Keywords

Acting ‘as if’ 2 + 2 = 5

Was Orwell’s ‘1984’ a fiction about how the state was influencing people in ways so they believed 2 + 2 = 5? Or was it a commentary about ethnomathematical approaches to calculation, where it is quite possible for 2 + 2 = 5 when using particular tools and mechanisms for addition? Perhaps it reflects a deeply Žižekian observation of a phenomenon which appears again and again in contemporary educational contexts where we may know 2 + 2 = 4, but act ‘as if’ 2 + 2 = 5, or more broadly, that our behaviour does not reflect what we openly say in front of colleagues—be it complaining about the quality in the latest coffee machine in the staff room (but then still drink it), or complaining about the latest amendment in a national curriculum (but then still teach it). As Butler explains in the context of money; “it does not matter that we know money is not an immediate expression of wealth… All that matters is that in our actual behaviour we continue to act as though it is” (Butler 2005, p. 5, emphasis added).

There are multiple examples that can be identified in contemporary education. In a major review of the National Student Survey in higher education, researchers concluded that:

…stakeholders and students thought the NSS had conceptual weaknesses concerning what it measured, and methodological weaknesses related to what it covered. In particular, they were concerned that the NSS’s scope was too narrow in terms of students’ experiences and their engagement in learning and teaching which undermined the NSS’s efficacy in informing student choice and enhancing students’ academic experience. (HEFCE 2014, p. 3, emphasis added)

Why is it, then, that higher education professional across the country “used the NSS to help enhance the quality of their provision” (HEFCE 2014, p. 3), even though it was recognized as having multiple weaknesses? Even a recent research report by the Higher Education Academy points to the same phenomenon:

Education is, of course, about a lot more than simply being ‘provided’ with teaching, resources and facilities. It is not a simple consumer relationship, but a partnership which requires effort and engagement from the student and it is the responsibility of their institution to encourage and facilitate this. Nonetheless, this survey provides us with an opportunity to investigate their sense of value-for-money… (Soilemetzidis et al. 2014, p. 33, emphasis added)

In other words, we know it is much more than the mis-recognition of customer-provider relationship, but nonetheless, we will do research into precisely this area. Is this not the same phenomenon as we witness in international research impact assessments in higher education establishments? Perhaps Sparkes (2007) pinpoints the spirit of the Žižekian point in his story of a researcher involved in such activity who feels compelled to give advice to his Vice-Chancellor:

Vice-chancellor, can I just point out that this research assessment exercise stuff is a crock of shit. An absolute load of bollocks. I know it, you know it, we all know it. So why don’t we just admit it and get on with something worthwhile? (Sparkes 2007, p. 526)

Primary school education does not escape this phenomenon. Do we not understand that Ofsted gradings are flawed and do not fully reflect pupil experience, or reflect the circumstances in which school teachers operate? Nonetheless, we still make changes to lesson plans, and even the structure of the entire school day, to ensure we get a good or better score. The National Union of Teachers tells us that 83 % of teachers say their most recent Ofsted inspection increases the pressure they experience and results in additional stress (NUT 2013). In other words, our behaviours indicate that we are acting ‘as if’ such inspections do reflect the experience of pupils and are crucially important.

To clarify the point here: this discussion is not about the reliability, validity or even utility of such scores, but it is about how we may publically acknowledge and critique an issue or problem, but at the same time, we carry on regardless—that is, we know something is unreliable, but we still use it ‘as if’ it is reliable. For Žižek, this is precisely how interpellation, as discussed in the previous chapter, works: the proverbial National Student Survey and Ofsted inspections are calling us from behind ‘hey you!’ and we turn. This ‘turn’ happens when we re-direct investment, amend infrastructures, tweak learning and teaching strategies, and alter delivery patterns of courses in order to improve our scores. In other words, in our behaviours, we are acting ‘as if’ they are reliable and important—and, of course, we celebrate when we get a good score or improvement in it.

