Baudrillard and the end of education

Abstract

In this paper we examine ideas around Baudrillard’s work on reality being a simulation, applying these ideas to educational research. We suggest that even rigorously devised quantitative forms of research, and the empirical data that such research produces, produce rather than simply report on reality; and that very often such research is complicit with naive assumptions about what education is and how education ought to be. We do not argue that such a process is intrinsically wrong but reflect on Baudrillard’s work which indicates that this state of affairs in inescapable.

Keywords:

• Baudrillard
• education
• simulation
• reality
• research