Historical Context and Creating the Educable Citizen & "the Other"

Today’s posting is the seventh in a summary and reflection on a 2008 Routledge book entitled

Foucault and Lifelong Learning:

Governing the Subject

and edited by Andreas Fejes and Katherine Nicoll.  I am posting every other day and each post will summarize one of the chapters in the book.

The seventh chapter is written by Andreas Fejes and is entitled

Historicizing the Lifelong Learner:

Governmentality and Neoliberal Rule

In this chapter, the author problematizes taken-for-granted ideas about Lifelong learning such as

• ·         the promise of a better life for all
• ·         the inclusion of all (access)

and shows how these assumptions are related to governing in a changing-present.  The questions that interest the author are:

• ·         What visions of the future are constructed in policy documents?
• ·         What subjects are constructed and what are they to become?

He will argue that

• ·         LLL is constructed by, and in turn,  is re-constructing, a neoliberal governmentality.
• ·         This governmentality sees the future as ever-changing and the citizen as in need of ever-adapting.
• ·          It expects that everyone should be (and can be) a lifelong learner and excludes from considerations those who do (or can) not. 
• ·         It constructs the state as an enabler of individual autonomy in the individual’s quest for continued learning. 
• ·         Historically, this has not been the case for Swedish policy, so it cannot be taken as inevitable and necessary.

Inventing the Educable Lifelong Learner and its “Other”

In the last post, I summarized how Popkewitz illustrated that LLL is an unfinished cosmopolitan cultural thesis that is divisive and invents the “Other” as someone to be excluded.  Fejes does something similar here within the context of Swedish policy documents.

The author argues that Swedish policy documents make these claims and implications:

• ·         Since not everyone is a lifelong learner, opportunities for those people have to be created to make them lifelong learners.
• ·         Without LLL people will be marginalized
• ·         Groups at risk include
•   Long-term unemployed
•   Immigrants,
•   People on social security
• ·         The at-risk are educable
• ·         We must make the educable employable
• ·         The at risk are “at risk” because they lack basic skills and they must participate in LLL
• ·         LLL will provide the basic skills required to make people employable.
• ·         Adult education has a role in providing opportunities for enhancing one’s role as a citizen and a worker.
• ·         To be a citizen and a worker, one needs an aptitude to learn and to handle change

The main point that Fejes engages is the construction of the individual as educable.  The role of LLL is, at first, to give everyone the skills so that they CAN be educable, and then later, to educate them. Statistics and scientific disciplines of sociology, psychology, education and pedagogy are used to create knowledge about this educable subject and in that process, it creates the subject it studies.

The thesis is that in the right environment, everyone is educable. Learning and the will to learn are constructed as norms. Thus, the “other” is created

By creating a normalized adult, an exclusionary practice is created where the ‘other’ is constructed (p. 89).

The thinking is:

• ·         Everyone should be a part of LLL
• ·         LLL is a natural goal for all
• ·         But not everyone is participating
• ·         Some don’t have the prerequisite skills and so can’t participate
• ·         Ironically, LLL is also presented as something that we all do already all our lives through various means and in various contexts (life-wide, informal, etc.)

Fejes suggests that “all” really means certain groups. “All” of us participate in LLL already….but that “all” doesn’t include the people who don’t have the requisite skills, nor does it include those who choose not to participate. These “others” are in need of normalization, and social policy is needed to accomplish that.  In Foucaultian terms, this is a ‘dividing practice’ It objectifies subjects as objects that can be known, and in doing so, classifies and separates them. It is the disciplines (sociology, statistics etc.) that produce the knowledge about the subjects that separates them into those who are and are not lifelong learners. 

The Enabling State

The author positions governing today in these terms:

• ·         Governing now is oriented at the future
• ·         Threats of an undesirable future are presented as real and a natural consequence of the direction in which we currently are travelling.
• ·         The threats today include lack of prosperity or social cohesion as a result of a future which is envisioned to be one of perpetual change
• ·         In order to avoid future calamity thus presented, subjects have to become adaptable and flexible lifelong learners
• ·         Those who fail to adapt are categorized as “other” and left marginalized

What this is is not a lack of government, but rather governing at a distance through neoliberal rationality where the role of the state is to enable subjects to make their own choices and their own future.  Although the future cannot be known, it can be controlled, in the future, by the autonomous lifelong learners who are fashioned today.  The state is an enabler.  Instead of intervening with policy and planning for a better today, the state seeks to create the subjects who will solve the problems of tomorrow.

Inventing the Educable Subject as Gifted and its “Other”

The author compares today with the 1950s in which the subject was constructed as talented. Each had talent and each should have the opportunity to use their talents. Fejes uses the term conditional educableness to describe that some were seen as talented in a way that would lead them into further study, and others were not.  But this was alright, and divisions between the normal and the “other” were not based on educability. Heredity and environment were co-positioned as being involved in one’s chances of achieving their educability potential or not. Those with the inherited predispositions for further study were thought gifted and were supported to reach their potential regardless of their social position. If you were not gifted, however, you were excluded from participation in further studies. But you were not “other” in that you were socially excluded.  The “other” was the subject who did not live up to whatever potential they had. 