This magical trick can also extend its reach to educational innovations and reforms which appear to be radical breaks from dominant structures. One of the educational experiments over the last century has included educational forms under the broad ‘free school’ label, attempting to challenge dominant orthodoxies in sometimes very radical ways. Arguably the best known example has been A.S. Neill’s Summerhill School founded in 1921 (Neill 1960). This school was, and still is, predicated on the idea that children flourish most when free from coercion: it is run on entirely democratic principles, with children deciding what they learn (in discussion with their tutors) and democratically establishing and enforcing any necessary rules and codes of behaviour, resolving disputes in school meetings.

For many decades Summerhill had an unhappy relationship with the UK educational authorities, with multiple attempts to close it in the late 1990s, mainly due to its lack of compulsory lessons. Eventually, the legal case against it brought by the schools’ inspectorate Ofsted on behalf of the Blair government collapsed. Pupils from Summerhill who attended the court hearing later took over the courtroom to discuss the proposed settlement, to which they agreed (see the dramatized account in the 2008 BBC TV film Summerhill). Summerhill clearly breaks from dominant forms of education, but it still exists within a wider structure managed by government. Summerhill’s last Ofsted inspection reveals specific ways in which the dominant expectations, which are not so radical, appear in the classroom:

[Summerhill School] meets all the regulatory requirements for independent schools… The national minimum standards for boarding schools are met… The good curriculum is underpinned by effective written policies and schemes of work. Planning for lessons in all subjects is set out clearly with units of work that have clearly identified objectives and resources. (Ofsted 2011, emphasis added)

Within this very short extract, we see glimpses into the expectations of a standardised form of school education, shaped and governed by regulatory requirements, national standards, a curriculum, written policies, written schemes of work, lesson plans, units of work with specified objectives and resources. The Žižekian twist here is that although we might aim for a radical departure, we might land at a place that is at least partially caught in the dominant perspective.

But is this not because of governmental imposition? You can see the same magical trick being performed in other contexts too, without governmental imposition. Other forms of ‘free schools’ flourished in the 1960s and 70s in cities across the UK, most notably the Free School in the downtrodden Scotland Road area of Liverpool, the London Free School in Notting Hill and the White Lion Street Free School in Islington. These owed much to Summerhill and the radical, hippy-influenced politics of the era, seeking to empower children who felt excluded from the orthodox state educational system. Few survived however, and often demonstrated their limitations as democratic and co-operative institutions operating within the wider prevailing norms of competitive, capitalist society. This experience at Scotland Road was not untypical, and demonstrates the trick at work:

History meant visiting Welsh castles. And when workers at the local JCB factory in Kirkby went on strike, the pupils joined them for a sit-in. But the free ideology espoused by the adults was occasionally shot down by the children, such as the time when the girls demanded a uniform. Their “bourgeois” wish was granted, even when they asked for checked lambswool miniskirts from a particular boutique in Liverpool. The request for matching coats was politely declined. (de Castella 2014, emphasis added)

Here, the students, though wanting to be free from dominant forms of education, were caught by a desire for a uniform (to become standardised in terms of education) and checked lambswool miniskirts (to become standardised in terms of popular fashion). Contemporary free schools under David Cameron and Michael Gove have not been of the same ilk as these earlier versions, with criticisms that their greater freedom can promote sectional and orthodox interests, including religious ones (see some of the critiques here Garner 2015; Ofsted 2015).

But what about other radical departures, which might be labelled as alternative or even un-schooling (see the Journal of Unschooling and Alternative Learning, Nipissing University 2015)? For example, within Montessori educational approaches, particular learning outcomes and ways of knowing are not prescribed at the outset thereby enabling a much more personalised experience to the needs and interests of the individual (American Montessori Society 2015; Friersona 2014; Montessori 1965). Do these alternative approaches of education escape the bureaucratic frameworks described above?

