Humanistic Paradigms of Education in the Postmodern Vision

ARTICLES DOI 10.2478/v10159-010-0012-7 JoP 1 (2): 99 – 119 Humanistic Paradigms of Education in the Postmodern Vision Martin Šarkan, Rastislav Nemec Abstract: This study portrays the present social trends of the educational system against the background of the transformation of the social institutions that emerge as a result of the general changes to the social paradigm. These transformations have a direct impact on questions over classical humanistic ideals and educational goals re- lating to the social perceptions of the status of educated people. The aim of this study is to discuss the conditio postmoderna in the education system following the Declara- tion of Bologna, especially emphasising the thinking of K. Liessmann and G. Lipovet- sky. This study also indicates the paradoxical effects of the reform process and com- pares them with classical ideals of the educated. Key words: Education, humanistic ideals, conditio postmoderna, deconstruction of educated persons’ status. Notions of education are always a problem for every new successive generation and society in general. After all, education represents the criteria of the perspective and values of society that are thereafter manifested in the political, social and cultural sphere of the self-identification of the individual. Philosophers have been considering this question since the time of Kant and Hegel, when education and scholarship shifted more towards the sphere of formation (derived from word form), self-realisation and self-determination. In reaction to this formal conception, philosophers of the period, such as Herder and W. Humboldt1, attempted to return education to the original 1 Humboldt, reacting to the Hegelian and Kantian conception of the subject as self- educating and self-forming, introduces the idea of higher erudition [see Humboldt 1907: 30]: „Wenn wir aber in unserer Sprache Bildung sagen, so meinen wir damit etwas zugleich Höheres und mehr Innerliches, nämlich die Sinnesart, die sich aus der Erkenntnis und dem Gefühle des gesamten geistigen und sittlichen Strebens harmo- nisch auf die Empfindung und den Charakter ergießte’" [see Stolzenberg, Ulrichs 2009: 10]. JOURNAL OF PEDAGOGY 2/2010 99 ARTICLES “content rich” ideas of the Enlightenment and to highlight the imperfection of purely formalised conception2. We have to realise that education requires society. As Herbert Marcuse re- marked [Kellner 2009], we must note that it is precisely the internal political factor in education which arises from the transcendental nature of reason – not only metaphysical, but also empirical transcendence in the realistic pos- sibility that life can be protected, i.e. social and political transcendence. In his lecture on higher education he uttered the following memorable state- ment: “We cannot change education and scholarship, if we do not change the society which gives them their goals” [p. 33]. On the other hand we have to say against Marcuse that this relation is not one-way. Society is equally dependent on the level of scholarship as it is to the degree which scholarship dictates it is so [see Fichte 1971: 25]. Society past and present both share something in common. As Marcuse maintains, technological crowd control and the traditional method of distinguishing be- tween words and acts are becoming inadequate to the extent where words are considered to be effective propaganda, which aggressively and destructively stimulate man, while on the other hand they desensitize him to brutality and deception. Thus only education may allow the barriers protecting the individual and society from oppression and discrimination to be extended. Many authors [see Volkers 2007: 15] have long been attempting to point out that, where education is concerned, what is important is not the formali- ties that govern the methodology, nor the criteria for assessing the formal aspects, that tell us nothing about the quality nor the accredited studies, but only the immeasurable aspect of cultivating people’s spirits. Even today there are many different ideas on the theme of ‘European’ education, which aim to reveal the connections that create the context of the age with the pur- pose of highlighting the socio-cultural conditionalities of the deep metamor- phosis of the social structures [see Egger, Hackl 2010: 123]. This metamor- phosis completes the historical process initiated during the Renaissance and Enlightenment epochs that influenced the majority of public institutions in the second half of the 20th century. The education system and education were affected to such an extent and so intensely that it is increasingly clear now that the education sphere is at the very least a litmus test of these changes, if not the catalyst – should we incline to such an opinion. 2 H.-G. Gadamer is an example of this battle, which can be understood as a battle of the arts and sciences for their status. He writes that it is precisely through the term (Education-Bildung) that we can best see the radical religious change that has occur- red within the religious sciences since the time of Goethe and Herder – this term came into use and was formalised under the influence of Kant and other philosophers [see Gadamer 1990: 15-24]. 