Page 113 - Looking_after_school

3. Touchstones: pedagogical articulations

the former. This is problematic in so far as the school starts to func-
tion as an exposition of what appears now as natural, fixed differences
among students, and no longer as pedagogical and (hopefully) only
temporary differences.

Personalisation of the initial situation

Yet another variant of personalisation is attuning the learning process
and the learning goals to the person of the student. This comprehen-
sive form of personalisation actually implies that a school is custom
made, which implies, in turn, a customised basic formation. Certain
versions of talent- and development-oriented schooling seem to go in
this direction. In so far as talent is an indication of a certain potential
which is present, a natural aptitude, or actual possibilities, these forms
of schooling presuppose that who one can become is already set, and
that students have thus a kind of natural predestination. The starting
points of pedagogical freedom and equality are left aside. Going to
school is then learning or developing into who one is ‘by nature’. The
natural orientation towards the destination which is present in every
student receives priority over societal goals and contents in terms of
literacies and grammars. Stated otherwise: the development of talent,
in this sense, implies ‘everybody in their right place, the place that they
are naturally entitled to, that is their birth right’. Natural selection, as
it were, carries out its work in school. Similarly, development-oriented
education will relativise a uniform curriculum from the position of
the person of the student, for instance, from their personal needs
and experiences and from aspects of personal wellbeing. Aspects
that relate to the level or speed of development and to well-being are
called upon here to offer tailored education. Learning in school is then
supposed to follow the natural development of the child as closely
as possible, to imitate or continue it. What students ‘are able to’ is
immediately connected or even made subservient to what the stu-
dent wants or chooses, and to the subsequent effects on the emotional
load. This could create a tension with the societal meaning of school;
when it pins students down on their own personal development and
well-being in such a way that they have limited exposure to societal
expectations and new worlds.

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