Today’s posting is the fourth 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 fourth chapter is written by Maarten Simons and Jan Masschelein and is entitled
Our ‘Will to Learn’ and the Assemblage of a Learning Apparatus
The authors refer to the domains of our life in which we consider ourselves learners:
- · At work, we generate competencies
- · For active democratic participation we seek to develop competencies
- · Private-sphere activities such as child-rearing, sex, eating, communicating are discussed as competencies
The authors position this paper as a kind of “ontology of the present.” They ask about the now. They want to know who we are as a people; as a kind of people who see learning as so important and so pervasive and who see it as a way to constantly reposition ourselves. Where does this subjectivity/identity come from? In what ways is learning today both government and self-government?
Learning as both a Problem and a Solution
In this section, the authors look at three historical domains in which problems are conceptualized as learning problems and where LLL is proposed as a solution
Problem 1: The Capitalization of Learning
Drucker (1969, p. xi) positioned knowledge as capital; as the “crucial means of production” (p. 49) in a Knowledge-Based Economy (KBE). Knowledge workers, with a Knowledge base are important assets. Educational institutions are re-envisioned as Knowledge-industries supplying the knowledge-base to the knowledge-workers. Continuing education is the solution to the KBE.
I have noted that although a significant amount of the time, LLL is positioned as the solution to the KBE (implying that we are in one and that it requires a solution), the KBE is also positioned often as a state to which we should aspire. In a sense, one could say that LLL is proposed as a solution to a problem that we don’t yet have, but one that LLL is promising to create. I find that entertaining.
Our aim: technological application of knowledge. To accomplish that, we need a form of continuing education where ‘school and life can no longer be separate’ (Drucker, 1969, p. 24). Education is no longer distinct from economics; it is disconnected from its traditional contexts and conditions.
Learning appears as a force to produce added value. (p. 50).
Problem 2: Being Responsible Toward Learning
In a concern for self-actualization and self-realization, learning should be lifelong and life-wide. The educational infrastructure should facilitate such learning and prepare individuals to adapt to change. In order to meet one’s needs, which are ever-changing, one needs autonomy and opportunities to learn.
The authors introduce discussion around the influence of humanistic psychology and self-directed learning on education and conclude that the learner is now required to diagnose their own learning needs, formulate learning goals, obtain resources, and engage in their own learning. The authors call this ‘responsibilization’ of learning.
This isn’t the direction I thought the authors would go; since I’m not sure how much of a ‘problem’ many readers will see in this description. I suppose a problem being presented is that people need to be self-actualized/realized, and LLL is the solution. Furthermore, the degree to which individuals take responsibility for all aspects of their learning for self-actualization can be seen as a problem if the learners are not well-equipped to do so. Perhaps the authors imply that there is room for others (state?) to share this responsibility.
What I expected from the title of the section is to hear an argument similar to that of Olssen in the previous chapter/post regarding the individual’s responsibility to learn for the economic benefit of the organization or the nation, and to ensure one’s own spot in the labour market.
Problem 3: Learning as Object of (Self-) management and (Self-) expertise
Learning is seen purely as a cognitive process. Learning results in change, so if one can get a hold of the cognitive processes involved in learning, one can affect the change that results. ‘Experts’ specializing in cognitive psychology view knowledge as the output of a process that starts with information: the human as machine (my metaphor). When learning is objectified in this way, as a process to which experts can focus their attention and interventions, it is implied that by acting on the learner-machine we can improve the output-knowledge. The learner is seen as someone who should become meta-cognitively aware and adept at managing the (production) process of knowledge creation. They should become the experts of their own learning (machines).
Learning and (Self-) government
The authors use the teaching profession Flanders as an example work for which skill is based on competencies and in which lifelong learning is expected and self-directed. Schools and teachers are both encouraged to increase their learning-capital not only learning in order “to enhance the capacity to create.” (p. 52).
They also uses politicians in Flanders and the Netherlands as example in that they claim a role for government in offering LLL for “lifetime employability.” (p. 52).
Governments should “stimulate an attitude” toward learning as something for which one should be self-motivated and something that contributes to a learning society. This will-to-learn of the individual and collective is an imperative for the local and the global.
