Page 134 - Looking_after_school

Looking after school: a critical analysis of personalisation in education

tices for dealing with written words in such a way that they do still
mean something, that the words are inscribed, and the school has an
important role to play in this.
Literacy - also through writing - always has in some way to do with
the fact that letters are inscribed in the body, and that we become
able to relate to language precisely because those letters have been
inscribed. Perhaps we should ask ourselves what school-based meth-
ods (including types of exercise and practice) we can develop so that
what reaches us today in digital form and as digital images and what
is presented as grammar of the digital could be inscribed and could
mean something in terms of becoming something to relate to. Digital
literacy, then, implies a kind of formation. Here we are pointing once
more at the importance of the basic grammars of the internet, of the
digital world, of visual culture (see also Dussel, 2018).
But the importance of basic grammars and literacy is also always
accompanied by the importance of authority, that is of a specific ped-
agogical authority. Not institutional or police authority, but author-
ity in the sense that something ‘tells’ us something, or ‘has to tell’ us
something in the strong sense of the word and thus acquires lasting
meaning. Something can only inscribe itself, and play a role in for-
mation, if it has something to say, if it generates a (shared) interest.
As with writing, this inscription has not automatically been the case
with digital (image) culture. It requires methods and specific school-
work, and perhaps also teachers who can make something (from the
world) speak, to give it authority so that it can be inscribed. Rather
than focusing on increasing the (limited) motivation of young people,
schools and teachers can focus on new methods that can make the
world speak (again), that can arouse interest and that can make what
is said and shown also instil a lasting impression (see also Vlieghe &
Zamojski 2019).

This also means that the training, and perhaps especially the school-
ing, of teachers is important. In addition to a training in pedagogy,
didactics, and subject matter, perhaps something like school studies is
also important for teachers. This at least would give them the oppor-
tunity to relate to the world of school, to be concerned about it, to take
care of it, and to thus play a role in the renewal of that world.

134