Perhaps not: “Public Montessori schools are mandated to administer the same standardized tests as other public schools” and “some private Montessori schools also administer standardized exams, particularly if they will be required by schools into which their students may transition” (American Montessori Society 2015, emphasis added). In other words, though a radically different picture of education is painted, emphasising the personalised discovery and knowing, they are also caught in a wider system which understands education in a more bureaucratic sense where testing and examining particular constructs of learning are important and valued. We may want a new direction for education, but a wider system imposes itself, and we need it to if we are to exist within that system.

What about a return to the autodidactic (self-taught) tradition, where some Marxists claimed that ‘knowledge is power’ and those who wield it are powerful? This lead to conscious attempts at self-improvement outside of the formal educational system (Macintyre 1980). In essence, it was a product of opposition to the idea of capitalism’s ‘education factories’, with schools and colleges growing up alongside the industrialisation and urbanisation associated with modern capitalism, being perceived as producing workers with the requisite skills and abilities to function as exploitable wage slaves in capitalist society. It was claimed that just as the early factories developed on Taylorist and Fordist principles of repeated processes, hierarchy and order, so did the schools—and eventually the universities too (initially for the elite but then generalised and now commodified in the modern era for larger sections of the working class). The autodidactic tradition stood outside these developments and challenged them, though was arguably a product of its time and heyday in the first half of the twentieth century.

To an extent, perhaps, this type of approach is currently being reinvigorated by the invention and explosion of Open Educational Resources (OER) such as Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)? OER as a phenomenon has opened the door to educational access that is not overtly defined by money-commodity relationships, and MOOCs give millions of people around the globe free access to Ivy League higher education courses in multiple subject areas, enabling them to construct their own learning from a vast menu of subjects, tailoring it to their needs and purposes. Is this not an alternative educational form? Again, Žižek might suggest not: many MOOCs are derived from on-campus higher education courses studied on campus, which are constructed within the realms of those highly regulated courses.

Here, we do not have to look far to see how these educational experiences are defined in terms of learning outcomes, learning hours, learning content, and even well-defined tactics for assessing learning—often in the form of ‘multiple choice’ questions which require the student to ‘tick’ boxes. Here, MOOCs could even be understood as an extension of the dominant form of higher education study packaged as discrete boxes. In true (dominant) form, at the end of their educational experience, the learner receives a certificate to prove they have completed the boxes as defined by the academic framework to which the university subscribes.

These contemporary cases exemplify the Žižekian critique of the Marxist idea that social change happens when we become aware of the problems in our working or life contexts, or how we are influenced by wider structures—that is, we are kept in place by the idea that ‘we do not know what we do’. Žižek wants us to realise that we might know that findings from surveys are flawed, but we act as if they are not, and still use it to direct our action (2 + 2 = 5). He wants us to recognise that although we might assert a radical approach, our actions are still at least partially caught by a dominant regulative perspective (2 + 2 = 5).

But why would we possibly want to do such things, especially if it contributes to the troubles sketched out earlier, such as ‘unacceptable levels of stress’ and unpleasant complaints processes? Such logic is reminiscent of a twelfth century proverb cutting my nose off to spite my face, or perhaps a Chinese proverb looking for a donkey while sitting on its back. Is the answer not simple and obvious, that is, are we not compelled to act in such ways for economic reasons? Žižek goes further and points to how this works in the psyche, i.e. how capitalist ideology grips our mind in terms of our identity, propelling us in the ways constructed by the ideology. He argues that the answer is deeply embedded within our subjectivity, and why we do this returns us precisely to the earlier discussion of how we are compelled towards a simplified image of self in the Imaginary: every time I speak, a little “question mark” over what I have said appears because something escapes (Žižek 1989, p. 111), and I get pleasure from trying to capture a unified self, always failing, and therefore bracketing out any discrepancies. And this brings us to reiterate and reinforce the importance of the danger that Žižek warns us about: we should be wary about “the ‘unknown knowns’—the disavowed beliefs, suppositions and obscene practices we pretend not to know about” (Žižek 2004).