Their final example illustrates that social problems are now situated as learning problems. Poverty and social exclusion are conceptualized as a lack of human capital or failure to learn the appropriate values. The authors suggest that humans are characterized primarily as learning organisms. That subjectivity is how we are positioned in society. Being a part of society means being an efficient manager of personal-human-capital. The authors quote the EU (1995, p.2):
…individual’s place in relation to fellow citizens will increasingly be determined by the capacity to learn…(p. 53).
In the move from social citizens to entrepreneurs of the self, individuals must plan their own developmental strategies and assume the related risks in competitive environment where those that take the wrong risks, are left to suffer the consequences. In order to assume the role of entrepreneur of the self and the associated risks, an individual needs some perception of potential benefit: a stimulating principle. That perception requires the development of desires.
The authors refer to a ‘permanent economic tribunal’ (p. 53, referencing Foucault, 2004, p. 253?) in which the subject is (self-)governed. All is seen in terms of economic entrepreneurship. Social relations are recoded in terms of investment and assets.
The authors suggest that 3 dimensions align in today’s governance:
- Epistemological. Truth is based on governmental rationality of entrepreneurism in which even the social is economized.
- Strategic. The state enables tactics and technologies to promote entrepreneurship.
- Ethical. The freedom to self-govern through the establishment of a particular subjectivity which has 4 components (reference to Foucault, 1984, p. 33):
· Involves human capital (in the form of knowledge/competencies)
· An economic tribunal, characterized by an attitude of desire to maximize human capital
· View of learning as an investment toward productive inclusion
· The understanding that productive inclusion will lead to personal satisfaction.
The Business Ethics of Self-Mobilization
Skills, knowledge and competencies need to be mobilized. But these are attached to people, so it is necessary that people self-mobilize. Each much capitalize on one’s own value and mobilize one’s capital. For this, one needs a disposition to invest in learning lifelong. As business ethics, it is a kind of adaptation ethics: mobile and flexible; primed and prepared. It is felt as a responsibility to capitalize the self “toward self-mobilization and learning as investment” (p. 55). Certain instruments have developed to aid this process. The authors describe the portfolio as a kind of wallet of competencies. It presents the self in terms of economic value. They also refer to the Europass as an instrument to standardize and make portable and assessable learned-capital. The authors note that such an instrument can also be harnessed to produce data which can be used as a technology of governance regarding human capital.
The authors use the term learning apparatus to refer to an inter-connected complex of dispersed practices and discourses promoting entrepreneurship and the capitalization of life through learning. Its goal: to secure adaptation of capital. Within the apparatus, policy challenges become translated into learning problems with capital adaptation as the solution. The will-to-learn is both a product and an instrument in the apparatus.
Learning to be Free or Freeing Ourselves from Learning?
The original question the authors sought to answer was:
who is the subject who that accepts learning as the force for repositioning oneself in society?
Their answer is: the entrepreneurial self. The E.S. experiences learning as capital that has to be self-managed, and, he or she does so in a particular governmental configuration. The governmentality of learning is that it is an instrument for the mobilization and adaptation of capital.
What does it then mean to be free? The authors position a condition of higher autonomy in which the learner is free from the state, institutions, teacher, economy etc. I am personally not comfortable with this formulation. What could this actually mean? One cannot be free in any absolute sense from these agents. Perhaps the authors mean, but did say, that they are attempting to consider how one can a greater degree of freedom from these elements. But hey, I’m just guessing here. Regardless, the suggest that in order to be (more) free, one has to forget, acknowledge that this conceptualization of learning is an instrument and effect of the governmental regime, and reconceive learning in a different way.
The irony the authors present surrounds freedom. The learning apparatus makes us believe that we are free. Thus, we do not see the need to liberate ourselves and do see the need for emancipatory learning. We need to free ourselves from the experience and notion that learning is necessary for our freedom.
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The next blog will be posted in 2 days and will summarize and reflect on the 5th Chapter in the same book. Written by Ulf Olsson and Kenneth Petersson, that chapter is entitled:
The Operation of Knowledge and Construction of the Lifelong Learning Subject
In this chapter, the authors problematize knowledge and knowledge production as they compare discursive practices in
- · Teacher education
- · Public health, and
- · Criminal Justice
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