LLL as Unfinished Cosmopolitanism creating Hope/Fear & Inclusion/Exclusion

Today’s posting is the sixth 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 sixth chapter is written by Thomas S. Popkewitz  and is entitled

The Reason of Reason:

Cosmopolitanism, Social Exclusion and Lifelong Learning

In this chapter, the author takes a look at LLL and the Learning Society as “the cultural thesis” (p. 74) of cosmopolitanism and considers inclusion and exclusion.

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The author references the hope of the Enlightenment to create a cosmopolitan citizen who is reasonable and rational and hospitable to the “Other” so that all can be emancipated. In reality, what it did was create a system of division between the cosmopolitan and those “less civilized” (p. 74).   Similarly, the author contends that LLL had (has?) hopes for unifying humanity through reason.  But in reality, it too creates divisive distinctions. 

In this chapter, Popkewitz will

• ·         compare the reason of cosmopolitanism with the reason of LLL and proposes a cultural thesis of who the child should be. 
• ·         turn to LLL specifically proposing it as a cultural thesis linking individuality to the norms of the collective. He notes, however, that the ‘collective’ in this regard is not bounded by all of humanity, but by national (or at least regional) lines: there is a specific unit of unity  (I would suggest that there are also unity boundaries in LLL promoted within industry).
• ·         Propose that each unity embodies double gestures. This concept revolves around the ideas of hope and fear, not as opposites but as 2 aspects of the same phenomenon.  Within each unity cosmopolitanism embodies hope and fear.
• ·         Examine the reason of cosmopolitanism in relation to pupils in school. This will allow him to compare pedagogical theories of the child and how the subject is formed.
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He refers to this paper as a part of a previous and larger historical project concerning cosmopolitan fears of difference and schooling.  He is interested in how objects are ordered and connected through time and space, although this paper is primarily contemporary.

The Hope:  Lifelong Learner and Community

We are attracted to the idea of LLL because it reflects an attitude  from the Enlightenment about life;  a life that is guided by reason and by concern for others.  But what we have today, Popkewitz refers to as unfinished cosmopolitanism.  We are always looking for change, and

The only thing that is not a choice is making choices (p. 75).

LLL:

·         it’s a cultural thesis

·         it involves a continual process

·         it emphasizes choice and agency

Popkewitz refers to Maeroff’s views that education has become an instrument of cosmopolitan reason by emphasizing and making available much choice.  (He speaks specifically about online learning)

Another author, Hargreaves (2003) says that LLL rejects the free-market approach of neoliberalism and is a cosmopolitanism that focuses developing in the child tolerance and commitment to social justice.

Where these 2 overlap is that as different cultural theses about life, they both

• ·         see life as involving continual change
• ·         focus on individual decision making and problem solving
• ·         the problem solving involves problems of the collective

This is what the author means by unfinished cosmopolitanism

The cultural thesis of the cosmopolitan mode of life is assembled and connected with discourses about choice and problem solving.(p. 75).

The child is seen as someone who should be a problem solver, and is constructed that way. Schooling is to not only show students how to problem solve, but also to WANT to problem solve. Teachers are to be problem-solvers themselves in that they have to assess the whole child and design solutions to ensure the development of each child as a cosmopolitan lifelong learner and problem solver.

Popkewitz refers to choice and problem solving as salvation themes which promise unity, prosperity and social justice.

Similarly, as a lifelong learner, the child is to be designed so that they can problem-solve upon themselves:  actively self-assess and identify problems in their own being and their solutions which will contribute to the common good.  Thus, the problem solving of the child is not merely about individuality.  It is to achieve community benefit through individuality. LLL is situated in communities and each learner constructs their lives in community pluralism.

Historically, (in the context of nation building) what was promoted was a more unified national (or other) identity.  Now, the child as a lifelong learner in multiple communities with diverse norms, is responsible for

multiple identities, collaboration, the local community and an individuality that embodies a flexible problem-solving.  (p. 77).

Cosmopolitanism and Collective Belonging

An interesting relationship between the individual and the collective is developed in the cosmopolitanism of the lifelong learner. The individual is related to a stabilizing force for the unity through discourse in tolerance and flexibility. In US school reforms, for instance, the child is positioned as the embodiment of universal values concerning social justice, democracy and prosperity.  The universal values of the unity, embodied in the student, are inserted into rhetoric about the world.  Popkewitz provides these excerpts from the American Council on Education’s (ACE, 1999, p. 1) documents on school reform which illustrate that school should be building leaders who will “work with others” to “ ensure that America and its children will have the schools they require and deserve” (p. 78).

Schools are seen as a place in which the individual can be formed who will reflect a collective identity and values. The National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future (1996, p. 12) refers to the duty of teachers to “reclaiming the soul of America” (p. 78) by inscribing in students particular qualities and values. The documents claim to know the qualities of the unity (America, in this case) and schools are to ensure that the individuals embody those qualities.  Popkewitz doesn’t make much of the question as to where those qualities came from at this point. But it strikes me that the qualities are more about designing who the American people need to be for the unknown future (see Chapter 4) than they are about reflecting who the American people are.  It attempts to create a unity based on predictions about ideal qualities for the future, instead of unifying a diverse people based on what are truly common characteristics or aspirations. 