On Being Critical (And Being Caught, Again)

It might seem that the solution lies in becoming aware of how the ‘unknown knowns’ shape and construct education, teachers and learners, perhaps through ‘critical reflection’. For example, we might follow many other scholars who critique the gap that separates higher education from its customers (in the vein of Bolden et al. 2009, 2010; CBI 2008, 2009; Cooper et al. 2008; Garnett 2009; Garnett et al. 2008; Wedgewood 2008; White 2012). Our critical reflection might lead us to employ “good marketing and good project management techniques” (Cooper et al. 2008, p. 32), or employ brokerage or translation staff who can communicate in ‘both’ languages, and can understand and manage the different expectations of each world (Bolden et al. 2009; Dhillon et al. 2011; Workman 2010).

Or our critique might lead to more fundamental calls to action, which require a ‘paradigm shift’ towards a “widespread culture of engagement—of business focus, of ‘close connect’ with professional employment and practice”, and specifically a culture “permeating all aspects of provision from the business model of a [higher education institution], through… new pedagogies for workforce education, to individual employment contracts for HE staff” (Wedgewood 2008, p. 20). Yet such actions, where implemented, might not practically change anything of significance, because they are not changing the wider forces outside any particular educational organisation or body (Gibbs and Garnett 2007). For Žižek, these acts are not addressing the Symbolic order which is setting up the ‘student as customer’ notion and which activates particular expectations which infiltrate relationships in the educational context.

Even if we do begin to question the ‘student as customer’ notion, which publications such as this book might aspire to do, we are doing so only within the structures and terms of the language that was used to set up such notions in the first place. In this way, we are being tricked into thinking we are surpassing the Symbolic realm, but we are in effect (through our behaviour) fully in accordance with the terms of a particular perspective that is reinforced by the dominant discourse. And in so doing, we are still activating all of the associated unconscious motivations described earlier. Žižek refers to this as ‘cynical distance’, and rather than creating distance, dialectically, it is a requirements for such notions to grip us. He says that thinking we are “stepping out of (what we experience as) ideology is the very form of our enslavement to it” (Žižek 1994, p. 6).

Importantly, “those who do not let themselves be caught in the symbolic/fiction and continue to believe their eyes are the ones who err most” (Žižek 2005), or in other words, those who think they are not caught by ideological framing, and then continue to believe what they see, are already caught. In such circumstances, as the Chinese proverbs tell us, our attempts at critical reflection become like gazing at a plum to quench our thirst or hitting a dog with a meat bun to protect ourselves. Such attempts reflect what happens to us when we are dealing with fetishes, that is, the fantasy versions of objects that have become commodified:

while the fundamentalist ignores (or at least mistrusts) argumentation, blindly clinging to his fetish, the cynic pretends to accept argumentation, but ignores its symbolic efficiency. In others words, while the fundamentalist (not so much believes as) directly ‘knows’ the truth embodies in his fetish, the cynic practises the logic of disavowal (‘I know very well, but…’). (Žižek 2009, pp. 68–69)

But how is it the Symbolic works so efficiently in this way? We have already heard Žižek’s explanations about how we are motivated to think in particular ways, but when we are dealing with educational fetishes, are we really that ‘blind’ not to see the difference between the proverbial MBA and 12,000 Big Mac meals? Surely we can see that we sitting on the proverbial donkey when we are trying to find it? Importantly, Žižek argues that the Real is parallactic in the sense we only ever get glimpses of the same ‘thing’ from different angles which generates a “multiplicity of appearances” (Žižek 2006, p. 26). In other words, because of the unknowability of the Real, we are able to see and make sense of objects from different angles or from different perspectives. Collini exemplifies this in the context of education, about himself, also known as ‘the parallactic Collini’:

I work in the knowledge and human-resources industry. My company specializes in two kinds of product: we manufacture high-quality, multi-skilled units of human capacity; and we produce commercially relevant, cutting-edge new knowledge in user-friendly packaged of printed material… Let me put that another way. I’m a university teacher. I teach students and I write books… I teach at a British university. (Collini 2012, p. 132)

