Misplaced Loyalties: The role of Business in establishing Schools

There's a common call from politicians from all sides that "industry" should have a direct hand in education. Among the arguments presented is that a business-focused curriculum which teaches "real-life" skills (and not useless academic stuff) is better delivered by, or at least organised by, people who are actually involved in business, who can introduce real-world scenarios and inculcate students into the ways of the world at a much younger age than they would otherwise encounter it. University Technical Colleges are but one example of this thinking.

Sounds great, doesn't it! After all, so much academic knowledge - the kind of stuff that appears on GCSE and 'A' level papers - is completely useless. The reductionism of knowledge into the curriculum of 'subjects' doesn't represent the true nature of knowledge as it is lived and breathed in the world. It only really exists like that in education. So, an 'authentic' real-life approach to education seems sensible. As always, the devil is in the detail.

To establish an industry-led educational intervention, the first thing that is needed is: a project! Projects are excellent vehicles for bringing together funders, builders, teachers, industrialists, parents and children. Projects must be managed, so the first thing is to appoint a project manager. Projects have goals, deliverables and milestones, and the role of the project manager is to ensure that these are met. If the project manager doesn't do this, they will be deemed not very good at their job, and probably lose it. Funders have public money to spend: they're job is to ensure that money isn't wasted. If it is, they will be seen to be not doing a very good job and held accountable. Builders want to get money to build buildings. They don't really care if the school itself is successful: they win whichever way it goes. Industrialists may have a social mission to get involved in education, but education is not their main business. Any failure within an education project will not impact on their operations elsewhere, so the project is less critical to them than it is to a project manager. Of course, some industrialists may see business opportunities in engaging in education: these are the most dangerous! Teachers probably already have jobs, and their engagement with a project might be strategic in positioning some kind of career advance, or it might be that they feel that their present position is under threat unless they comply with the project. The point is that there are a wide variety of commitments to any project to create an industry-led school.

Now it gets interesting. The person who stands to lose most if the project fails is the project manager. Let's say a business partner in the project realises the vulnerability of the manager in requiring the business's cooperation. Let's say the business seeks to gain other benefits or advantages from the project manager and their institution and threatens to leave the project if these are not granted (they are, after all, businesses, and this is what business does!) What can the project manager do? Very little, it turns out, because to lose the business would be to lose the trust of the funders, and the project would then fail and the manager would lose their job.

Where are the students and the aims of the school in all this? The project's aspirations to transform education get lost because of the difference in aims and objectives of the stakeholders - particularly the businesses. The lack of shared objectives results in a retreat to a "functionalism" in the project to deliver the basic requirements of the school - curriculum, building, staffing, etc - without any critical questioning about the educational vision at all. Only the teachers will be interested in this, and their voice is drowned by the machinations of business deals in the background. The only goal that unites all the stakeholders is to ensure that the instruments of the project are successfully implemented (this is of particular interest to the developers who build the building!)

The result? A school which is much like any other - there are teachers and children - but where whatever pedagogical transformation was envisaged never materialises because the project functionalism has created an environment of such threat and fear that nobody dares speak out-of-turn. How could it have been different? Only by ensuring that the hearts of the project team were all focused on the realities of education, and the needs of children, not on making money or pursuing other expedient advantages. It would be difficult to make this happen with businesses involved in a powerful position. What appears attractive in theory, in practice results in deeper conservatism than is currently in place within the education sector.

Only the children will have the fearlessness to judge whether the emperor has any clothes on!

Mind. Education. Learning.

There is confusion in educational discourse between a description of "education" and a description of "learning". This might be characterised as a confusion between sociology and psychology: Education is a sociological concern whilst learning belongs within the realm of the psychological study of processes of (metaphysical) adaptation. But what of "mind"? What of the thing that drives the whole show in first place? Educationalists rarely talk about this!

I think one of the reasons that mind gets left out of the educational picture is that the development of mind has got confused with the development of expertise within a domain of knowledge. Displays of subject knowledge are however tied to particular academic practices of meeting 'learning criteria' around which the whole University system has organised itself. Academic performances are not in themselves indicative of a quality of mind, although a quality of mind might be revealed through them (or not, as the case may be). But what are mental qualities?

This is a question I've been asking myself in thinking about Bateson's idea of an 'ecology of mind'. Bateson's description of an ecology of mind is rather vague - certainly open to interpretation of a kind of loose ecological thinking that sees 'interconnectedness' when he talks about the "pattern that connects" without necessarily inquiring into exactly what is connected, or even what a 'connection' or 'pattern' means. Bateson's books only offer tantalising clues as to what he was on about.

The Catholic Aristotelians of the scholastic middle ages took mind more seriously, building on Arisototle's distinction between the 'agent' intellect which actively makes things intelligible, and the 'passive' intellect which receives intelligible objects as a kind of 'in-form-ing' process (the passive intellect is conceived as a kind of plasticine moulded by sense data). For Aquinas, the mind must be able to form phantasms or mental images in order to be able to coordinate the operation of the active and passive intellect. The creation of phantasms is both essential to the identification of particulars of perception, and to the capacity to identify abstract things like mathematical truths. This philosophy no doubt influenced the early university curriculum (trivium and quadrivium), and the development of mind which it sought.

So here there is a domain of:

1. passive intellect being moulded by sense impressions
2. phenomena of the world which are perceived
3. the active intellect which seeks to make things intelligible

From an educational perspective the way that we might compare different configurations of the mind and the way the passive and agent intellect work in different kinds of students important in thinking about how we might hope that the minds of students might develop. 

Although the idea that the passive intellect perceives by being moulded seems a little perverse to us today, it perhaps isn't that different from Hebbian mechanisms, or the effects of habit on perception. But with regard to this, one might expect a correlation between forms in the world and forms in the mind. I've started to think of this in terms of discursive paradigms of thought - so, for example, we might consider the difference between functionalism and critique as examples of different paradigms which are both mental attitudes which have been moulded by exposure to particular kinds of events and discourses. A 'reflective' attitude would be another example, produced by a different kind of stimulus. So these different attitudes might be diagrammatically represented:

Here 'mind' on the left is characterised by different paradigmatic views which are moulded by engagement with the external world of discourse on the right. 

But what of the agent intellect? This is some kind of reflexive mental process which is 'making intelligible' perhaps in the way that Katherine Hayles argues when she says (of reflexivity):

"Reflexivity is that moment by which that has been made to generate a system is made, by a changed perspective, to become part of the system it generates." (in "How we became Posthuman", p8)

In the above diagram, this generation of the system occurs in the top right hand part of the diagram. It's connected to the paradigmatic forming of the passive intellect, and actively engaged in the world of discourse and matter. With this tripartite relationship, it is possible to see how concepts form, paradigms are established, people are moulded and minds may either become dulled or enlightened. In particular, the possibility of a 'knot' emerging between the active and passive intellect in relation to the world is perhaps an indication of a self-sustaining loop which would maintain concepts in consciousness.

