Lincoln Social Science Centre Public Lecture 27 th September, 2012 ‘Democracy is not only...

Lincoln Social Science CentrePublic Lecture

27th September, 2012

‘‘Democracy is not only something Democracy is not only something to fight for, but fight with’ to fight for, but fight with’

The radical potential of higher The radical potential of higher education in a time of crisiseducation in a time of crisis

Michael FieldingInstitute of Education, University of London, UK

[email protected]

The Functions of a UniversityJohn Macmurray (1944)

‘Unless the life of the university is effectively bound up with that of society around it its learning must become pedantic and its educational activates largely sterile.’

‘It must be a place where knowledge is unified, and not merely a common house for disjointed specialisms.’

’The Functions of a University’ Political Quarterly (1944)

4-fold Crisis of the UniversityMichael Burawoy (2012)

1 Fiscal crisis – no state funding2 Legitimacy crisis – loss of ‘legitimacy as a public good working with public funding’

3 Identity crisis – ‘To restore public confidence the university has to recover its place in society by establishing an ongoing relation with publics. We need to

redefine the meaning of the public university develop the university as a place of intense dialogue, a community of critical discourse

4 Governance crisis – bureaucratisation and corporatisation of teaching and research

1. Education in + for radical democracy

Proclaimed, not just an intended democratic vitality St George-in-the-East Secondary Modern School, Stepney, Cable

Street, London on 1st October, 1945 Alex Bloom set out to develop

‘a consciously democratic community … without regimentation, without corporal punishment, without competition’

‘we need to develop the (HEI) as a place of intense dialogue’ How do we ‘name’ what we aspire to?

Schools …Higher education …

as places of intense dialogue, as communities of critical discourse (1)

2. Radical structures + spaces

Participatory traditions of democracy Minority spaces Shared public space, especially General Meeting

Formal and informal spaces for dialogue, discussion and disagreement How do we respond to Macmurray’s

insistence that an HEI is not just a collection of specialist departments, but a place where we make sense of the interrelationships of knowledge, where culture (i.e. meaning) is made together?



3. Radical roles

Radical collegiality + possibility of intergenerational learning

‘A cultural-revolutionary attack on rigid roles … role defiance + role jumbling … free sociability from its script’ (Roberto Unger)

Blurring roles ‘The student as the subject rather than the object of the teaching and learning process’ (Neary 2012) ‘Parrhesiastes’?



Michael Fielding’s

Patterns of partnershipHow adults listen to and learn with students in schools

6. Intergenerational learning asLived Democracy

shared commitment responsibility for the common good

5. Students as Joint Authorsstudents and staff decide joint course of action together

4. Students as Knowledge Creatorsstudents take lead roles with active staff support

3. Students as Co-enquirersstaff take lead role with high-profile student support

2. Students as Active Respondentsstaff / student dialogue to deepen professional decisions

1. Students as Data sourcestaff use information about student progress / well-being

4. Radical relationships

Relationships less bounded, more exploratory Power is not the only characteristic of human relations

that prohibits or facilitates different kinds of outcome.

Equally important, and especially so when taken into account

with the calibrations of power, are relationships i.e. the way we regard each other, the way in which our dispositions are directed and shaped by our willingness to treat each other as persons in our own right, as beings with all the distinctiveness and possibility our uniqueness proclaims and the rich commonality our humanity presumes and requires.


as places of intense dialogue, as communities of critical discourse (4)(a)

4. Radical relationships (continued)

When teachers and students begin to work in these new ways they are not just redrawing the boundaries of what is permissible and thereby jointly extending a sense of what is possible: they are also giving each other the desire and the strength to do so through their regard and care for each other

How and why we work together is crucial The work of progressive intellectuals ‘should reflect the

ways in which the social relations of capitalist society might be transformed’ (Mike Neary on Bertolt Brecht)


as places of intense dialogue, as communities of critical discourse (4)(b)

4. Radical relationships (continued)

‘Giving the aged poor their pension and providing them with medical care may be a necessary condition for their self respect and dignity, but it is not a sufficient condition. It is the manner of giving that counts and the moral basis on which it is given.

