Hello again everyone,
I am not convinced that there are technical solutions to the problems of the
pedagogy. Just as Badiou says that there is no economic cure to Capitalism
(what we need is to democratize markets, production, capital flow etc),
there is no pedagogical solution to education. Ranciere hedges his bets in
'The Ignorant Schoolmaster' by proposing a solution that is partly technical
(ie teaching methods that regard the incapable as capable etc) but also
social (ie transforming the social relations between teachers and students,
and disavowing the hierarchical relations between the educated and the
imbecilic).
To ask for a technical solution to education is to fail to address the
structural conditions of education, specifically how the institutions of
education have social functions beyond pedagogy - eg social control,
interpellation, as Ideological State Apparatuses). This is why it is
laughable when people say that pedagogical models might solve the problems
of art's social relations (elitism and so forth). Education is riddled with
social inequities, is inextricably bound up with the state (ie with the
domination of one part of society over the rest), and is governed by
processes of distinction (not only grading, but also the distinction between
those who pass through a certain stage of education - eg sixth form, Further
Education or Higher Education - and those who don't). Education is not the
solution, it is a knot of problems.
Dave
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