Of course, the really interesting thing is What happens to students? Students often arrive at university with a disconnect rag-bag of knowledge. Using the above diagram, this might be represented as: 

Here the are clear domains within which there might be a self-sustaining dynamic, but there are aspects of practice and aspects of thought which are entirely separate and disconnected. When encountering this, what can/does a teacher do?

There are effectively two domains where a teacher might intervene: either in a logical way (top right) by suggesting new ways of looking at things (actually this is really a discursive intervention), or within the domain of practice. With the latter, the intervention of introducing new domains of practice, new experiences and so on can (and does) lead to new questions being asked, and existing paradigms being challenged. New interventions in practice also invite new logical explanations. The question is what kind of interventions? How might they be selected?

Between disconnected domains of understanding, there are limits which become evident in the way that contradictions emerge in student explanations. Limits define areas where students' experiences in the world have not caused those limits to be questioned. In other words, the limits of understanding are reflected  in limits around practical experience. The obvious thing for a teacher is then to start to probe new kinds of experiences which exist in the gaps between the practices with which understanding has become habituated. Psychotherapists do this when they probe the assumptions that are made about entities which have not been deeply inspected: "tell me about your mother"... and so on. But such interventions need not be so explicitly psychotherapeutic.

I find it interesting that the relationship between the trivium and quadrivium also maps onto the idea that teachers can only intervene in the logical domain and practical one of new experiences. The logical domain required new skills for thinking: grammar, logic, rhetoric. New experiences came from exposure to astronomy, music, arithmetic and geometry. Now of course, new experiences come from the Oculus Rift, biofeedback and so on. Maybe the old skills for thinking need to be rethought in terms of mindfulness techniques, or maybe the logic of limits which is revealed in the drama, art, music or mathematics. 

Music, Science and Status: An exploration in search of an efficacious social science

Stravinsky’s famous remark “Music is incapable of expressing anything but itself” tends to be taken to refer to his antipathy to "sentimentalism" in music, or to the idea of a correlation between notation and emotional experience of either composers or listeners. Music has no reference - so how can it express emotion? The mystery is that whilst music might express nothing, it certainly communicates. How does this happen when there is no proposition about a state of affairs which is asserted? All that there appears to be is a declaration that “this is music”.

John Cage made a way of marking out what music is by simply declaring the sounds of the world as music: his 'silent' piece 4'33'' is simply a declaration of "this is music" - a declaration which many experiencing it might disagree with, although few could be unchallenged by it. When a number of people are drawn to the declaration "this is music", there is some kind of communication (even if it's about the fart that rang out in one of the early performances of 4'33''). Would this communication be possible without the declaration that x is music? 

What is interesting here is that declarations like "this is music" can serve to raise the status of somebody making it. Cage's reputation suffered no loss with 4'33''. Equally, scientists make declarations like "this is gravity", or "this is a Higgs Boson". Equally, there is a network of status mechanisms which are called into play following such a declaration. These mechanisms implicate the person making it, social institutions like universities, learned societies and journals, popular opinion and the media which conveys it, analytical criticism, and (crucially) the internal content of the work (the internal details of an artwork, or the veracity of theoretical claims and their foundations). How do these factors relate?

There are many reasons for focusing on musical work as a case study for exploring this question about status. In particular, the absence of reference in a musical work (unlike a scientific theory) specifically throws the spotlight on status mechanisms themselves. In effect, it helps us explore the conditions under which the declaration "this 'nothing' is a something" might be upheld. In turn, we go on to argue that this insight helps us understand that although scientific theories present apparently rational criteria for judgement, there are also many aspects of scientific claims which are no less lacking in reference than an artwork, as Feyerabend has argued. 

The declaration of something as something and its relation to its internal content

A declaration may be thought of as what Searle has recently called a ‘status function’. Searle situates status functions as those speech acts which articulate different bits of social reality. The social reality he considers he divides into the “ontological subjective”, “ontological objective”, “epistemic subjective”, “epistemic objective”. What kind of statements apply to music? To answer this question we have to compare “Beethoven died in 1827” with “This is Beethoven’s 5^th symphony” with “Beethoven’s 5^th symphony was written between 1804 to 1808” with “Beethoven’s 5^th symphony has four movements” with “Beethoven’s 5^th symphony is beautiful”. The statement about Beethoven’s death is epistemically objective: a statement of normative fact. By this token so too is “This is Beethoven’s 5^th symphony” and “Beethoven’s 5^th symphony was composed between 1804 and 1808". Normative facts have truth values attached to them. “Beethoven’s 5^th symphony is beautiful” on the other hand, is a statement of “epistemic subjectivity”. It is like saying “I don't like red”. At the same time, the statement “Beethoven’s 5^th symphony has 4 movements” appears to be a statement of ontological objectivity - like "the speed of sound is 340.29 m/s"; but perhaps it could be that this is epistemic objectivity too - after all, the status function "this is a movement" is epistemically objective. However, the tension between the statements “Beethoven’s 5^th symphony has 4 movements” and “Beethoven’s 5^th symphony is was composed between 1804 and 1808” reveals something about the difficulties in establishing a clear position regarding the declarations that surround music.

But all these declarations are oriented practices and conventions involving people and technologies who come together and make a particular sound. What are they doing? Why are they doing it? Can they not see that there is nothing there? Are we all victims of the kind of misapprehension that afflicted all but the little boy in the story of the "Emporer’s new clothes”? If that is the case, what are the status functions concerning the naked emporer which leads everyone not to see that he is naked?  The issue concerns the relation between status declarations and truth.

Status functions exist within the context of power structures. The status function “'Tristan and Isolde' is a fantastic opera" is not only an expression of opinion (or normative opinion) - it can also be an expression of expectation in a situation between a boss and a subordinate, which will result in the subordinate being forced to sit through hours of opera in order to curry favour. The consequence of such an unfortunate episode is that if one’s taste in music would never be stretched to agree to listen to Wagner for hours, then one would expect a certain kind of inner tension to arise. Similarly, we might look at the status functions that are imposed and supported by the radical Islamists in arguing “This is jihad” – What does the status function “This is Jihad” mean? What about “This is an academic conference”? The tension is brought out through the interplay between the content of experience and the status declarations that are made about it.