Whether strangers at my door get their stories listened to by their social worker, whether the ambulance man takes care not to jostle them when they are taken down the steep stairs of their apartment building, whether a nurse sits with them in the hospital when they are frightened and alone. Respect and dignity are conferred by gestures such as these.’ (Michael Ignatieff The Needs of Strangers 1984)


as places of intense dialogue, as communities of critical discourse (4)(c)

Democratic fellowshipas the synergy between

emancipatory structures & roles and human-centred relationships

‘Fellowship is life and lack of fellowship is death, and the deeds ye do upon the earth,

it is for fellowship’s sake that ye do them.’ William Morris A Dream of John Ball (1888)

Roles Catalytic nexus Relationships

Structural creativity

Democratic Fellowshipbased on principles of equality, freedom

and care for the other

Dispositional drive

Enabling EncountersExample

Person-centred Student-Led Reviews

‘Resilient Circumstances’Example

‘Student as Producer’

Structural responsiveness to democratic values

creates new spaces, roles and expressive

opportunities

Dispositional energy and generosity

creates new forms and processes of

encounter

5. Personal + communal narrative Making meaning, personally + communally How do students students and staff together students + staff + publics make meaning of their work?

Historical narrative of radical traditions Connect to radical traditions



6. Radical curriculum, critical pedagogy + enabling assessment

Interrogate the given + co-construct knowledge of how to lead good lives together

Connect to radical forerunners e.g. North East London Polytechnic (now University of East London) School for Independent Study Ian Cunningham’s work on Self Managed Learning Groups

Start with local before you transcend it


as places of intense dialogue, as communities of critical discourse (6)(a)

6. Radical curriculum, critical pedagogy + enabling assessment (continued)

Integrated forms of staff / student enquiry

Participatory Action Research Students as Producers / Lincoln University Researcher Education programme

Flexible forms of assessment Roffey Park Business School accreditation of Sussex University MSc in People and Organisational Development.


as places of intense dialogue, as communities of critical discourse (6)(b)

7. Insistent affirmation of possibility

Generosity of presumption - no ability labelling Emulation, not competition Intrinsic motivation + communal recognition, no

marks and prizes How do you come to know / utilise/ celebrate the diversity of all who are part of LSSC? honour the ‘100 languages’ of learning? encourage and respond to surprise?



8. Engaging the local

School as reciprocal resource + site of community renewal

Mutual re-seeing of presumed identities

HEI’s vital reciprocal relationship with local community



9. Accountability as shared responsibility

Accountability is morally and politically situated, not merely technically + procedurally ‘delivered’

Develop new forms of ‘accountability’ Co-develop framework of democratic accountability that expresses the values and aspirations of the Lincoln SSC



10. Regional, national + global solidarities

Learn from history – importance of values- driven networks + alliances

Alex Bloom and the New Education Fellowship Links with range of local, national and international organisations with similar values



Prefigurative practice

Rather than waiting until all the necessary social engineering has been done education through its processes, the experiences it offers, and the expectations it makes, should prefigure, in microcosm, the more equal, just and fulfilling society …

Schools should not merely reflect the world of which they are a part, but be critical of it, and show in their own processes that its shortcomings are not inevitable, but can be changed.

(Roger Dale)

Waystations + ‘Real Utopias’Erik Olin Wright

Central to the problem of envisioning real utopias concerns the viability of institutional alternatives (waystations) that embody emancipatory values, but the practical achievability of such institutional designs often depends upon the existence of smaller steps, intermediate institutional innovations that move us in the right direction but only partially embody those values

Democratic experimentalism Roberto Unger

We need to establish ‘small-scale, fragmentary versions’ of future society because without these kinds of ‘experimental anticipations … there would be no way to pass from one set of assumptions about group interests, collective identities, and social responsibilities to another’

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/nesson/blog/wp-content/moeda02.jpg

Some changes have to start now else there is no beginning for us

We must

‘release the imagination of what could be ...

Some changes have to start now else there is no beginning for us.’

(Shelia Rowbotham)

Dimensions of Prefigurative practice

1

Profound change

7 Celebrating + contesting

history

2 Education +

radical social change

8 Persistent pull of

personalism3

Positional restlessness9

Radical incrementalism4

Permanent provisionality10

Strategic engagement

5 Transgressive holism

11 Institutional transformation

6 Transformed community

12 Narrative engagement

Lincoln Social Science Centre Public Lecture 27 th September, 2012 ‘Democracy is not only...

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