconstruct Prakash Nair’s promise to build a better future for education. Additionally, I argue that educational researchers may benefit from thinking of the classroom as a fictional place, a “scene” that does not always bear identical and universal attributes, owing to the diversity of cultural and geographical contexts in which classrooms are found.

Keywords:

• Derrida
• classroom
• deconstruction

Notes

1. By comparison to educational research, scholars in the field of literary theory, aesthetics and cultural studies are more accustomed to thinking about the significance of architecture for expressions of political and economic formations cf. Jameson (1991, 1998).

2. Fielding Nair International (2005) and Nair (2011).

3. ‘These initiatives would not necessarily get rid of classrooms, but instead redesign and refurbish them to operate as “learning studios” and “learning suites” alongside common areas reclaimed from hallways that vastly expand available space and allow better teaching and learning’ Nair (2011).

4. Michael Peters offers a helpful discussion of the shift in Foucault’s language with respect to the ‘regime of truth’ cf. Peters (2004).

5. Derrida is, of course, drawing on the work of Nietzsche and Heidegger in taking up this view of the Enlightenment.