In terms of education, we have already discussed this in terms of saleable product forms, and in terms of bureaucratic forms (credits, levels, units, modules, programmes). A cynical engagement here might ask; which one is the real form of education? The problem is that there is no neutral answer, and the point is that things are “continuous with each other: the one, as it is, is the “truth” of the other, and vice versa” (Žižek 2007). In other words, the point is that we can never seize the Real, but we can only access glimpses or appearances of partial bits of it—“our vision of reality is anamorphically distorted… [and that this] accounts for the very multiplicity of appearances of the same underlying Real” (Žižek 2006, p. 26). What is more, the appearances that do see are always already shaped by the same desires that are mobilising our motivations:

[an] object assumes clear and distinctive features only if we look at it “at an angle”, i.e. with an “interested” view, supported, permeated, and “distorted” by desire… an object that be perceived only by a gaze “distorted” by desire, an object that does not exist for an “objective” gaze… outside this distortion, “in itself”, it does not exist, since it is nothing but the embodiment, the materialization of this very distortion… “objectively” nothing, though, viewed from a certain perspective, it assumes the shape of “something”. (Žižek 1991, p. 12)

In other words, for something to exist or to be subjectively experienced, it must be framed (in the first place) by a desire: a particular (so called, distorted) perspective is required by a spectator to see some-thing. As such, parallax gaps can occur: when two perspectives exist where there is an “antinomy which can never be dialectically “mediated/sublated” into a higher synthesis, since there is no common language, no shared ground” (Žižek 2006, p. 4). For Žižek, these are all around us, but we may not recognise them as such. One unsettling example can be spotted in the narratives used to describe Josef Fritzl—from one angle (in media accounts), he was represented as a monster who did terrible and unthinkable things to his family, and from another angle (in his own accounts), he was the opposite, a loving father who was protecting his family from the dangers of the modern world (Žižek 2008, p. ix). These are different ways of understanding the same ‘thing’ of ‘Josef Fritzl’, but which cannot be reconciled.

This is the same sort of tension that arises when we understand education as a commercial product form (a Best Buy) compared with its bureaucratic terms (credits and levels)—when such forms appear as alternatives, they appear as incompatible or incommensurate. The discussion above suggests, however, that they are ‘continuous’, but in what way? Perhaps this text from a real advertisement for a higher education establishment in New York gives us a dialectical clue:

Question: Why study in Puerto Rico?

Answer: lower cost per credit!

Is this advert not a signal that shows that a consumerist packaging of higher education as a product is absolutely not at odds with a bureaucratic packaging into academic credits? Here, it is not that it is oppositional at all, but that the former is dependent on and realised precisely because of the latter? In other words, we are able to package a product precisely because we have credits. Indeed, through a long drawn-out and uneven process (Betts and Smith 1998), academic ‘credit’ has emerged as the key measure and store of value when education is packaged into units of study. In many respects, credit in the academic sphere reflects the volume of learning required to demonstrate achievement from students in a similar way to how Marx explained the exchange value of commodities in capitalism on the basis of the average amount of labour time needed from workers to produce them from start to finish. And these education credits—the product of the labours of learning—are similarly intended to be as interchangeable as possible, being capable of importation from one course to another under certain conditions through the recognition of prior learning (Perrin and Helyer 2015). In effect, the units become a universal educational currency, or ‘money’, which is recognised across a system.

In the UK for example, the credit system involves 10 hours of learning being the ‘universal equivalent’ of one credit point, with Europe more generally being based on the equivalence of 20 hours of learning for one credit. Now part of a global educational trend, each qualification of worth is defined in terms of an academic level and credit value. So value, volume and equivalence are crucial (Perrin and Helyer 2015), just as they were for Marx when explaining the exchange value of physical commodities in capitalism.

