Page 90 - Looking_after_school

Looking after school: a critical analysis of personalisation in education

do something, to allow them to become and to remain students, and
thus to avoid a turn towards the fatalistic, non-pedagogical experience
of ‘being incapable of’ something. Part of this challenge is to remind
young people that they are not at home, that school life is not the same
as family life, and that living a life as student is living a life of freedom
and equality.

Society as seen from within the school

In so far as society organises scholastic learning, and thus does not
determine the destination of the coming generation, the school calls
for a specific kind of societal responsibility. The first question to ask
is not what the school should do for society, but what society can do
for the school (Bachelard, 1934/1967). It is up to society to determine
what ‘contents’ or ‘materials’ are eligible for young people to shape
their lives. Taking the school seriously as a school forces the societal
debate about school content to go to ‘the basics’, and thus transcend
private interests. A very uncomplicated way of speaking of the cur-
riculum in this sense are the terms ‘literacy’ and ‘grammar’ (also see
Stiegler, 2010).
Society expects different types of literacy from young people: linguis-
tic literacy (national and foreign languages), but also digital, techno-
logical, practical, and scientific literacy. Being literate means that you
have enough distance to this linguistic, technologic, or digital world
in order to be able to relate it, that is, to use it independently, with care
and creativity. Literate people are people who are not determined by
what influences them, but who instead have learned how to relate
themselves to those influences by making distinctions, naming them,
and acting upon them. Digital literacy means, for instance, that you
are not determined by what Google automatically does, that you know
what the search algorithm does for you, that the basic practices of
Google can be talked about, that you can distance yourself from it
and use it ‘critically’ and ‘with care’. An indifferent, careless relation
now becomes a relation which acknowledges and attempts to name
differences that matter and require concern. Literacy here means that
certain ‘letters’ have been inscribed and become part of one’s way of
talking, looking, moving, and writing. One could speak here about

90