The declaration of the status of music relies on a network of status functions which constitute power structures ("x is the boss", etc). We might start to unpick these, but among the different responses to the conflict between power structures is the maintenance (and contribution to) of certain kinds of practice. The tension between maintaining status functions contributes to the conditions for reproducing them. This seems particularly important with regard to statements about things which apparently have no reference - like music. Yet music has content, and musical practice communicates without reference (Stravinsky never denied communication). Alienation arising from impossible power relations frequently gives rise to emotional artistic expression. Why? And what is the relationship between the content which forms the substance of a status declaration and the social structures which uphold it?

The Content of Music

What is declared as “Western art music” has certain features which analysts make further status functions about: "harmony", "counterpoint", "melody", "form", "tonality", "instrumentation", "rhythm", and so on. Music analysis is the practice of making status functions about the parts of the content of music. Sometimes these declarations of parts are then used to reconsider the status of the utterance of music itself: Schenker famously thought there was no great music after Brahms – largely because he was not able to fit any music after Brahms into his remarkable analytical scheme.

In analysing the parts of music, theorists hope to identify those components which appear to be causal in the way that music communicates. By abstracting patterns and comparing them with feelings there have been various ways in which things get codified, Schenker sought to identify the components of experience as they related to the fundamental structures of music so as to understand the way that music itself was ordered.

Musical content exhibits a structuring which appears in many aspects to be universal. It is rather like the way that the structures of mathematics exhibit a content is independent of discourse. Whilst other forces may create situations where universality of feeling or meaning are not expressed, there are enough examples (particularly from ethology) where universality is sufficiently exposed between people - matters of love, attachment and loss provide the most compelling evidence. This is where music communicates – and it does so without the need for a common reference.

Our question is therefore, What can be said about the content of music as it relates to its social context? This may be the same question as “What is to be said of truth in society?” Whilst music expresses nothing but itself, it communicates in the interaction between its social context and its intrinsic qualities. In this process of interaction, what emerges are shifting patterns of expectation between players.

The Communicating of Music

For Schutz, communication in music occurs through a mutual ‘tuning-in’ between participants. In bringing together the thought of Husserl with that of Weber, Schutz’s idea of “mutual tuning-in” is based on his  idea that music offers the chance to share in the lived experience of others. For Parsons, and later for Luhmann, utterances in ordinary communication (with reference) were the result of a calculation of the relative expectations between individuals of the likelihood of success of a particular communication within a social context. Schutz argues that the grimaces and the bodily contortions which are associated with the engagement with the material content of music and music-making are the means by which we gain access to each others lived experience. It is this insight into each others’ lived experience which is, for Schutz, the means by which music communicates.

The sharing of a performer's lived experience involve some acknowledgement of the limits of someone else; just in the same way as we are amazed at the acrobat's manoeuvres because we understand something of the limits they face in performing. What is required is an understanding of how limits emerge, what causes them, how they are reached, how they are surpassed. The limits of society entail status functions which conflict. Within any social situation, agents find themselves having to negotiate a complex web of limits and restrictions. Agents have to make choices. We might speculate the rationale that sits behind choices, but in reality it is hard to be able to understand the motivation behind the selections that are made. This entails a logic of expectation where the overlapping of expectations is causal in the production of utterances.

Expectation play a role in artistic experience. If the nature of expectation is seen to be structured, or to reveal a structure then the question about expectation must be related to the ability to determine the elements of probability which surround a particular utterance. Here we are faced with a fundamental situation which is at once artistic and communicative: any utterance, any picture, any sound exists within a context. There is always figure and ground.

In information theory, the characterisation of figure and ground is characterised as a balance between entropy (or the 'negentropy' of 'information') and redundancy. Redundancy frames messages in the way that grammar frames language. In the work of Ernst Gombrich (see his "The Sense of Order"), he analysed particular patterns of redundancy in the patterns of background in decorative art. In music too, the redundancy associated with Alberti accompaniments, together with the grammatical forms of tonal structure all testify to repetitions upon which variations are situated.

In human communication, to say that a set of expectations must be consistent for communication to take place is to say that there must be a set of expectations between people which are effectively redundant. This is a turn in Shannon’s own theory, for it turns out that communication is not measured in the transfer of information (negentropy) but rather in the overlapping of redundancy of expectations.

The 'ground'-nature of redundant forms in artistic communication suggest that there might be a relationship between redundancy and absence (I gather Lacan says something about this with regard to his concept of 'lack' and redundancy). What is absent is what is all around us, but which we fail to notice. Here we might bring the notion of limit together with that of absence and that of redundancy. A limit is a point of balance in the mid-point of two sets of structures. One might imagine the limit between different interpretations of a law, or a moral dilemma. Limits exist against a background – absences ('empty' sets) maps on to all objects between which there might be tensioning of limit. Feyerabend argues that paradigm shifts in science may occur not only with critique of different theoretical positions, but when the background to those positions changes. This is like a melody played in one context appears entirely differently with a different accompaniment. So here we can start to draw a picture of the ways that different status functions might overlap in the context of redundancies or absences and different status functions are held in check.

If the absences pertaining to redundancy of expectation holds other limits in place, then situations are possible where status functions are held in place within a society because of the redundancies of expectations of members of a society. Here we might find the conditions for the mutual maintenances and stability of a set of contradictions such as exist in Bateson's 'double-bind'. Indeed, most institutional structures seem to embody different 'knotted' structures of the double-bind (think of Church, university or the family). It might imagine that absence or redundancy ‘bends’ an arrow which maps members of one set onto another - thus producing knotted structures like the Trefoil knot. Another way of conceiving this is to consider a relationship between classical logic (the logical of the excluded middle) and dialectical logic. This relationship between classical and dialectical logic is a relationship between degrees and strata on the one hand (dialectical) and truth and falsehood on the other (classical). Category theoretical structures enable us to characterise both kinds of pattern. The determination of truth and falsehood is dependent on the ‘sub-object classifier’ within category theory, whilst the structuring of objects is dependent on the relationship between initial and terminal objects.

Limits in Scientific Rationality

Scientific rationality depends on the determining of regularities in scientific experiment. But what is this determining of regularity if it is not also the determining of probabilities of expectation? The question with regard to this process is the problem of being fundamentally unable to determine the parameters around the totalities about which the probabilities of events might be calculated. In determining the parameters of the fundamental totalities, there is a patterning and an ordering of reality which results in the ways that totalities are determined, and this patterning and reality is connected with the fundamental structures which are themselves related in some way to truth.

