Page 117 - Looking_after_school
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3. Touchstones: pedagogical articulations
who is calculating and always profiling themself will become part of a
learning environment that always adapts itself to their person. A pos-
sible ambivalence is situated at least in two areas: first, the calculating
student will always also have to adjust their calculations because the
variables of the learning environment may need to be adapted ‘along
the way’. In all this, the student will be governed here by algorithms
which are mostly out of sight (Rouvroy, 2011). Secondly, in an adapting
learning environment, profiling students will always encounter them-
selves. This is very much like the Google user who encounters them-
self in the always-personalised search results (Feuz et al., 2011; Casati,
2013). In other words: the personalised student is always reminded of
their past, and in the extreme can be made accountable for their past
again and again. Everything literally counts and keeps on adding to the
account. This condition is completely the opposite of a school condi-
tion where freedom and equality are precisely assumed and where
pedagogy is about actively avoiding that the past becomes something
that determines the future.
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