A Manifesto For Education PDF
A Manifesto For Education PDF
A Manifesto For Education PDF
GERT BIESTA
Stirling Institute of Education, University of Stirling, United Kingdom
CARL ANDERS SÄFSTRÖM
School of Education Culture and Communication, Mälardalen University, Sweden
ABSTRACT In November 2010 the authors finished the writing of a manifesto for education. The
manifesto was an attempt to respond to a number of issues concerning education, both in the field of
educational research and in the wider socio-political environment. This is the text of that manifesto
followed by two commentaries in which the authors try to highlight some of the reasons that have led
to the writing of the manifesto, and in which an attempt is made to situate the manifesto in a number
of discussions and debates.
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A Manifesto for Education
exclusively for those who were already free, from the Enlightenment onwards education has
become conceived as itself a liberating process, a process aimed at the realisation of freedom. Such
freedom is often projected into the future, either through a psychological argument that focuses on
development of inner faculties or potential, or through a sociological argument that focuses on
social change, liberation from oppression and the overcoming of inequality. In this way education
has not only become tied up with progress but has actually become synonymous with it. However,
by conceiving education in terms of what is not yet – that is, by conceiving education as a process
that will deliver its promises at some point in the future – the question of freedom disappears from
the here and now and runs the risk of being forever deferred. This locates the educational in a place
beyond reach.
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educational ‘work’. When the sociology of education aims to explain how education reproduces
existing inequalities – either overtly or through ideology – it operates in the domain of ‘what is’. To
utilise such knowledge educationally runs the risk of turning the individual towards ‘what is’ rather
than promoting freedom. When, on the other hand, developmental psychology understands ‘what
is not’ in terms of ‘what is not yet’, it runs the risk of subjecting current freedom to a freedom-to-be
that may never arrive. Both forms of theorising thus lead education away from the tension
between ‘what is’ and ‘what is not’. This raises the question about the possibility of forms of
theorising that are able to stay within the tension. This is the question of educational theory proper
as distinguished from applied and imported forms of theorising.
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idea of freedom – a freedom that is ‘difficult’ because it is connected, related – we are trying to
articulate the educational interest as an interest in something that also cannot be pinned down, that
cannot be captured, and that, in that sense, also cannot be defined. More positively, we are trying to
indicate that a number of ways of speaking and doing and thinking about education that are
circulating in contemporary discussions about education, both in society at large and in the field of
educational research, run the risk of keeping out or eradicating the very thing that might matter
educationally.
This is what we see happening in both populism and idealism. Both strategies seem to miss
something that matters educationally – or, to put it in more careful terms, that might matter
educationally and that, so we believe, should matter educationally. While populism expects too
little from education – and thus can blame those who expect a little more, those who complicate
education – idealism expects too much from education – and thus can blame those who expect too
little from it, those who tie education too quickly to the existing state of affairs. ‘Freedom’ then
signifies an ‘excess’; that is, it signifies what cannot be captured if one is either a serious populist or
a serious idealist, but may matter nonetheless, and may matter educationally.
Perhaps as an aside, the difficulty with the word ‘education’ is that it can refer to many
different things and actually does refer to many different things. (And that’s only in the English
language, because if we go to other languages, such as German, we find a much bigger array of
concepts, such as Erziehung, Bildung, Ausbildung, and so on.) We are not trying to cover all of that.
We are not trying to say that schools should only be about freedom, for example, or that
vocational education should not be called education. But we are trying to ask how much education
is possible or can occur in schools, how much education is possible or can occur in vocational
training – and, in a sense, we are trying to indicate why it might be important to be able to ask that
question, why it might be a meaningful and important question, particularly here and now, when
we see that education is under attack for not delivering what it is supposed to deliver (and perhaps
at the same time for delivering what, from the angle of populism or idealism, it is not supposed to
deliver).
The idea of freedom is not a foreign concept in the field of education. We can find many
references to it throughout the history of educational thought and educational practice. We can
hear its echo in such notions as emancipation, enlightenment and liberal education, and we can
find its promise in critical education, empowering education, and so on. While in this regard
freedom may have the power to keep education away from what is, from the reality of the here
and now, and keeps the possibility of excess or transcendence open, there is a danger that in such
notions as emancipation, enlightenment, liberation and empowerment freedom is always projected
into the future, as something that needs time, as something that may arrive, but that is always to
arrive later. As we suggest in the manifesto, there is a strong tendency to think of education
entirely in such temporal terms, both with regard to what it is supposed to deliver – a future state
of liberation, a future state of enlightenment – and with regard to its object – the child as the ‘not
yet’. Could it be, therefore, that we need to take temporality out of education in order to capture
something educationally, something that is neither about what is, nor about what is not yet (but will
come one day)?