Another way of saying this is to say that the space of mutual expectation, or mutual redundant expectation is the space where theory arises. Here we see both a logical (analytical) construct for thinking about music, and a measurable practical component. Given forms of redundancy and absence, the process of theory-building is to determine the relationship between the redundancy that is identified through experience and the object to which it aims. It is to determine this both in an abstract theoretical way and in a way which is linked to empirical measurement. With the joint status functions of empirical evidence and logical characterisation, a new limit of critical orientation can be formed, which in turn produces new redundancies which in turn create new scientific ideas. Naturalism is a process of defining the limits (defined socially) which relate the status of the empirical with the status of the logical.

The structure of musical experience and the nature of empirical objects

Musical experience is structured. Levels of redundancy are revealed and wash over one another: one accompanimental pattern over another; melodic fragments become accompaniments; the redundancy of rhythms overlap with the redundancy of harmony and the redundancy of melodic patterns.  When we think about this, are all the redundancies different levels of expectation? As they overlap, so the nature of truth (the tendency towards resolution and finality - the arrival at unity) and falsehood change over time and the nature of status objects. The truth of music is revealed in a process of establishing a limit which converges to resolution. This process both specifies ordering of ideas (in the sense that the subobject classifier identifies an ordering) and at the same time time it configures the relationship between a possible initial starting point and a likely end-point. The declaration "This is music" is itself analysable as a limit between social relations, personal identity and musical content. It is sustainable when the three forces constraint each other in a stable co-dependence.

Whilst the shifting patterns of redundancy within the musical content are both synthetically (empirically) and analytically (logically) determinable and give a sense of the ordering of the musical structure (this is perhaps not dissimilar to Schenker's graphs). If the characterisation of the logical structure can extend beyond the music content to the social matrix within which the status function "this is music" is made, then richer and more contextual descriptions can be made about the relationship between the content of a creative process and the social structure within which claims (status functions) might be made about it. Moreover, if we can determine the relationship between the content of a creative endeavour and its social structure in both an analytical and a synthetic way, then a possibility arises for deep contextual assessments of status functions relating theories (analysis) with experiment (synthesis).

Conclusion

Arguments between Kuhn, Popper, Lakatos, Feyerabend and many others rest on difficulties of establishing the connection between the content of scientific creative work and the social structures within which they are made. Understanding the relationship between creative artistic works and status focuses the challenge in formulating both analytical and synthetic explanations and presentations whose coherence at a deep level might provide a deeper basis for both theoretical development and practical innovation. 

Computational Social Science and Social Naturalism

In recent years it has become possible to computationally calculate relations between people, documents and words in terms of the analysis of communications and the modelling of social dynamics. The implications of this “computational social science” on naturalistic social inquiry are disputed. The way that utterances between individuals relate can be investigated: this might entail analysing the correspondences between the use of words, phrases and topics in different contexts, determining the relative probabilities of those topics or words occurring across contexts and making inferences about the related semantic content between different contexts as a result. This approach belongs to a tradition of studying information in terms of the probabilities of the occurrences of symbols which was instigated by Shannon, and which a number of authors have related to the processes of human communication (although Shannon himself excluded this possibility). As more communication practices are bound by technology, probabilistic analysis of communication presents remarkable results in affording the clustering of cognate areas through automatic analysis, making possible automatic topic identification, the clustering of social groups through communication patterns, automatic identification of learning needs, preferences, and so on. Consequently, economic opportunities present themselves through the emergence of recommendation services, direct marketing, learning support, social prediction, and so on.

In contrast to the statistical techniques which view communications as ‘bags of words’, purposeful and meaningful utterances constitute lived experience where communications implicate and manipulate social positions between agents: expectations, intentions, meanings, ambitions, experiences and power struggles contribute to the constitution of both social institutions and individual experience. Unlike relations, positions are inhabited by agents. Despite the success of the algorithmic analysis of communication relations, most communicating occurs away from the internet. What is the possibility of a computational analysis of the inter-human positioning of meanings, expectations and power struggles? What is its connection to the computational analysis of relation between people, words and documents? What import does this bear for a naturalistic approach to the social sciences?

Objects of Analysis and Analytical Objects

A computational analysis examines data produced through social interaction (usually from the internet). Internet-based interactions are declarations of facts, feelings, opinions, states of affairs made by agents for the purpose of positioning between agents. An analysis of the words that constitute declarations is also a declaration – also for the purpose of positioning. The present analysis here is also a declarative contribution to discourse and the purpose here is positional. How might an understanding of the social dynamics of what might be considered ‘codes of communication’ arise through what can only be a participatory process in the reproduction and transformation of those codes of communication?

We might begin by making a distinction between experience, utterance and analysis. Searle has recently suggested one way of doing this, making a distinction presenting “ontological subjectivity” and “epistemological subjectivity”. For Searle, consciousness belongs to the category of the “epistemological subjective”: these are the as-yet uncodified transcendental constructs relating to Husserls’s “horizon of co-givenness”, Freud’s primary process or Luhmann’s ‘psychic system’. By constrast Searle presents the “ontologically subjective” as a way of characterising social institutions, documents, artefacts, practices, technologies and social roles. Searle argues that ontologically subjective objects are brought into being by a particular kind of speech act called a ‘status function’. In arguing for this, he argues for a ‘collective intentionality’ which upholds status functions and thus serves to constitute social reality. Searle’s collective intentionality can be compared to a coordination of expectations within a system of communication as is described by Luhmann.  Status functions are themselves utterances – among their basic forms is the statement “X counts as Y in C”, but this is one of many forms of utterance.  In this way, Searle’s categories serve as a way of distinguishing between objects of analysis – spreadsheets,  social network graphs, economic forecasts and so on – about which status functions as expressions of collective intentionality and positioning will be made (“X counts as Y in C”), and the epistemically subjective realm of consciousness within which coordinations of utterances emerge.

Considering the difference between relations and positions in this light, it is possible to make the status function “this relation is a position” – indeed, this is a common status function among those who would wish to assert the legitimacy of simple social network analysis as isomorphic to social ordering. Such confusion between relation and position presents an opportunity to explore related status functions concerning the legitimacy of data analytics in the first place and the particular algorithms concerned. Since positions are inhabited by agents, we might expect the false assertion of positions to lead to difficulties in establishing the appropriate collective intentionality required to uphold the status function. However, assertions of relations as positions sometimes do become accepted for periods of time, supported by acceptance of other status functions (of the deontic power of those making the declarations, for example), only for them to eventually be critiqued and overturned.  Indeed, radical changes in positioning involve the dramatic overturning of status functions relating to social role or position: revolution is the name we give to the overturning 

of the status function “I am the king”; Western powers are currently engaged in an attempt to overturn the status function "This is a caliphate".

