Seeking room for utopian thinking in learning

As the pandemic drags on and new variants emerge threatening to make it even more interminable than it already feels, it is possible to think of the pandemic as a form of test for societies. Certainly, much ink has been spilled discussing this notion, so I will not attempt to rehearse too many of those points. I do wonder, however, about the contribution of schools to the outcome of the pandemic across multiple societies, but not necessarily in a comparative manner. These outcomes seem to me far too complex to be resolvable by reductionistic comparison of schooling practices which are possibly decades away from when these students have any form of political influence in the societies they would inhabit. Nonetheless, I wonder the degree to which readers and contributors of this journal may be inadvertently complicit in the ways in which their societies may be broken. This is, of course, a very strong charge to level, and I invite some patience as I try to make the case.

By the account of historian Bregman (2017), we in most of the developed world have achieved what many in the earlier generations would have considered an utopian existence. By most metrics of life expectancy, societal wealth, and quality of life, we are a long way off from the times which inspired observers such as Thomas Hobbes to declare life to be “nasty, brutish, and short”. Utopian thinking is most often reactionary, responding to the perceived shortcomings of one’s age, and gives hope, meaning and purpose to its readers. Of course, dictatorships and totalitarian regimes have also promised utopias in the past, to disastrous outcomes for all involved. There is reason to be suspicious of utopian thinking. But then, if we were to eliminate utopian thinking altogether, we will also eliminate the possibility for meaning and purpose to our lives beyond the technocratic rearrangement of our deck chairs.

In education, this suspicion of the utopian narrative, this societal avoidance of moralising and thinking about prescription takes the form of an excessive focus on the means rather than the ends. As researchers, we tend to shy away from suggesting that our research in learning can, for instance, ultimately lead towards an awakening of critical consciousness that might address the social problems that accompany a runaway capitalism. Absent from some form of societal moralising, educators essentially acquiesce to the demands of “the economy” for more grist to the mill, ready to be manipulated by a system to demand “upgrades” every few years, never mind the environmental costs of doing so. How can it be otherwise when plastered over almost every city in the world, and in media broadcasts of any form imaginable, the public sphere is full of messages to the effect that one is not complete without the latest gadget, service, or curated experience? How can it be otherwise when there are over 6 billion smartphone users on this planet, each one essentially being piped messaging that is ready to be exploited, for the highest bidder or for the maximum “audience engagement”?

Yes, part of education is the preparation of individuals for meaningful employment. However, we educators might do well to expand our notions of what counts as an effective preparation. With increased specialisation and the growth of the administrative and managerial classes, we are inclined to suppose that a good education is one which privileges abstraction and a general ability to manipulate symbols. Education research can focus too narrowly on the best methods to bring about “learning” of some desired skill or knowledge, but not ask enough questions about where this will fit into the greater scheme of things, or more generally, if there are more or less critical versions of the same skill or knowledge that ought to be communicated to students. For instance, one might good naturedly assume that teaching students about epistemic aspects of knowledge might be beneficial. But, if we do not also tell students how it is we can translate phenomena into representation, if we do not tell them that nature does not speak for itself, and that the process of interpretation is a social process thoroughly infused with social relations; if we do not do this, we are likely to do them a disservice. The saying we all know is that a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing – when students graduate knowing that “truth is socially constructed” but not how it is constructed, or how it is we can nonetheless have “good enough” versions of truth, we can become susceptible to misinformation peddlers.

Sociologist of science Collins (2009) has asserted that, at least in the public understanding, “the founding myth of the individual scientist using evidence to stand against the power of church or state […] has been replaced with a model in which Machiavellian scientists engage in artful collaboration with the powerful.” If this is indeed the case, more knowledge may not be enough to address this problem, especially if we understand the concept of motivated reasoning – more often, it is the highly educated, those most well equipped with reasoning skills, who are more likely to double down on their beliefs and explain away contravening evidence (Sinatra et al., 2014). The intention here is not to discuss the specific case of epistemic reasoning in science as a goal for scientific literacy, but merely to use this as an example of how tightly enmeshed the problem of education is, and how a limited, reductionist focus on singular aspects of the problem can miss the point. Crucially, it can be the case that, despite our best intentions, interventions can produce the opposite outcome. What this might suggest, then, is that we need a more holistic approach to education, with a view to an education that is radically open, that has the potential to surprise even educators as to its outcomes (Harðarson, 2012). It seems to me that we need to acknowledge the power differential inherent in acts of education, and how easily our intentions to “help” students can shade ever so subtly into the realm of indoctrination. What else should we call it, if we set out to engineer experiences where students have no choice but to achieve the “learning objectives” that we set out for them? Could we involve students more completely in their own education, helping them to decide among a range of possible goals, and how and in what ways some goals are better than others?

To be fair, as a friend of mine would remind me: even if we can agree on a utopian vision for schooling, there remains a lot of work to be done to bring us there. Journals such as ours still can serve a very vital role in documenting the different ways in which learning can be brought about. However, I believe that without the occasional effort to outline the ways in which learning brings about improvements, all we have is a record of change. I am indebted to the writings of philosopher Biesta (2004) for this deceptively simple idea, and of course, his insistence that learning is verb in the English language that is incomplete without specification of what it is that we think should be learnt, why this learning should take place, and the ideal manner of relationship between instructor and students (Biesta, 2013, 2016). Indeed, he invented the deliberately ugly term learnification to point to the ways in which our contemporary discourse has seemed to drop these uncomfortable considerations in preference for a version of learning that simply assumes learning to always be an unquestioned good. Just as we have to accept that weapons of mass destruction are profoundly creative inventions (and hence, not all inventions and acts of creation are valuable), we have to also accept that not all forms of learning are desirable.

Certainly, we will need more moments of introspection, and to that effect we invite contributors to expand our collective conversation about means in relation to the ends of learning. Certainly, the purpose of this editorial is not to signal a change in editorial policy or direction – we will continue publishing articles of specific interest to scholars of the diverse aspects of learning. However, it might be appropriate for the community to think collectively about the practice of learning: to what degree are practices of learning, given the contexts in which they exist, well described by our theories? To what degree is theory context independent? Theories are generated within a particular context, and we often assume that we are able to translate these theories to another context. What limitations might there be? How would contextual factors interact to produce a richer result? What might a better outcome look like? Are contextual variations merely distractions to prevent us from a scientific generalisability? This list, of course, is not exhaustive, and understanding practice in its variability is not at all straightforward. Yet, if we are concerned about the effects that education might have on the world, we ought to also have discussions concerning the ends, rather than only the means? Given the complexity of practice, what may be ways to make descriptions which simultaneously do not excessively smooth out the significant variations, and does not get lost in the minutiae of details?

It would bother on the hyperbolic to warn about the time sensitivity of the need for changes to be made to schooling. Yet it would similarly be insensitive to the point of negligence to say that all is well. Change will have to happen, one way or another. Here’s hoping that we will all make it.