A REFLECTION on the CRISIS in EDUCATION and MAN's TRUNCATED EXISTENCE by MARIA LYONS March 2011

A REFLECTION ON THE CRISIS IN EDUCATION AND MAN’S TRUNCATED EXISTENCE By MARIA LYONS March 2011 ABSTRACT Today, in any part of Britain, it is hardly possible to open a newspaper without reading the word ‘crisis’ in connection to some aspect of public education. Within educational literature, many versions of this crisis have been recognised, debated and diagnosed. In an academic climate generally discouraging to ‘big picture’ research, however, comparatively few attempts have been made to interpret the contemporary crisis in education in terms of more profound social, historical and spiritual phenomena. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this thesis has sought to provide such an interpretation, drawing in particular on the anthroposophical worldview developed by Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner (1861- 1925). In tracing the major political, economic and ideological factors that have shaped education in Britain since the end of the Second World War up to the present, the thesis has identified a set of recurring attitudes and practices which can be traced to their origins in the circumstances of the European Enlightenment. The most significant of these is the belief that the united power of politics and education can guarantee a healthy society. This enduring conviction fuels today’s politically-instigated ‘learning revolution’. The thesis has argued that the politicisation of learning is fundamentally at odds with human freedom, for it entails an externalisation of responsibility for self-knowledge and self-development. It is this tension which manifests as an ever-intensifying sense of crisis. The thesis has proposed that to address the crisis it will be necessary to move beyond both the idea of freedom as a state project and the prevailing conception of the human self as a politically realisable entity. Emphasising the personal rather than the political nature of the crisis, the thesis has striven to demonstrate that it is ultimately up to each individual, in his or her everyday thoughts and actions, to take responsibility for it. CONTENTS CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION Research Aim 7 Crisis-Talk 10 Conceptualising Crisis 20 Diagnosis and Therapy 28 Overview 36 CHAPTER 2: EXPANSION AND INTERVENTION The Post-War Consensus 40 The Move to Comprehensives 46 Critique from the Right 51 The Education Reform Act (ERA) 57 CHAPTER 3: CRITICISMS AND IMPLICATIONS OF THE ERA The Accountability Culture 64 The National Curriculum 71 Linear Models of Learning 77 CHAPTER 4: RECULTURING SOCIETY New Labour and the New Age 86 The Performative Society 94 Higher Education and the ‘Learning Society’ 100 CHAPTER 5: EDUCATION AND THE MODERN CRISIS SYSTEM Crisis as a Technical Problem 110 Ideology and the State Solution 116 The ‘Inevitability’ of Certain Realities 120 The Absence of Cultural and Historical Reflexivity 123 The Divorce between Theory and Practice 128 The Corruption of Language 130 The Loss of Reality and the Loss of Man 131 The Faith in Politics and Permanent Revolution 136 The Totalisation of Man and Society 142 Freedom and the Self as a Political Project 146 The Cycle of Crisis 148 CHAPTER 6: REGAINING THE WHOLE Knowing Self and the World 151 The Evolution of Consciousness 162 Schooling the Soul 171 Pedagogy and the Possibility of Freedom 177 CHAPTER 7: RESISTING THE TOTAL ANSWER Diagnosis and Social Questions 186 The Threefold Nature of Social Life 197 Relating Education, State and Economy 203 CHAPTER 8: CONCLUSION 212 BIBLIOGRAPHY 223 P a g e | 7 Chapter 1: Introduction Real learning gets to the heart of what it means to be human. Through learning we re-create ourselves. Through learning we become able to do something we never were able to do. Through learning we re-perceive the world and our relationship to it. Through learning we extend our capacity to create, to be part of the general process of life. (Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline, 1992)1 RESEARCH AIM Some years ago a friend brought to my attention a little book from the Study Guide series sold in Blackwell bookshops on university campuses around the country. The book is called Taking Notes from Lectures and offers the young person embarking on his or her university career advice on how to get the most from attending lectures. Prefaced with the statement “In all of these study guides, we emphasise that you have to do your own learning – it can’t be done for you”,2 it goes on to explain in detail how to become an “active listener” in lectures, and what clues one might receive to help understand what the lecturer is doing. The following hint is typical: Sometimes the ‘signposts’ are non-verbal. For instance, when the lecturers write on the board or use an overhead projector, it is often because you are intended to copy down the information, though it may also be because a visual aid reinforces the explanation. If they say something more slowly, or pause, it is often for emphasis (although it may also be a sign of hard thinking!). You will be able to spot different non-verbal signposts in different lecturers.3 1 Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization (London: Canterbury Business, 1992), p.14. 