If we take freedom seriously – as something that can happen right here and right now – then
perhaps the educational moment, the educational event arises out of the confrontation between
what is and what is not; right here and right now. This confrontation which, after Rancière but not
identical with Rancière, we refer to as dissensus, is the moment where speech – as different from
repetition – might happen. It is not the moment where existing identity positions are picked up
through repetition (not even if the repetition is not entirely perfect, as slippage is not automatically
speech), nor is it about the future promise of speech. It rather is about what is spoken here and
now, right in front of us. This, as we try to argue, is not to take history out of education, but rather
to take history seriously, to believe that history can be made because history is not the unfolding of
a programme, but a chain of events.
What is there in the manifesto is therefore not only an attempt to speak for education, and
also not just an attempt to articulate the referent we are speaking for, it is perhaps also a theory of
education, a theory that first of all aims to construct an educational ‘object’. This is important as
well, because if there is no educational way of speaking about education, if there is no educational
way to theorise education, then the only resources left are ones that are borrowed from
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somewhere else. In the field of educational theory and educational research such resources are
often borrowed from other academic disciplines, thus constructing the sociology of education, the
psychology of education, the philosophy of education, the history of education, the economics of
education, and so on. These resources can make important things visible and can do important
work. But the question that needs to be asked again – just as we try to ask this question in relation
to educational practices – is whether such theoretical resources can capture the educational
dimension of education. We have some doubts, but the most important thing for us is to see if it
can become possible to make this into a meaningful question: To what extent can the sociology,
psychology, philosophy, history etcetera of education capture what is educational about education?
As mentioned, the manifesto is an attempt to speak – to speak for education. In a sense, this is
something that can only be done, not something that can be explained. In that sense this
commentary is as much an attempt to speak for education as the manifesto is. It is therefore as
much a manifesto as the manifesto it tries to make plausible. There is, therefore, no invitation to
sign up to the manifesto. The manifesto rather invites people to start speaking for education
themselves. It is, in sum, a manifesto that calls for multiplication, not for copying.
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discursive shift in the discourse about education and schooling in Sweden, where ‘discipline’ and
‘order’ have become key terms, rather than democracy (Månsson & Säfström, 2010). To be more
precise, the ‘school for all’ has been renamed ‘for all to join’, and ‘lifelong learning in the
knowledge society’. This is a distinctly different discourse characterised by a return to ‘positivistic’
knowledge produced by brain research, evidence-based research, positivistic psychology, and
leadership and efficiency ideas in all matters concerning schooling.
Second, it also follows that if educational research is internal to a particular kind of welfare
state that is being challenged to its core by political forces from the right – both liberals and
conservatives – then it means that educational research is also under attack. All types of research
that is orientated towards something outside of itself (e.g. an orientation towards justice, solidarity,
democracy, or freedom) are questioned. That is, research becomes reduced to more research for
the sake of research to be used by politicians defining to what end it will lead (Biesta, 2010).
In Sweden this means in effect that a new right redefines the whole idea of a welfare state
from within by changing the whole educational infrastructure. This involves changing the school
law and the grading system in school; it involves giving teachers the right to punish students; it
involves changing the admission criteria for the gymnasium (high school) and for the university; it
involves changing the terms upon which educational research is funded; it involves changing
teacher education and who has the right to give teacher education diplomas; it involves
implementing a new ‘quality’ system for universities; and much more – it involves changing the
totality of the educational landscape, from kindergarten to higher education.
The irony of it all is that in order for such fundamental change to take place, the right-wing
coalition parties need to attack educational research forcefully, since a large part of educational
research in Sweden has been conducted within the larger idea of a ‘social democratic’ welfare state
(Rosengren & Öhngren, 1997). Or rather, the state needs to redefine educational research so as to
better suit its own aspirations. This is done most blatantly by promoting brain research and an old
form of positivistic educational psychology (Säfström, 2011). The state thus supports types of
research that only with great difficulty can say anything substantial at all about education, and that
too easily can be accused of only legitimising an already politically decided view on what education
is and what it should be good for. Its lack of scientific credibility (and this is particularly ironic, since
the Ministry of Education claims it is doing all this in order to increase the quality of research) is
counteracted by rigid and aggressive propaganda, supported by one of the bigger daily papers in
Sweden, Dagens Nyheter (see Wiklund, 2006), in effect turning school politics into pure populism
and disgracefully and illegitimately criticising solid mainstream educational research for failing to
live up to some kind of ‘quality’ standard. One should remember, though, that in this critique it is
not educational research per se that is the target; rather, it is a particular ‘social democratic’ welfare
state that is under attack.
