Page 51 - Looking_after_school

1. Today's discourse: why should the student be at the center of education?

The discourse of the learning citizen combines these four perspectives.
It considers the individual learning process as a production process
that has to be managed by the individual learner, in view of concrete
learning outcomes which (in the form of skills or competencies) form
the basis for their employability. The downside is that the citizen who
cannot learn or who does not want to learn subsequently excludes
themselves. If we return to the European Commission, it is precisely
this perspective that is most pervasive:

“Education and training can only contribute to growth and job-creation
if learning is focused on the knowledge, skills and competences to be
acquired by students (learning outcomes) through the learning process,
rather than on completing a specific stage or on time spent in school.”
(European Commission, 2012, p. 7)

In schooling, which is only one particular time and place of learn-
ing, the focus is not really on the acquisition of degrees, but on the
actual learning outcomes that one has (or has not) attained. It is not
the degrees, but rather the specific learning outcomes which have an
immediate economic, social, and personal relevance for the learner.
The figure of the learning citizen also gives learning a strategic func-
tion from a political standpoint. This gives rise to an all-embracing
‘learning policy’ which understands the acquisition of competencies
as a solution to problems in numerous domains, such as poverty reduc-
tion, integration, and cultural participation. Or the other way around:
numerous challenges are now framed as individual learning problems
(Simons & Masschelein, 2008).

The perspective of the learning citizen also assumes that learning pro-
cesses are always results-orientated. Consequently, added value and
efficiency are the main quality indicators when the learning process
is understood as a production process. In other words: the learning
citizen is a citizen who needs to think in terms of profit (where is this
course or this learning path leading to?) and has to keep track of time
and cost-efficiency (how can I reach profitable learning outcomes as
fast and cheap as possible?).
As we have seen, this educational perspective (which we discussed
rather limitedly) is quite diverse and has a number of different argu-

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