2 Sandra Ashman and Phyllis Crème, Taking Notes from Lectures (London: University of North London Press, 1996), p.13. 3 Ibid., p.14. P a g e | 8 The little book continues, under the heading “The Mechanics of Note-Taking”, to provide visual examples of how the student might like to lay notes out for clarity and precision, e.g. 1(a), 1(b), 1(c) etc.. In a simple and yet important way the desire to look more deeply into the question of education was prompted by meeting on a daily basis, both at university and in life generally, the seemingly self-refuting message epitomised in this guidance. What reasons, I asked myself, did the authors have for publishing this book? Is there a genuine need amongst students for such a book and, if so, does that imply something about the individuals being taught or does it say more about the kind of education being provided and the kind of learning encouraged in our schools and universities today? To extend the question somewhat, what are the connections between our attitudes as a society toward learning and the ways in which we see ourselves, interact, communicate, cooperate, what we prioritise; in short, how we live? These are of course big questions and the more specific – yet no less far-reaching – research question that emerged from this interest has been shaped by the fact that a crisis in education is today so loudly and widely proclaimed, both publicly and in academic circles. Understanding the nature and causes of this crisis thus became the guiding focus of the project. As it turned out, after a long journey through the conceptual history and usage of the term crisis, as well as the theories, events and practices that have produced our contemporary education system, I ended up back where I started; that is, with the same contradiction that is so succinctly expressed within the pages of the study aid quoted above. The crisis reflects the fact that it is impossible to do your own learning and have your learning done for you. In other words, we cannot live both, for they ultimately represent mutually exclusive ways of being in the world. The crisis is, in one sense, the continuous re-experience of the tension that exists between these two ways of being. At the same time it represents a decision that is faced every day, at each moment, by every person: the decision about how one is going to live one’s life. This thesis argues that the perceived crisis in education, in its various manifestations, is symptomatic of an ongoing attempt to conceal this tension, and in so doing, ultimately avoid the decision. Managing this involves the creation of what can be described as an increasingly sophisticated system of make-believe, for want of a better phrase. Living both answers is impossible, yet it is possible to live one while pretending to live the other, P a g e | 9 even to the point where the pretence becomes more real than life itself. This pretence can be glimpsed wherever a statement about the world, or what is being done in it, is contradicted by the world, or what is done, as illustrated by the example above. The statement “you must do your own learning”, and any number of similar declarations, does not change the fact that our learning is continuously being done for us, something that is shown not just by the existence of the book itself but by the character of the whole education system, and indeed, our political system. At an individual level if I say I am doing one thing and in fact do another, the reality of my actions is likewise not altered by what I say. However the statement – the saying – is significant, for it reveals either that I believe my actions to be otherwise, or that I aim to give the impression that they are otherwise, for whatever reason. In the former case, the pretence has become my reality. In the latter, appearing to be true to a certain principle, convention, or ideal perhaps, is more important than actually doing so. Whichever way we look at it, therefore, at the heart of this pretence is some form of dishonesty, whether it be a self-deception, a deception of others, or both. Maintaining this pretence thus relies on greater and greater efforts to conceal the truth. These efforts consist not just in the development of personal mechanisms of denial – apparent in a culture where even self-reflection is externalised – but relationships, institutions and the whole social structure are recruited to the cause.

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