The Analysis of collective intentionality

Since status functions are upheld by collective intentionality, status functions are themselves positional (they implicate power, ambition, expectation and meaning). It is reasonable to ask whether algorithmic analysis which exposes position rather than relation is possible. Such an analysis depends on postulating dynamics of multi-dimensional communications of everyday life. Techniques for analysing relation rely on Shannon’s theories about information, entropy and redundancy which can be applied to the distribution of symbols of communication in a large system like the internet. These techniques applied the analysis of relation appear to produce striking and revealing results. However, the experience of encountering such an analysis is effectively one of being subject to a status function relating to the analysis by various means of other status functions contained in internet communications in which many agents (possibly including the viewers of the analysis) participate. In short, to be ‘convinced’ by a relational analysis is to be positioned by those making the status declaration about the analysis. This then raises the question as whether it is possible to produce a computational analysis where the positioning itself might be revealed, thus revealing the deeper dynamics of collective intentionality.

Before addressing this question, there is an obvious concern: is a status function concerning a positional analysis any different from a status function concerning a relational analysis? The problem here becomes one of assessing the impact of a status function of any analysis. Status functions of all kinds are positional – they implicate what Searle calls the ‘deontic power’ of the person making the declaration – however sophisticated, power, ambition, meaning and expectation all play a role. They further implicate status functions concerning the method (algorithms) and underlying epistemology of any analysis that is pursued. Since methods and epistemologies will entail transcendental  components which are metaphysical (and therefore unprovable) methods, and analytical objects will always be vulnerable to critique. So why bother attempting to develop an analysis of positioning between agents?

Moving beyond a relational algorithmic analysis to one that attempts to capture the dynamics of collective intentionality presents an opportunity to explore different empirical metrics whose values may be compared to logical structures which express different social theories. If a connection between logical structure and empirical measure can be established, then a naturalistic inquiry emerges as a possibility in the social sciences whereby theorized social ordering can be compared to measured data. This would address a problem in the social sciences whereby research practice frequently exhibits a kind of ‘naturalistic gap’ as theories are used to design interventions, but where theory-practice gaps result in changes to practice at the expense of theoretical critique  (resulting in pathological positioning).  In other words, richer analysis – particularly the analysis of collective intentionality should be seen in the context of an empirical activity which stimulates disputation and analysis between statements of logic (theorized social structures) and status of empirical fact (empirically measured structures). Might an analysis of positional data present an opportunity to exploit data analytics with regard to social naturalism?

The Logical characterisation of social structure and the possibility of naturalism

Social analysis – particularly as it is undertaken in economics – tends towards quantification of social structure through econometric modelling (Hodgson, 1988; Lawson, 1999). Social network analysis has provided new means of representing social structure as relational entities. Both econometric and social network analysis presents logical and empirical aspects. The logic of econometrics has been heavily critiqued in recent years as not only divorced from reality, but responsible for economic pathology whereby econometric models which have little predictive or explanatory power are nevertheless forced on the population (Lawson, 1999). A similar story of forcing social network idealisations on a population have emerged in the manipulation of user responses to social software and gamification. In such situations, the theories that sit beneath the models are not critiqued, whilst economic policy attempts to force practice so that its measurement fits the econometric models used for analysis. In other words, there is a ‘naturalistic gap’ between prescribing policy interventions without theoretical development or refinement.

Social network analyses, however, do provide a glimpse of the logic of a social structure: indeed, the graphs of positional social network analysis are essentially logical, not empirical. In representing relations between nodes and arcs, the logical structure of the diagrams bears comparison with what Kauffman (1995) calls ‘arrow epistemology’ alluding to Category Theory (Mac Lane, 1972; Goldblatt, 1982). In arguing for such logical presentation of structures as a network of arrows, Kauffman argues that “it enables us to draw connections with the kind of diagrammatics that occurs in artistic, linguistic, physical and philosophical contexts.” (Kauffman, 1995, p 38). Extending this to the category-theoretical constructs of objects, limits, exponents, push-outs, pull-backs and sub-object classifiers, Badiou (2006), Meillassoux (2008)  and others have argued that logical mathematical representations of social structures may present new directions for naturalistic investigation. In the present context, the connection between such logical structures and empirically-derived networks pertaining not only to relation but also to position are of interest. This is to address the naturalistic gap between theory and practice through the comparison of two status function: one which asserts the status of the empirical object (the social network analysis of relation or position); and the other which asserts the status of the logical description. A naturalistic approach may then explore the differences in ordering between the two, which in turn represents the gap between theory (as represented by the logical) and practice (as represented by the empirical).

This may be described at a simple level. Any status function, if it is to be upheld within its context (in other words, if it is maintained within a particular code of communication), will exist by virtue of the dynamics of other communications. Kauffman has suggested how certain ‘knot’ topologies may be mutually reinforcing. Using the example of the Trefoil knot, it is possible to see where a particular topology of communication may serve to maintain those communications owing to the mutual constraint that each communication bears on the others. Noting this, a logical representation can find fuller description in Category theory by articulating the limits bearing upon each aspect of the communication dynamics, and the way in which each limit relates to each other limit.

Within the empirical technique for identifying positions described above, the logical representation of constraint identified in category theoretical limits becomes translated into the empirical measurement of mutual redundancy. The empirical measurement of positions rests on the identification of redundant expectations which can be analysed through communications. A theory may express the view that certain status functions are upheld within certain dynamics of communication. Measurement of redundancies of communication can confirm or deny this, thus requiring changes to the representation of logical structures and deeper analysis of empirical data.

In normal science, reproducible experiment and regular successions of events (as described by Hume) may itself be reinterpreted as a probabilistic exercise in the identification of redundant expectations (Meillassoux). By this description, theory-building emerges from the identification of mutual redundancy produced through empirical practice. A positional data analysis coupled with the articulation of theory as logical structure similarly is a process of identifying mutual redundancies of expectation between the theory and empirical results. In particular, category theoretical articulations of social order articulate limits at different points in a structure which empirically correspond to the constraints of redundancies. The correlation between limits and redundancies only works in a positional analysis, since a relational analysis simply considers connections between nodes rather than constraints bearing upon them.

References

Badiou, A (2006) Logics of Worlds

Bhaskar, R (1979) The Possibility of Naturalism

Goldblatt, R (1982) Topoi: The categorial analysis of logic

Hodgson, G (1988) Economics and Institutions

Kauffmann, L.H. (1995) Knots and Applications

Lawson, T (1999) Economics and Reality

Luhmann, N (1980) Social Systems

Mac Lane, S (1972) Categories for the working Mathematician

Meillasoux, Q (2008) After Finitude

Searle, J (2007) Making the Social World

Shannon, C; Weaver, W (1952) The Mathematical Theory of Communication

Marina Warner and the New Lindisfarne moment: What price Scholarship?