The point that I find interesting and implied in Fejes comments and observations is that the notion of ‘gifted’ for lifelong learning has to a degree, disappeared today.  The status of the highly educable person has been reduced in a context where all are expected to be highly educable.  It also occurs to me that in present society we have what might be called the division between the participants and the non-participants as a way of classification of value.  Whereas in the 1950s, I can see 3 categories:

·         The gifted participant (in LLL)

·         The non-gifted who achieves his or her potential talents

·         The subject (gifted or not) who doesn’t achieve their talents.

With the assumption that the state will provide the environment so that all can reach their potential, gifted or not, there is an implication that those who do not reach their potential are at fault and I would expect, would be constructed as lesser beings.  This, I suspect, would be true of the ungifted, but also of the gifted.  I have to wonder if the gifted who failed to achieve their potential talents was viewed differently in the 1950s than the non-gifted who did not achieve their potential. 

The Distanced State – Planning the Future

The author explains that in the 1950s, the state was more directly involved in the creation of the subject and other than it is today.  It chose, administered and interpreted the tests that identified and classified subjects as gifted or not. Knowledgeable experts first created the knowledge about the subject, and then used that knowledge to provide advice to individuals and the state.  This is a more visible State than what was described earlier in the paper.

He comments that the 1950s also had their visions on the future.  It was claimed that the future would require more highly educated people, and the state involved itself to that end in a more direct fashion as described above.  Fejes also parallels the 1950s to today in that there was discourse on the creation of the active subject who makes their own choices, even if they were positioned slightly differently, as responsible for reaching their inner potential, whatever that might be.

Fejes comments that the subject of the 1950s was limited in their choice (and their futures) based on their potential.  We see today, a significant reduction in the boundaries of achievement presented for lifelong learners. 

The author suggests that these examples illustrate that there is no unified discourses within policy over time. Instead, he posits parallels that take on different positions in different power and historical contexts.  Through the 1950s and present day, the state is in the process of constructing its identity as a distant enabler but in different ways.  In the 1950s, it was more a matter of helping individuals identify their potential and then setting them on a course to achieve that of their own accord. 

Inventing the Educable Subject as Citizen and its “Other”

The 1920s saw liberal education in the idea that the educable subject was presented in a way that meant that everyone could learn something. Education targeted everyone. And the over-arching goal was to construct a future where present day social issues were addressed.  Citizenship was changing.  People earned the right to vote and social justice was envisioned as something that could be encouraged through educated citizenry. Education was for making it possible for citizens to take on responsible social roles as citizens.

The parallel narratives remain the same. This too was about the future, but the issues of the future that were targeted were political issues of social justice.  The life-long and life-wide nature of learning was there, but it was formulated as opportunities that one could engage in such as learning circles and lectures, if one so chose.  It wasn’t normalized. The subject was constructed as immature and uncultivated, but that through liberal adult education in their leisure time, the subject could improve. This still marginalized some who had yet to achieve the acceptable level of culture. So, in the 1920s the division that was created by the discourse on adult education was between the normal, responsible citizen and the irresponsible citizen.

 

The Social State—Planning the Future

\Fejes describes the early 20^th century as a time in which governing involved socially planning the future by, for instance, regulating what literature was available.  The effect of certain materials on the individuals who was not of an appropriate maturity, were judged by the state or a representative of it (librarian). The state had a view of future society, and a plan as to how to get there.

However, there was also a notion of the subject as self-governed in a liberal education. Lectures may inspire, but the individual takes up further study to go beyond. Social administration of the population was achieved through a combination of the promotion of individual interest and autonomy and intervention by the state in identifying the bounds of that exploration.

The lifelong Learner in a “Changing” Society

Indeed, although there have been parallel themes, new ways of governing have taken place in Sweden over the last 80 years. A major shift has been that governance has become more distant, acting through individual choices and their constructed identities. Lifelong learning has been normalized and distributed across various sectors life-wide. What is similar is that all such normalizing practices throughout time, create exclusions. When the educable subject is constructed in a certain fashion, so is the “Other.”  Although inclusion is a goal of current discourse on LLL, the effect is still to create a form of exclusion.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………

This was the last of the chapters in the section of the book entitled

Governing Policy Subjects

There are 7 chapters in the next section entitled

Governing Pedagogical Subjects

And one in a final section entitled

Governing Subjects

At this point, I am going to stop summarizing this book as I have need now to get a better idea of the different directions different books take in the area of contemporary Lifelong learning.  So, I cannot say, today, what the next posting will be.  I still plan on posting in 2 days, but what I post will be dependent upon what I find in my searches.  What I hope to accomplish prior to the next posting is a better idea of the specific questions I would like to focus on in my comprehensive exam on lifelong learning. So, I may end up posting these questions and beginning to discuss those. 

But I guess, you and I both will have to wait and see!