Reason is no longer for the perfection of the ideal of the Republic through making multiple communities into the collective embodiment of the social good. (p. 78).

Fears of Who is not the Unfinished Cosmopolitan

Rancière (1983/2004) discusses how arbitrary differences are being seen as inevitable.  Such is the case with education. It is not being understood that the differences created by creating a unity based on particular values and principle, are indeed constructed.  Where we have the unity of the (unfinished) cosmopolitan lifelong learner, we acknowledge (and label) those who are not within that unity. Inclusion simultaneously contains fears of difference. Those outside the norm may be labeled as projects to work on, or they can be seen as too otherly and incapable of achieving the (inevitable) norms of the unity. In the Enlightenment, the fears were of the barbarians who could not achieve enlightened reason.  What are the fears today in the unfinished cosmopolitanism of lifelong learning?

In the U.S., education reform focuses on “all children can learn” and the related 2001 Federal legislation called No Child Left Behind. These phrases reflect an unspoken cultural thesis about all children.  It assumes that there are no academic differences between children, and those that are there will either be addressed, reformed out of them, or ignored. (This latter sentiment was not in the text, but is rather my own extrapolation). Recognizing the child that doesn’t fit this model labels them as not belonging and in need of “rescue” (p. 79) in order for them to accept their position in the social whole. Teacher education reform suggests a fear that schools will not be able to reach all children unless teachers change.

Teachers (and the system) fear failure to meet the needs of the “at risk.”  These fears construct this particular population of student as different, and dangerously so. They are seen as both socially and morally inferior. The categories of distinction (and fear) that emerge are a product of different disciplines.  Documents label

• ·         those who live in poverty
• ·         non-native-English speakers
• ·         students with disabilities
• ·         females
• ·         non-white students
• ·         urban students

as categories for focus.  This labels these students as not belonging to the cosmopolitan identity of the lifelong learner and as entities to be feared.  There is a hope that “the innate potential of the child can be drawn out…to rescue the child…” (p. 81).  But that hope is accompanied necessarily by the fear that it will not and that this “other” will be there to threaten the cosmopolitan project.  I think it important to reflect for a moment on what constitutes potential:  what capacities and knowledge is valued and how they are so labeled.  Modernity only values certain forms of potential. 

Democratization, Alchemies of School Subjects and Naturalizing the World.

Popkewitz uses the term alchemy to signify the (magical) changes that occur between disciplines such as mathematics, history and music, and the related subjects that are taught in schools. Processes of filtering and translation have to happen to make what happens in the disciplines appropriate for the schools. But whatever happens, the subjects in school bear little resemblance to the norms of participation, truth and recognition of the disciplines.

The author’s contention is that subjects are ordered by the cultural thesis of cosmopolitanism and its ‘double gestures’ of inclusion and exclusion.  Teachers are to be experts of their discipline, indeed. But the aspects of that discipline that come out in the curriculum are those that involve the student as an autonomous agent involved in the lifelong learning tasks of knowledge-production,  problems solving and collaboration within community.  The author points out that knowledge-creation in schools is aimed at re-producing knowledge that is already known.  Knowledge-construction in schools is almost like a practice round for knowledge-production in the real world, but under conditions where the expert-teacher can validate student conclusions. It is the conventional ideas that are brought from the disciplines into the classroom, and the linguistics of education treats the bodies of knowledge as if they were static.

This is consistent with the given cultural thesis.  Notions of community in a unity and finding solutions to problems are much more easily supported by static bodies of knowledge and correct answers than they are in the context of the disciplines from which they came, where, dispute, difference and ambiguity are common. The subjects and their curricula are chosen to promote harmony.

Pedagogical practices are also aligned with the cultural thesis of lifelong learning and cosmopolitanism. Over time texts and curriculum have been rewritten to include much more participation, personal relevance and emotional accessibility.

Popkewitz argues that although the child is being modeled as an active participant in problem-solving and questioning, the promotion of the rightness of answers, absolute truth, and the authority of science renders the child LESS active in defining the terms of his or her own future learning.  He or she is limited to the boundaries of what is already known.

The child is a tourist and/or consumer in the world of propositions and generalizations presented in school subjects as fixed and unchanging.

The Unfinished Cosmopolitanism, Power and Resistance

The cultural thesis of the unfinished cosmopolitan lifelong learner, includes the themes of agency and freedom of the Enlightenment, if not in a mutated form. These are linked to a reason of unity that divides, creating both hope and fear, inclusion and exclusion. The problem lies now in identifying the concrete practices that order and differentiate. Even it its reliance on the concepts of democracy and collaboration, the unfinished cosmopolitanism project and the self-governing subjects it creates, create exclusions. Popkewitz concludes with

The bifurcated world distances, divides, erases and hides how expert knowledge works dialectally in the forming of social relations.

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The next summary and rumination will be posted in 2 days.  It will address the 7^th Chapter, written by Andreas Fejes and 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 term 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.