Abstract
The issue of schooling is being thoroughly analysed by a number of excellent scholars in this special issue. It is a very comprehensive analytical work which I intend to take into a commentary consideration in this brief article. Schooling is a matter of great and recent concern not the least from a political point of view, where schooling seems to take on a specific role that deals with not only schooling as a normativity but also schooling as the absolute forming of students. Despite ongoing disagreements on what kind of schooling may prove the best as well as the correct form of education as a whole, in this paper I argue that relevant science may have a pretty good idea as to how to apply schooling in such a way as to ensure that teaching is applied equally efficient. It is, however, slightly more difficult to see how this very same science and the above mentioned knowledge finds its way into educational policies not to mention finding its way into the classroom. I argue, that schooling is not (surprisingly and not only) society’s tool for data delivery and data interpretation, but also (and perhaps rather) some certain specific actors of society’s tool for culturalization. This thereby changes schooling from being an educational tool only, a mere transfer of data and a formation of students into a political tool, thus creating a notion of schooling being more or less synonymous with a different kind of formation, a formation of a quite specific nature to suit quite specific properties. I claim these properties to be of an economic, market oriented and universalist nature. I therefore wish to draw attention to two aspects of interest: the oddity of science’s position in this matter, where science appears to have plausible answers as to how the best possible schooling looks like, however, at the same time – not surprisingly - also seem to live up to politically phrased demands in accordance with the premise of the competition state. This, off course, give rise to further questions on the necessity of politically independent universities and the pressure they underlie.
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The following constitutes a comprehensive commentary to schooling as a term with many faces, as demonstrated by a line of brilliant scholars in this special issue. This paper may seem slightly drifting away from its role as a commentary article. However, I base my commentary on two articles especially; Åsta Birkeland and Siv Ødemotland (2018) and their article on their educational exchange with Chinese kindergarten on one hand and Thomas Szulevicz’ article (2018) on the perhaps improper marriage between psychology and (what he refers to as) neoliberal schools.
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Dorsch, H. The Issue of Schooling….or How to Tame a Horse. Integr. psych. behav. 52, 459–473 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-018-9437-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-018-9437-7