"Education" as a topic is very complex and hard to define. We might think of schools, classrooms, teachers, but whatever we choose to include as "education" inevitably excludes something. This is the problem of making a distinction about anything - but it is exacerbated when we think of education. The exclusion/inclusion problem creates uncertainty, and this uncertainty has to be managed through a process which usually involves talking to each other. Since talking to each other about important things is something we do in education, the topic of "education" is uniquely caught in a web of conversation. At the beginning of my book, I quoted Everett Hughes, who I think gets it about right when he says that education is a "complex of arts" where:
Philip Augar's review of post-18 education funding has been fairly warmly received - partly because of the thoughtful tone it sets, and its modest reprimands against some of the more outrageous excesses of marketised higher education. However, as many commentators have pointed out, in cutting the headline fee for students, but increasing the repayment period, it is appears more socially regressive than the current system. The message hasn't changed: it is the job of job of students (the young) to pay for their education (pay for their elders to teach them) over the course of their lives, although it is recommended that the loan funding to pay for education may be available for more flexible study options. The rationale is that the young benefit from education financially.
This week I've been involved in two separate discussions about the future of work. That Artificial Intelligence and global data is going to transform the workplace is barely beyond doubt. Exactly what kind of impact it will have on opportunities for the young is as yet unclear. Will every automated service create an equivalent number of jobs in other areas? Will the growth of profits of large corporations which benefit from a falling salary bill trickle-down to those left behind in the rush to reduce expensive human labour? Or are we heading for a data-coordinated future of globalised gig-work at globalised rock-bottom wages? If this is the future for the young, who could blame them for questioning the fairness of the financial burden they bear for an education which turns out to fall short of the promises made by their universities?
This is how we depress the future. As Stafford Beer said (in an unpublished notebook):
In these kinds of simple things - of the elders sharing resources and talking with the young - there is something very important that we've missed in our educational market. Teaching involves the revealing of one's understanding, and the existential need to teach may lie with the elders, not the young. The gains for the young to participate are not always obvious to them (or anyone else). Promises made by the elders to the young about future riches are not always believable, but behind them lies the desire of the elders to encourage the young and preserve humanity after the elders are dead. Successful companies understand the importance of supporting the next generation, and they don't do it for the future financial benefit of the young. They do it to preserve the viability of the business.
If the existential need is to teach, not for the young to learn for future financial gain, then the elders should pay the young to be taught, for them to reveal their understanding to the next generation before the elders die. Only seeing it this way round makes any sense looking into the future: the young will have their own children, they will become the elders, they will have an existential need to teach, and they will pay their young to learn. The spirit of encouragement drives one generation to the next.
Now look at what Augar has tweaked but otherwise left untouched. Despite some florid prose extolling the virtues of education, the underlying existential issue is financial gain for the young through the acquisition of knowledge and certificates. The elders (of whom Augar is one) are merely functionaries in delivering knowledge and certificates. The promise of financial gain will be broken amidst employment insecurity, rents, lifelong debt and inequality. They will look at the elders and see their big houses and long lifespans (damn it, they won't even die quickly and leave an inheritance!), and ask how it is that their hopes for the future were diminished. Their only respite will be to inflict a similar injustice on their own children as they mutter "there is no alternative". This is positive feedback: the spirit of despair infects one generation to the next.
Augar's report is thoughtful though, so I don't want to dismiss it. One of his targets is the breaking down of the monolith of the 3-year degree course, and reconfiguring the way the institution's transactions with its students work. This is good. But Corbyn was right about the financing of education and who should pay. It's not just an argument about one generation of students. It's an argument about a viable society.
"the manner of practicing them is the very stuff of the clash of wills and interests; thus, the stuff of politics."This is the same confrontation of wills and interests that parents face with their children, that the younger generation faces with the older. But all the way through, it is conversation which is the process of negotiation.
Philip Augar's review of post-18 education funding has been fairly warmly received - partly because of the thoughtful tone it sets, and its modest reprimands against some of the more outrageous excesses of marketised higher education. However, as many commentators have pointed out, in cutting the headline fee for students, but increasing the repayment period, it is appears more socially regressive than the current system. The message hasn't changed: it is the job of job of students (the young) to pay for their education (pay for their elders to teach them) over the course of their lives, although it is recommended that the loan funding to pay for education may be available for more flexible study options. The rationale is that the young benefit from education financially.
This week I've been involved in two separate discussions about the future of work. That Artificial Intelligence and global data is going to transform the workplace is barely beyond doubt. Exactly what kind of impact it will have on opportunities for the young is as yet unclear. Will every automated service create an equivalent number of jobs in other areas? Will the growth of profits of large corporations which benefit from a falling salary bill trickle-down to those left behind in the rush to reduce expensive human labour? Or are we heading for a data-coordinated future of globalised gig-work at globalised rock-bottom wages? If this is the future for the young, who could blame them for questioning the fairness of the financial burden they bear for an education which turns out to fall short of the promises made by their universities?
This is how we depress the future. As Stafford Beer said (in an unpublished notebook):
"In a hundred years from any `now', everyone alive will be dead: it would therefore be possible for the human race to run its affairs quite differently - in a wise and benevolent fashion. Education exists to make sure this does not happen."What is AI? What is the Web? Are they technologies "for organising our affairs quite differently"? They could be. "In a wise and benevolent fashion"? Not currently, according to Tim Berners-Lee and many others, but they could be. Then we come to education. Beer is making a point about education's role in reproducing social class divisions, which Bourdieu famously explained. But education is conversation, and more importantly, an intergenerational conversation. Our technologies are tools which both afford the coordination of conversation, and create new kind of remarkable artefacts for us to talk about. And these conversations are intergenerational: to be able to summon-up movies, videos or documents on demand and watch/read them together, whether online or together in the living room with our kids is profound and powerful. Something very special happens in those conversations.
In these kinds of simple things - of the elders sharing resources and talking with the young - there is something very important that we've missed in our educational market. Teaching involves the revealing of one's understanding, and the existential need to teach may lie with the elders, not the young. The gains for the young to participate are not always obvious to them (or anyone else). Promises made by the elders to the young about future riches are not always believable, but behind them lies the desire of the elders to encourage the young and preserve humanity after the elders are dead. Successful companies understand the importance of supporting the next generation, and they don't do it for the future financial benefit of the young. They do it to preserve the viability of the business.
If the existential need is to teach, not for the young to learn for future financial gain, then the elders should pay the young to be taught, for them to reveal their understanding to the next generation before the elders die. Only seeing it this way round makes any sense looking into the future: the young will have their own children, they will become the elders, they will have an existential need to teach, and they will pay their young to learn. The spirit of encouragement drives one generation to the next.
Now look at what Augar has tweaked but otherwise left untouched. Despite some florid prose extolling the virtues of education, the underlying existential issue is financial gain for the young through the acquisition of knowledge and certificates. The elders (of whom Augar is one) are merely functionaries in delivering knowledge and certificates. The promise of financial gain will be broken amidst employment insecurity, rents, lifelong debt and inequality. They will look at the elders and see their big houses and long lifespans (damn it, they won't even die quickly and leave an inheritance!), and ask how it is that their hopes for the future were diminished. Their only respite will be to inflict a similar injustice on their own children as they mutter "there is no alternative". This is positive feedback: the spirit of despair infects one generation to the next.
Augar's report is thoughtful though, so I don't want to dismiss it. One of his targets is the breaking down of the monolith of the 3-year degree course, and reconfiguring the way the institution's transactions with its students work. This is good. But Corbyn was right about the financing of education and who should pay. It's not just an argument about one generation of students. It's an argument about a viable society.
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