100 JOURNAL OF PEDAGOGY 2/2010 Humanistic Paradigms of Education in the Postmodern Vision Education as deconstruction or the deconstruction of education? The last bearer of the culture of a content-focused education, seen as a social ideal, was the townsfolk of the 19th century, who quietly left the historical scene under constant debilitative attack of the intellectual avant-gardes of literary, dramatic or creative –isms. “The educated townsfolk, who for a cer- tain period of time had entrenched themselves not only as a state but who had also more or less set the whole cultural tone of bourgeois society that be- came the defining criteria of education as such, had already disappeared” [Liessmann 2008: 47]. Throughout the 20th century, education began building on radically different concepts from those that had previously existed. The ancient-medieval (and also early-modern) paradigm ordo – order, which arranges the universe according to its intelligible structure of eternal, universal, objective laws, was in the 20th century definitively substituted by the paradigm of discursus –in which the organisation of the universe is not given, nor is it eternal nor objective – it is the result of social dialogue and agreement. The structure of reality has now become the story of the age, the narrative product of a social discus- sion of cultures and subcultures. Reality is no longer revealed, sought after and known – reality is created, constructed in a discourse. Reality is discourse and discourse is reality. Statics is substituted by process – a story, which emerges in discourse, a never-ending flow and reality with its develop- ing plot demands ever new constructions, which are associated with the deconstruction of the previous contents and forms. They promote the idea that deconstruction is that which enables re-construction and the 20th century is fascinated by deconstruction – it must be removed in the name of making room for new creations. It is imperative always to begin from the green meadow and the story of education has to be an exemplary case in the narra- tions of our times. (The current practice of adopting new evaluative criteria for the department of education with each new government is fully in accor- dance with the spirit of the time.) Liessmann talks of the systemic character of the society-wide deconstructive mania in the education sphere, which all institutional levels of the social hierarchy participate in: “The dissolution of the Humboldtian humanistic grammar schools and universities, the disman- tling of the bureaucratic state in association with trimming down the state and the gradual changes in teaching staff illustrate the political-educational and civic aspects of this process” [Liessmann 2008: 47]. Deconstruction focuses on the content of understanding, which is losing significance and the system of knowledge which no longer refers to anything JOURNAL OF PEDAGOGY 2/2010 101 ARTICLES is becoming a dead memorial to previous forms of scholarship. The knowledge heritage of civilisation has become a decoration or backdrop to the historical educational projects, behind which lies nothing. The result of this deconstruction in education is a strange cultural neologism, which Adorno identified as sciolism. In terms of educational policies, the 1960s were a time of hectic reforms that barely hid the symptoms of Adorn’s diagnosis. Yet the institutionalisation of mass culture [see Adorno 2009] (branded as a demo- cratic movement or the opening up of the education system to everyone) tried to preserve the shell of normativity in the conception of education. Behind which the content void had already started to spread as a natural conse- quence of the postmodern process of the erosion of the classical ideal of culture that was, more or less, spontaneously operating in the background. Liessmann comments on this phenomenon: “Much of that which was subordinated to the term didactics was con- ducted according to the simple principle: Weed out and trim the content of classical education... All these strategies were motivated by the attempt to save at least something of education, even though it eventually led to the cor- ruption of education, its updating and medialization” [Liessmann 2008: 49]. In the end, the deconstruction process turned against the principles of progress and this turnaround to the auto-deconstruction of modernism be- came known as postmodernism. Of course, this had an impact on the forms of education. Postmodern discourse – era of emptiness Gilles Lipovetsky, a late 20th century French philosopher, was concerned with the society-wide phenomenon of what he calls emptiness; he does not simply attend to the structure-content dimension of this phenomenon, but tries to capture the whole social mood or atmosphere that permeates the or- ganism of western culture.

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