Page 122 - Looking_after_school

Looking after school: a critical analysis of personalisation in education

employability. The learner, in other words, cannot take their eventual
recognition into their own hands. Also, in a culture of degrees, the
student does not have control over the ultimate value of the degree
(the so called ‘civil effect’ of a diploma). The difference is that in the
architecture of the learning environment, the institutional protec-
tion (the value of the degree is the responsibility of the institution) is
cancelled, and the student is directly confronted with the fluctuating
(exchange) value of their unique, personal competencies. The recogni-
tion of factually acquired learning outcomes personalises someone,
whilst a societally standardised degree individualises someone. A
unique person is then both literally and figuratively left by themself
without recognition.

De-schooling the school

We assume that now more than ever we need touchstones which
examine whether reforms that take place in the name of a more central
position of the student are worth pursuing. In order to formulate these
touchstones, we used a pedagogical approach. This approach starts
from the assumption that today everybody can learn anytime and
anywhere, and that, while this is also important, learning in school or
scholastic learning has a specific societal relevance. Scholastic learn-
ing is fundamentally different from learning, as it takes place today in
the forms of socialisation, initiation, learning at work, investment… To
clarify this, the term ‘basic formation’ remains useful. Three charac-
teristics are important: the school is the place and the time in which
students can form themselves and their future (freedom); the school
presupposes that everybody, wherever they are from and independent
of their heritage or their natural features, should in principle be given
the chance to give shape to their own life (equality); the school has the
mission or duty to prepare young people for societal life (formation).
This is about basic formation in the sense of giving students the time
and space to work on a ‘basic shape’, but without the guarantee that
they will deliver societal top performances later on. The school does
not have control over this last element. What young people learn in
school is to relate to the worlds which are influencing or acting upon
them and to give shape to this relationship, themselves.

122