Page 95 - Looking_after_school

3. Touchstones: pedagogical articulations

The value, however, resides on the side of the working student. The
expression of “undefined work of freedom” articulates very well what
is at stake in schoolwork (Foucault, 2007). School practice or exercise
always has this indetermination (it is defined neither by an input nor
5
by an output), it is work which is undefined. At this point the engage-
ment with grammar in schoolwork is crucial; a grammar is not defin-
ing (like a norm, for example), but opening up possibilities. This is not
to say that schoolwork does not have an aim. Schoolwork on writing,
reading, calculation, or drawing is about creating conditions for some-
one to be(come) able to write, to read, to calculate, or to draw; these
school specific aims of literacy, however, are different from attempts
to produce writers, mathematicians, artists, etc. Schoolwork is about
becoming able, and giving oneself a shape, not about predetermining
the actualisation of these abilities in view of a defined form or image
of the educated subject.

Try again

What is equally important to turn someone into a school student is
the expression ‘try again’. The expression articulates a sense of opti-
mism, a belief in the student’s abilities notwithstanding someone’s
past. It also expresses patience. ‘Try again’ is about giving someone a
second chance, or even a third or fourth chance. It means reinforcing
the belief that everyone can learn everything, and intervening to pro-
tect the student from the influence of natural or social forces which
seek to determine the student’s abilities. The verbal intervention ‘try
again’ interrupts the linear timeline where the student’s past deter-
mines the student’s future; when emptying this space from all sorts
of profiles and all traces of success and failure, it creates a spacetime
were someone can become a student again, that is, to arrive at the point
to experience becoming able to do something. What the instruction
‘try again’ does is inscribe equality as a condition of school learning.

This equality follows from the typical freedom of school learning. If
the (social) position of young people is not defining (the future) from
the onset, this means that everybody, regardless of where they come

5 For an elaboration see: Simons & Masschelein, 2019.
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