Page 100 - Looking_after_school

Looking after school: a critical analysis of personalisation in education

cal attempt to interrupt all kinds of (social and other) identifications
and the pre-defined destinies associated with it.

Does the school make basic formation possible for everyone?

Autonomy in respect to the family is relative because the school of
course cannot abstract from differences and consequently must peda-
gogically compensate the differences between students. This means
that it is the responsibility of the school to put them in the same ‘initial
situation’: the school must assess in how far it (in)explicitly imposes
certain prerequisites through its organisation, through its methods,
and through what it expects from parents; it has to check whether
this excludes students from the onset and how it can compensate for
this. By failing to do so, the school would actually legitimise social and
other inequalities, make them relevant, and thus also ignore the free-
dom and equality of the coming generation. Consequently, the school
cannot outsource its tasks to the family, nor can it, pedagogically
speaking, expect everything from families and parents. This would
allow the differences among families to weigh on the basic formation
of young people. It would not allow them to become students.

Is the school in service of both the student and of society?

From a pedagogical perspective, the school is never only in service
of society; the school does not exist to fulfil societal functions (such as
cultural reproduction, social order, or economic growth…). In this case,
students would become mere instruments or means in the function of
something else, or in someone else’s hands. Other forms of learning
(such as specific training) would be more efficient and effective than
the school, but the school cannot just be there for the students (as a
group or as individuals) either. In this kind of one-sided perspective
on the student, society is stripped from the chance to renew itself and
give itself a future. The formation of the young generation would be
empty, it would lack materials or worldly content to actually shape or
form one’s life. The school is thus in service of every child just as it is
in service of society. Every child is given the possibility to become a
student and find their own destination, and society gives the future
generation the possibility to renew that society. This double service

100