Much of the language of HE now reflects this widespread commodification and monetisation. For instance, when students are asked to show that their prior learning is still up-to-date and reflects contemporary thinking it is called demonstrating ‘currency’. Similarly, achieved credit is in ‘the bank’ and they may choose to achieve other credits through taking units of study (modules) from ‘the bank of modules’ on offer. This Symbolic order of higher education impacts on the consciousness of academics and students alike, and reflects dialectical contradictions within the way education and wider society relate to one another.

This dialectical twist is just as evident in radical higher education programmes which are designed on the fundamental principle of negotiation between the learner and the higher education establishment, rather than pre-set criteria and methods of learning and assessment (see for example Aditomo et al. 2011; Boud and Solomon 2001; Wall 2010; Workman et al. 2009; Lester and Costley 2010; Mabweazara and Taylor 2012). One example is ‘negotiated work based learning’ where learners are able to negotiate programmes of study that relate to them and their workplace, often being based on a combination of prior and current experiential learning through work. Such programmes typically aim to:

  • enable widening participation opportunities for adult learners who normally would not or could not attend university,

  • allow students to take responsibility for their own learning within certain parameters, such as enabling negotiation of learning pathways, module content (for example, through work based projects), and even award titles that reflect the area of working practice,

  • emphasise opportunities for the accreditation of prior learning, both experiential and certificated,

  • enhance professional development and workplace capability, and

  • provide for the possible accreditation of in-house training programmes delivered by other organisations, such as companies (Perrin et al. 2009).

On the one hand, such programmes are a manifestation of ultimate flexibility, attempting to break free from the dominant approach to higher education study that has been prescriptive and academy-led. In doing so, they attempt to empower learners to negotiate the educational focus, content and structure of their own learning (often written by them rather than the academics). Such a way of working even involves a very different power relationship between tutor and student than in other programmes, with students taking much more ‘ownership’ and ‘control’ of their learning (Talbot 2010; Wall 2013). Yet on the other hand, to exercise their choice, learners have to engage considerably with—and understand—these constructs far more than other students need to.

Although engaging with the bureaucracy of such academic frameworks can be alien, frustrating and confusing for learners—especially the administrative processes associated with it—this level of choice is facilitated precisely because of the existence of the underlying academic framework that governs it: precisely defined academic levels and credits provide a currency system on which to deliver the flexibility. In this way, learners (and their tutors) become ‘credit mechanics’, fully immersed in a particular way of packaging education. So rather than being on two different hands, it might be better expressed as two sides of the same (academic) coin.

Žižek might also want us to notice another dialectical twist about negotiated higher education study which emphasises an earlier point. The basis for this type of education emerged during the free-spirited 1960s (such as with the Open University in the UK), representing an attempt to democratise education and empower students, often using ideas which scholars describe as potentially subversive at work (Brookfield 1991). Yet part of the function of this type of education is set within the context of enhancing professional practices, focusing on improving the production of ever more efficient wage slaves. Indeed, negotiated work based learning enables the co-creation of learning between workers, but also with the companies employing them: all mediated, packaged, and assessed through the universal HE credit system, most notably and obviously where it involves the negotiation of bespoke corporate programmes. So in this way, although it was an attempt to break with traditional approaches of higher education, it can immerse students and staff even more deeply into capitalist structures than perhaps other forms of higher education study.

In this vein, such forms of higher education study can be seen as an innovative and far-reaching mechanism that can enable a particular form of education to impact on sectors and people that would not otherwise be enveloped by such processes—or alternatively expressed, extend into ‘hard to reach’ parts of society. In this respect, it is the ultimate expression of higher education packaged as credits despite its radical and empowering aspirations. So in this Žižekian sense one of the most radical, challenging and potentially subversive educational approaches that has been developed in the modern era also contains within it something of its opposite—the standard, the conforming, the ordered and the privatised. So what is to be done to navigate such insidious mechanisms, or realise that we are sitting on the donkey we are looking for? This is the focus of our final chapter, next.