Page 96 - Looking_after_school

Looking after school: a critical analysis of personalisation in education

from or who they are, must have the chance to practice and to find
themselves a proper form. The equality created through the expres-
sion ‘try again’ is different from the objectives of both the meritocratic
strategies of equality of opportunities and the egalitarian approaches
of equality of outcomes. These are the approaches that result in, for
instance, initiatives to compensate for social inequalities which pre-
vent someone from fully realising their talents, or support strategies
which help disadvantaged students to pass the same finish line. In
one way or another, what these approaches do is first make students
unequal by re-defining who and what they are in social or natural
terms, and second by predefining learning trajectories based on the
observed natural or social necessities. The message in ‘try again’ is
not to define or re-define, but to ‘undefine’. The traces of someone’s
past are not ignored or forgotten, but the expression ‘try again’ makes
clear that they no longer cast a shadow on someone’s present abilities.

Try this

‘Try’, ‘try again’, ‘try this’; the latter expression is likewise crucial to see
what school learning is about. The expression ‘try this’, in one way or
another, points at something outside, something not-yet part of some-
one’s lifeworld. ‘Try this’ contradicts the idea that school learning is
only about the person of the student. It ensures that giving shape to
oneself – through schoolwork - passes always through the outside. The
instruction orients the student’s effort towards specific schoolwork
and specific subject matter. The expression assumes, somehow, that
there is not always a natural inclination towards doing something new,
thus necessitating an intervention and serious effort. Specifying what
should be tried means defining the effort, the activities, and the abili-
ties involved, without actually defining schoolwork. It remains an invi-
tation to give something a try. School learning enables students to read,
write, and calculate, but this form of learning does not try to determine
the exact usage of this reading, writing, and calculating by trying to
shape students according to a predefined form of life (although there
have been many attempts to do so). Through school learning, young
people are enabled to become attentive to, for instance, their mother
tongue, and this provides them a safe space and present moment that
makes developing one’s relation with the world of language possible.

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