Page 121 - Looking_after_school

4. Lessons learned

Additionally, today’s student-centrism is often proposed as a libera-
tion of the student. At last, it is said, students are freed from a single
normalising denominator and can show themselves as they really are:
unique persons! We wanted to show that this understanding of the
matter overlooks something critical. It is important to indicate that
the personalisation of education is only possible when the student
is personalised and is thus made into a unique person (there aren’t
unique persons by nature). Personalisation, just as normalisation in
its time, is a form of power: it is a system of profiling, monitoring, and
feedback which renders unique characteristics visible and turns some-
one into a personalised learner, both for themselves and for others.
Learners do not exist without these systems and are thus dependent
on, steered, and controlled by them. Even more, the learner is no-one
or nothing unless their unique characteristics are profiled and made
public. This power configuration of public visibility (being recogni-
sable) and appreciation (to be recognised) makes somebody exist as
a unique person.
The consequence is that the personalised student is also the spectator
or the viewer of their own profile. They are sensitive to the image that
others have of them, someone who has to profile themself in order to
be someone, and who has a continuous need for feedback. The per-
sonalised student is also someone for whom every rule and norm is
a possible source of injustice. Rules and norms always imply a gener-
alisation, and thus by their very definition cannot do justice to unique
profiles. In the name of personal injustice, or by a lack of recognition
of personal circumstances, rules and norms are now questioned them-
selves. In short: the personalised student is a self-proclaimed Other,
and someone with an insatiable desire for recognition. And just as the
‘desire to be normal’ is not natural or innate, the ‘desire for recogni-
tion’ only appears in a specific organisation of learning and education.
It is this organisational architecture that gives rise to the desire for
recognition.
A critical element of the architecture of the learning environment is
that the personalised student has control over their own learning pro-
cess and learning outcomes, but not over the societal appreciation or
validation of those learning outcomes, and thus also not over their

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