Page 130 - Looking_after_school

Looking after school: a critical analysis of personalisation in education

we find indeed worthwhile to defend, but which is made impossible by
both the normalising educational institution (of the modern era) and
by the personalising learning environment. This scholastic approach of
newcomers is not only overshadowed by external, economic, or socio-
logical approaches; these external approaches also rob the school of
its powers to change society and open up the future.

Keeping children out of factories

We are well aware that the school can disappear, just as democracy can
disappear. A society may no longer chose scholastic forms of learning
in light of freedom, equality, and formation. We can imagine a society
that chooses resolutely for extreme forms of personalisation, that de-
schools the school from within. At the same time, we are also aware
that a society which does make choices for the school is confronted
with a major challenge; after all, the school will always need to be
reinvented. The 19th century school is certainly not the model for the
school of the future. The 19th century school, itself, was modelled as
an industrial factory. Similarly, we should perhaps be careful to use
the contemporary FabLabs and other open platforms which want to
exploit creativity as models for the school of the future. Those labs
and platforms of the creative economy may very well be inclusive and
open, as they are immediately in service of the development of talent,
production, and innovation; yet these creative workspaces are also
factories. The school as a FabLab is a place where the youth discovers
and develops their talents whilst fabricating and innovating. This is
hardly about pedagogical freedom, equality, and formation, just as
9
little as it is about study and practice. It seems important to us to
keep children out of the factories, at least for a while yet. So, a differ-
ent, more pedagogical imagination is needed when we talk about the
school of the future.
The foregoing is often misread as a plea to keep everything that has to
do with ‘work’ out of school. At a time when the meaning of work is
becoming less and less clear, it is more necessary than ever to question
the relationship between work and school, or rather, how work can

9 For an elaboration see: Masschelein, Simons & Larrosa (2019).
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