Marina Warner's excellent piece in the London Review of Books about her quitting Essex University (see http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n17/marina-warner/diary) in the wake of managerial pathology, educational functionalism and mindless philistinism is a warning to all of us about the desperate state of higher education today. To put it briefly, what we have seen within the space of about 5 years is a technocratic coup in universities whereby non-scholar managers have equipped themselves with tools (the REF, workload allocation, impact analysis) whereby they believe they make defensible judgements about scholarship. In fact their decision-making is seldom in the interests of any scholar, and Warner is a shining example of the fact that nobody is safe. Universities as homes of scholarship and research are under serious threat. Many universities are now homes of managers sucking the life out of culture like shady art-dealers and auction racketeers, doing deals on middle eastern beaches, basking in the reflected glory of the human struggle for truth, exploiting the priestly trappings of social status, whilst reducing the whole thing to the ting of the cash register as they reward themselves like bandits, and mesmerised students drop handsome donations (which they haven't earned yet) into the collection plate on the pretext that it might grant them happiness and security.

The tick of the deathwatch beetle which Warner describes as the warning signs (closing the history of art department; putting the Latin American collection up for sale; Derek Walcott’s visiting post not being renewed, at the express insistence of the vice-chancellor) will resonate with everybody in higher education. The ticking she talks about is not the threatened "end of the institution" as managers love to frighten their staff with (education is, after all, the new religion - and proving itself remarkably successful as such). The ticking is for the end of culture and scholarship. The examples from my own less lofty institution are rather more ridiculous than at Essex - but it's the same thing - only the ticking is probably louder! The really loud ticking is in the flow of money into bank accounts every month. What becomes of truth and the civilisation it underpins? The Times Higher last week contained an interesting article on the obligation of academics to speak truth to power (see http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/features/feature-todays-intellectuals-too-obedient/2015328.fullarticle)  In my institution and many others, this has resulted in the usual response of despotic regimes: 'disappearances' of staff who are muzzled by 'compromise agreements'. Thankfully, Warner doesn't appear to have signed one!

What must scholars do? The Lindisfarne moment is a name given to moments of exodus when the scholars have to find a hiding place away from the invading barbarians so as to preserve knowledge. In fact, Lindisfarne, which had become a haven for Irish monasticism, itself was sacked by the Vikings in 875: the 'moment' could equally be called the 'Chester-le-street' moment after the place of refuge that was then sought (although that's not quite as romantic!). If things continue as they are, some kind of exodus might be the only option. On the internet? Whilst I don't want to believe it, I'm afraid that's the root of the trouble in the first place... Maybe there's another technological solution away from the prying greedy eyes of corporations. Scholars may become poor once again (but we became too rich in our acquiescence with the managerial elites - personally, I blame the Americans!) The pursuit of truth and the custodianship of knowledge are really what's it's about. Without the scholars, managers - who too are custodians, not the 'owners' they pretend to be - are rather overpaid.

Something and (K)nothing: The knotty problem of shared constraint and project functionalism in the ITEC Project

The ITEC project, which is nearing completion, is probably one of the last large-scale government-funded (EU) e-learning projects that we will see. The era for this kind of thing has gone, and indeed ITEC provides plenty of evidence as to why it has gone. There are many good things that ITEC has done: it has raised awareness of technology across Europe; it has allowed many teachers to experiment with different kinds of pedagogy (particularly inquiry-based, classroom flipping, etc). But against its own ambition to create a technological infrastructure to support 'the classroom of the future', ITEC (like so many other projects before it) has failed. What can we learn from this?

One approach to exploring ITEC is to consider the mindset of those who conceived the project who believed that the ITEC technical interventions would work. Against the nay-sayers, people would point to the adoption of the VLE in education, or the rise of email and mobile phones to say that technology really can change individual practices and social structures. New 'interaction rituals', as Randall Collins calls them, can arise in a new technological context. This is what ITEC sought.

That raises a question about the conditions under which new interaction rituals can establish themselves. Any new technical intervention is introduced to people with a declaration: "this is a new technology for x". This declaration is what Searle calls a 'status function'. Searle argues that the entities of the social world, institutions, objects, textbooks, teachers, schools, etc are all status functions. He argues that it is the declaration of a status function which, if the person  making it has sufficient 'deontic power' then that status function will be binding within the context within which it is made.

Searle's idea is powerful and has far-reaching consequences. However, when a status function is made about a new technology, it is unclear where the deontic power lies. Consequently the extent to which most technological status functions don't appear to have any long-term effect, whilst a few do is not directly explained by Searle's theory. Adoption occurs at the point where there is broad social agreement that the status function is indeed valid (which is the case now for mobile phones, email and social software). However, any new status function is made in the context of many other established status functions within a society. Typically technologies aim to disrupt established interaction rituals involving other kinds of object, practice and institutional structure. Additionally, every  status function, as well as being a statement about what is what in context c, is also a statement about what is not what: in other words, a status function makes a distinction between what counts as x, and what doesn't. Status functions are both positive in affirming an object, and negative in declaring a constraint.

Given that status functions declare constraints, it would not be surprising to see different status functions competing with each other, or contradicting each other: each being each others' constraints. The status functions "I am the master" and "You are a slave" presents a simple example of where one status function is constrained by the other. The master requires the slave to acquiescence; the slave is constrained by the boss in a way which is not advantageous, yet feels compelled to reinforce the boss's power. Fear leads them to be unable to consider life away from the boss's demands. Indeed, in this case, it is fear both instilled by the boss and bearing upon the boss which holds the contradictory relationship between them in place. The stability of such a master-slave relationship may be seen as a basic 'institution': without relationships of mutual reinforcing constraint of this kind every human institution from the family to the firm would flounder.

Technological status functions produce similar patterns of mutual constraint. The assertion, usually by technology corporations, of the status of objects demands the acquiescence of users, whose emerging ritualised patterns of practice entail fears in breaking rituals which further entail the use of the tools about which the status functions are made. The reality of technologies is held in place by knots. But how did the knots get tied in the first place?

In social life, the status functions that each of us lives with comprise highly complex webs of mutual constraint. This makes the intervention of a status function in a pre-existing web of status functions particularly challenging. It is the inability to counteract the forces prevalent in existing status functions that most technologies fail. To say there is "nothing in it for me to use technology x" is to say that existing commitments demand the maintenance of practices which would be unnecessarily disrupted by a new technology. However, in order to understand how it is that some status functions actually do succeed in transforming the knots that people live within, it is important to understand the forces that keep the knots tied together. Since every status function is also a declaration of constraint, and that successful knots are patterns of mutual constraint, the role of shared constraints among the different stakeholders who are implicated in upholding the status of a state of affairs. Through an analysis of constraint, and particularly through a consideration of the relationship between constraint and redundancy, an understanding of the dynamics that distinguish instances of adoption with non-adoption can be explored. In this study, instances of non-adoption are most informative, and since this has been the principal characteristic of the ITEC project, it makes an excellent case-study for examination.

