Page 123 - Looking_after_school

4. Lessons learned

The school consequently imposes the responsibility on society to
examine itself, question itself about these influences and forces, and
ask which domains are of importance so that young people can pre-
pare themselves. But society cannot use the school to form young peo-
ple into the image that (groups of) society bears in mind. The school
is not here to form students to match the image of the old generation,
to match the actual or ideal image of the ‘elder’. In so far as this is in
effect taking place, the school is being de-schooled. Scholastic learning
then becomes a form of socialisation, initiation, imitation, develop-
ment, or identification.
An important point is that the school, as we understand it here, is
anti-naturalistic: the pedagogical belief is that all students are capable
of a basic formation, and that their abilities or limitations in terms of
learning are not given by nature. That is also why it is the responsibility
of every school and of every teacher to differentiate when needed, so
that everybody can be brought (back) to this point. This can be done
through extra effort or by adopting different approaches. This does not
mean that the school always succeeds in doing this (far from it), but
giving students different or other opportunities from the onset, based
on their so-called natural differences simply because we would not
succeed in this basic formation for everyone, in fact means that we
are giving up on this pedagogical belief. This pedagogical presupposi-
tion is not naive, romantic, or unworldly, but expresses faith in what
learning and pedagogical actions are capable of, until proven con-
trary. In this light, it is relevant to make a comparison with democracy.
What democracy is to power and politics, school is to learning and
education. Democracy may not always be the most efficient or effec-
tive organisation of power and politics, but using this as an argument
for abolishing or limiting democracy mostly means abandoning the
assumption of equality and freedom. Similarly, we can say that other
forms and methods of learning have their value and are meaningful,
and that they are often more efficient and effective, but they mostly do
not serve freedom and equality. These other forms of learning often
do not start from the pedagogical premise that all human beings come
into this world without societal or natural destinations, that the world
belongs to no one, and that they have to get themselves into shape and
a find a destination, themselves.

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