And here I come to the heart of the matter. Educational research forms itself too easily in
relation to the politics of the day rather than in relation to traditions of thought that are older than
the span of the ruling parties. Educational research too easily becomes reduced to the application of
ideas coming from elsewhere, be it politics or other disciplines. This makes education weak in
relation to ideological attacks such as the ones described above, and confuses the field to its core.
Educational researchers carrying out solid educational research, both mainstream and ‘critical’, did
not foresee what was coming, and when this frontal attack on everything they held sacred came,
there was simply no response possible. Or, to be more precise, the possible response just seemed to
confirm what the new right was saying – namely, that educational research only was backing up an
outdated welfare state in its own ‘leftist’ interest. The few responses from the research field just
dug themselves deeper into the dirt.
What complicates the issue even more is that the field of educational research in Sweden is
also under attack from within. Other disciplines enter into education through subject didactics, yet
often without doing their homework, without bothering to trace theories of education through
their intellectual history and without relating themselves to what actually has been done and
currently is being done in the field of education, nationally and internationally. This expansion of
‘educational’ research in the universities, mainly through teacher education, in effect diffuses the
field even more. Education has been severely marginalised as an intellectual tradition in its own
right, and new inventions are constantly made in order to meet the demands of a confused field
and determined policymakers alike. The inventions are called, for example, subject didactics,
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educational work, educational sociology, special education, educational psychology, and are
established as their own disciplines, but often with the same content, only named differently at
different universities, and all of them supposedly distinctively different from education (in Swedish,
Pedagogik), confusing students and staff on all levels. In one respect, though, the diffused field is
kept together today by the ambitions of the state not only to support a particular kind of research,
but actually to define what that research is to explain, how it will explain it, and what theory it will
use to establish these explanations as the truth (for further details, see Säfström, 2010). But is that
what we want education to mean? I strongly believe it is not. It is time to stand up for education!
Note
[1] The editor would be pleased to publish responses to this text (no more than 500 words).
References
Biesta, G.J.J. (2010) Good Education in an Age of Measurement: ethics, politics, democracy. Boulder, CO: Paradigm.
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Englund, T. (2010) Questioning the Parental Right to Educational Authority: arguments for a pluralistic
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Herrman, E. (1995) The Romance of American Psychology: political culture in the age of experts. Berkeley:
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Popkewitz, T. (2008) Cosmopolitanism and the Age of School Reform: science education, and making society
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Rosengren, K.-E. & Öhngren, B. (1997) An Evaluation of Swedish Research in Education. Stockholm: HSFR.
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Säfström, C.-A. (2011) Rethinking Emancipation, Rethinking Education, Studies in Philosophy and Education,
30(2), 199-211. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11217-011-9227-x
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Wiklund, M. (2006) Kunskapens fanbärare. Den gode läraren som diskursiv konstruktion på en mediearena.
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GERT BIESTA is Professor of Education and Director of Research at the School of Education,
University of Stirling, where he also co-directs the Laboratory for Educational Theory
(http://www.theorylab.co.uk). He is Visiting Professor at the School of Education, Culture and
Communication, Mälardalen University, Sweden, editor-in-chief of Studies in Philosophy and
Education and co-editor of Other Education: The Journal of Educational Alternatives. He publishes on
the theory and philosophy of education and is particularly interested in the connections between
education and democracy. Recent books include Good Education in an Age of Measurement: ethics,
politics, democracy (Paradigm Publishers, 2010); Jacques Rancière: education, truth, emancipation, with
Charles Bingham (Continuum, 2010); Complexity Theory and the Politics of Education (co-edited with
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Deborah Osberg; Sense Publishers, 2010) and Learning Democracy in School and Society (Sense
Publishers, 2011). Correspondence: Gert Biesta, School of Education, University of Stirling, Stirling
FK9 4LA, United Kingdom ([email protected]).
CARL ANDERS SÄFSTRÖM is Professor of Education and Chair of the Graduate School of
Philosophical Studies of Educational Relations at the School of Education Culture and
Communication, Mälardalen University, Sweden, and Visiting Professor at the University of
Stirling, United Kingdom. He conducts theoretical and empirical research in the fields of
educational philosophy, curriculum theory and Didaktik. Recent publications include the book Levd
Demokrati? Skola och mobbning i ungdomars liv (co-authored with Hedvig Ekerwald [Lived
democracy? School and bullying in the lives of youth] Liber, in press); the articles ‘The Immigrant
Has No Proper Name: the disease of consensual democracy within the myth of schooling’
(Educational Philosophy and Theory, 2010, 42(5/6), 606-617); and ‘What I Talk about When I Talk
about Teaching and Learning’ (Studies in Philosophy and Education, 2011, 30(5), 485-489).
Correspondence: [email protected]
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