Projects and Status Functions

A project is basically a set of status declarations. The first and most important being the declaration:

"This is project"

Then there are the objects of the project. In ITEC the objects of the project (as set out in the project plan) entail declarations like:

"This is learning scenario (a broad description of educational activity)"
"This is a widget store (a  repository of tools)"
"This is a widget (a tool)"
"This is a widget (tool) for doing "
"This is learning activity"
"This is a "composer" (a way of recording configurations of activities and tools)"
"This is a 'people and events' database (a kind of meetup.com for schools)"
"This is a learning shell (basically a container for educational activities, people and tools - e.g. a VLE)"
"This is an evaluation questionnaire"
"This is a national coordinator of ITEC activities in your country"

ITEC is focused on schools and what happens in the classroom. Teachers are the principal target for the above status declarations. Teachers, in most schools, already inhabit a world of status declarations from various sources:

"This is the headteacher of your school"
"These are the professional expectations for your performance"
"These are the children you are responsible for"
"These are their parents"
"These are the expectations the children's parents have of their children"
"These are the league tables of your school (if they have them)"
"These are the assessments the children will have to pass"
"This is your timetable"
"This is the curriculum"

It is not difficult to see that these two sets of status declarations may conflict with each other. Individual teachers, project officials, national coordinators, software developers, etc. have to make choices about their actions. Each status declaration presents an aspect of constraint against which choices must be negotiated: whilst each declaration makes a statement of the positive existence of a thing (headteachers, widgets, evaluation questionnaires) they simultaneously declare an absence - what isn't a headteacher, widget, evaluation questionnaire, and so on. A status function is a distinction as the declaration of a boundary.

Within each stakeholder, there are unarticulated status functions: the things people might want to say, or declare in the future, but don't yet have the position, evidence, or so on, to articulate their own status functions. Here we might consider:

"This is my ambition"
"These are the needs of my family"
"These are the people I love"
"These are the things that matter"
"This is my strategy"
"This is the domain over which I have control"
"This is the domain over which I want control"
"This is the domain over which I can do nothing"

A project seeks to harmonise its status declarations with the existing status declarations that already exist within the setting in which it wants to intervene. Given that the potential for conflict between the expectations of different stakeholders, any project might hope that it establishes a dynamic between the inner wishes of individual stakeholders, the existing professional responsibilities of those stakeholders, and the innovations suggested by the project. In other words, it hopes that the intervention of the project creates a closed-loop between three constraints whereby the new innovations are established and held in place because of:

• The dynamic between individual ambition and professional constraint
• The dynamic between professional constraint project interventions
• The dynamic between project interventions and individual ambition

We can imagine a situation presented through the metaphor of a trefoil knot. Each declaration is a constraint for the other, but each constraint holds the others in place.

In the imagined situation of a bid, or a design plan, it will be hoped that the Trefoil knot situation is produced in implementation: should this happen, then the technological adoption is achieved. Unfortunately, reality isn't like this. In reality, the professional constraints of teachers dominate and project interventions tend to get ignored.  The education system tends not to change. So what is the difference between the real situation and the imagined situation where adoption is gained? Under what conditions might engagement occur? How do people react when it doesn't?

The constraints between project managers, software developers and national coordinators

The imagined knots of what the project hopes to achieve tend to mask the real knots that already exist within the project itself. The ITEC project makes many status declarations about entities other than software. In particular, there are different types of participant within the project: different roles, responsibilities, and so on. For example, there are those who are in charge of pedagogy, there are those who are doing software development and there are those who are trying to manage it together. Each group of stakeholders bring different constraints, and each group of stakeholders will be enmeshed in their own knots relating to their professional practice and so on. For example, the pedagogical partners know that the status declarations they are responsible for maintaining are those which state:

"This is a learning scenario"
"This is a learning scenario design activity"
"These are pedagogical trends which constrain the design of activities"
"This is the pedagogical discourse with which to make an intervention"

Whilst at the same time, there are other status functions which lie outside the project which will be of concern to anyone involved in pedagogical research:

"This is the educational discourse"
"These are the important journals to publish work"
"These are the deliverables that must be achieved"
"This is the budget"
"These are the people who are involved"
"These are colleagues with whom it would be good to make connection"

Beyond this, there will also be individual strategic, unarticulated status functions which will affect the relationship with the others. Having said this, it may not be the case that each of the constraints surrounding the different status functions will constrain each other. In particular, even within the project teams, it is difficult to identify the shared constraints which hold everything together which can work to maintain all the different status functions which are declared.

The same is true of the other partners in the project. Technical partners are responsible for declarations of particular technologies:

"This is a widget"
"This is a widget store"
"This is a shell"
"This is a composer"
"This is a people and events coordinator"
"This is a training session"
"This is the software discourse to make an intervention"

Project managers must make declarations including:

"This is a completed deliverable""This is a budget"
"This is a change to project direction"

For each of these statements to hold, there has to be similarly a knot where the declarations of pedagogy partners are constraints for the declarations of software developers and consistent with the declarations of project managers. An idealised knot emerges which contextualises the way that the project makes its declarations to ministries and schools. However, the ideal knot with its status declarations does not reflect the reality either of the project team or the groups with whom the project seeks to make an intervention.

The dominant constraint is the meeting of the  project deliverables, and the status functions which apply to that constraint evolve and move to ensure that project success is achieved at the expense of success on the ground.

The emergence of project-functionalism as the binding force of a project (and its consequent powerlessness)

The concerns of those interested in pedagogical innovation in the classroom are not the same as those whose concern is the development of technology. The knots that each individual will experience will be different in terms of the discourses they are trying to satisfy, the ways that they manoeuvre their actions in the project, the goals and ambitions that they harbour and the actions that they then take.

Yet, each of them is funded and bound to a contract whereby funding can be withdrawn unless they cooperate with the endeavour. However, cooperation is difficult since there are many barriers in the way of solving a problem which may or may not exist.

Inevitably, the meeting of the contractual bargain with the project funder is the principal aim of the members of the project. The list of deliverables and the list of things to be achieved in the project so as to honour the bargain is the most important thing. Not meeting these targets is generally seen as a universal constraint. Around meeting these criteria, there can be seen to be common cause and sense in addressing the project deliverables. Coordination occurs through commonalities in redundancies in the expectations of individuals across the different strands of the project. However, the extent to which this constraint impacts on the other constraints involved in the project is negotiable.

