Page 97 - Looking_after_school

3. Touchstones: pedagogical articulations

Crucial here is what we already referred to as the disclosure of worlds
through grammatisation. Such a grammatisation is not only about
making a temporal flow (e.g., of speech) discrete (through writing in
letters and words), but often also involves turning something into a
two-dimensional flat presentation (think about a diagram on the black
board) in order to make it relatable, to allow for a freedom to try and
to avoid becoming just part of its functioning. Making the grammars
available (for instance, in terms of the alphabet or numbers, but also
code and algorithms in case of the world of technology) does not define
the work of freedom. These grammars, and the expression ‘try this’,
constitute a milieu for the undefined work of freedom.

This aspect of school learning could be described, with Michel Serres
(1997), as a “passage through the third place”. He uses the image of the
swimmer crossing a river – from one shore to another – passing a third
place. School learning is what brings one to the middle, the moment
of exposure or the present moment – in the middle of the river – where
all directions are possible. Exactly this milieu, this middle or third
place is the time and space where freedom is undefined (‘no direction’)
but possible to be defined (‘to find all directions’). The grammars at
school create this milieu for students. The grammars themselves have
no direction - they provide the (middle) space and time from which
all directions can be found. Without a doubt, there have been many
attempts to impose a particular form of the literate citizen and to turn
the ‘grammar school’ (in the sense of a school that offers grammars
of worlds and not to be confused with the actual English grammar
schools) into a nationally defined work of freedom (see for instance
Popkewitz, 2007). In a similar way, there are attempts to take the gram-
mars out of the school and to make, for instance, learning at the work
place the norm for efficient and effective education. The consequence,
however, is that students no longer have a milieu in which they can
learn how to relate to what they are supposed to do, and that they are,
hence, no longer given the chance to become literate; without gram-
matisation, undefined schoolwork is turned into defined factory work,
and students are denied the opportunity to become a new generation.

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