The status function of “this is a widget”, “this is a widget store” is presented as a particular technological status function which doesn’t have any grounding in the reality of teachers. However, the status function "This is a widget training session" does at acquire support of teachers. Acquiescence with the latter status function is a trade-off for teachers, who are happy to be removed from their classrooms to take part in widget testing, but where there is little evidence of them doing any more with the widgets.

This can also explain the discrepancy between the evaluation responses of teachers to the questionnaire and the evidence from web-hits on the widget store, and so on. Acquiescing with a questionnaire and giving a judgement on their widget usage depends on the nature of the way that they experience the constraints of the project, and the way that they deal with the constraints that care placed on them professionally. The dominant constraint is the meeting of the project deliverables, and the status functions which apply to that constraint evolve and move to ensure that project success is achieved at the expense of success on the ground.

What arises in this situation is a kind of project functionalism, where the instruments of the Commission become the principal declarations of the members of the project team. The management question is the one that binds everyone together, not the difficult questions of dealing with the things the project set out to change. Is there any way to avoid project functionalism? Are there recommendations for changing the way we deal with projects?

Why project functionalism and not project critique or project phenomenology?

With projects targeted towards the production of concrete deliverables, and these deliverables related to the organisation of activities, project functionalism will always be the grounding force that steers the project towards outcomes. How might a project be organised that didn’t do this? 

A project that seeks intervention in a domain usually usually has little understanding of the domain before it begins.  ITEC is notable for the number of status declarations it made in its bid document before it began. Projects should make as few status declarations as they can before they begin, but instead seek to identify the status declarations and the dynamics which hold them in place in the domain within which they seek to make intervention. In understanding the pre-existing status declarations, the common constraints which hold existing status functions together can be identified. It isn’t enough to simply examine the functions of people within the school environment. It is important to understand their motivations, the problems they face, the binds they are in, and the ambitions they have.

If projects became like the situation they seek to change then they too would exhibit the same constraints as the thing they seek to change. If mutual constraint is the driving force that determines the success of adoption of new tools and practices, then those interventions which are full of redundancies and constraint may be more effective than those which are deterministic in their approach. In this way, artistic interventions can sometimes have a greater impact, since such interventions are characterised by the universality of the constraints they present. Projects could make particular use of games and art as ways of facilitating change within the environment. Art and games are ways in which universal redundancies can be made: they are effectively status functions of ‘nothing’; most of what they declare is absent and consequently the absences affect stakeholders universally.

...Maybe in this way critique and experience can be built in to the project processes from the beginning. 

Technics and Disputation: Where is Mind in Education?

How did we get from scholastic 'disputation' as a means of assessment to learning outcomes? The evolution from scholastic methods which instructed the art of disputation through the 'trivium' (grammar, logic, rhetoric) which was to be applied to the four domains of the quadrivium: arithmetic, music, astronomy, geometry was steadily critiqued, and eventually evolved into the domination of modern university curricula by specialist domain-specific knowledge. What originated as a method for inquiring about disciplinary phenomena for the purpose of the discovery of the mind became a method for applying the mind to the discovery of domain-specific knowledge. We have seen an inversion. From the critiques of Roger Bacon onwards, the need for more specialised scientific inquiry, and the consequent challenge to the doctrinal rigidity of medieval education as a 'way to God', presented a naturalistic inquiry which steadily divorced itself from mysticism in favour of the mastery of knowledge of scientific accomplishment. Yet for a long time, despite the inversion of the relation between mind and nature in education, something of the development and discovery of mind in the light of phenomena survived - but it is very much at risk from the processes of educational industrialisation.

Industrialisation has brought with it a new phase in the relation between mind and nature in education. Some aspects of specialist scientific inquiry still demand some awareness of mind where the pursuit of these disciplines is not particularly focused on the need to 'get a job' (think about the career aspirations of pure mathematicians, or cosmologists). But now, with the industrial emphasis on making education pay, and the "graduate premium" (COR! Wot a Bargain!), technical skill dominates. Indeed, following the computer revolution, scientific pursuit has increasingly become a matter of application of technical skill. Big data risks dwarfing the critical inquiry. Skills can be sold, learning outcomes as indexes of skill accomplishment measured, courses marketed, jobs coveted - but increasingly mind is out of the picture. Universities and their bosses become rich with their mass-produced education religion, but students and teachers become alienated.

Some students will have acquired something of the intellectual armoury which will mark them out in society. There is still a display among students of elite institutions of the rhetorical qualities of the ancient schoolmen: the ability to critically consider things and to engage in successful argumentative defence of their position: they tend to become politicians and lawyers. But these abilities have not necessarily been given to them by their elite schools (although they will have mixed with many others quite similar to them). Mostly, such skills have been bequeathed to them by their families. The after-dinner conversation, the mixing with important people, the confidence to take on authority and engage it. They may well be subjected to tedious regime of meeting learning outcomes like the rest of us, but in the end it will be their intellectual comportment which carries them into successful careers. But this aspect of 'having a mind' has become the mark of educational quality - the badge which grants entry to elite institutions.

What about everyone else? For them, there are only tedious learning outcomes marking the application of technical skill, and the acquisition of these alone is the means by which education is attained in the form of a certificate which may or may not grant access to the next step in the life-chance gamble. Of course learning outcomes and assessment criteria will encourage learners to "synthesize arguments" and "critically examine" - but these demands seem more vestigial of a former age than core to the business of the university in attracting students and pumping out graduates in the pursuit of its own viability.

We now have a society where the discovery of mind is only supported in families - either those of the privileged middle and upper classes, or of those on the radical left. When education becomes a private domain society has a problem. It is the education system's job, and government's responsibility, to compensate for the fact that not everyone comes from a family background that will support their development. At the moment, the education system rewards elite parents with a pat-on-the-back when little Jonny gets his 10 A*s. At a time when social mobility appears to be going in reverse despite rising educational attainment, we should be asking where the mind is in education. This is a systemic challenge, not a discipline-specific one. It is a testament to the mess we are in that the automatic response of the educators is to "create a module" to address the lack that their ever-more instrumentalised system continues to create - thereby creating more lack.

To put mind at the forefront of education is a structural intervention. It is to examine critically how institutions are governed, how they are funded, what expectations we have of them and how staff and students are supported. If there is a light on the horizon it is in the fact that mindless education is dangerous in ways which we are only beginning to discover in our dismal geo-politics. Broken promises, alienation, disempowerment and lack of freedom of expression only lead to tyranny and terror.