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Some remarks on A Manifesto for Education by Biesta and Säfström

Some remarks on A Manifesto for Education by Biesta and Säfström

A Manifesto for Education seems to be timely or is perhaps almost always timely. Education has very often, as has capitalism and democracy, been considered to be in a crisis. Maybe the sense of a crisis is part and parcel of the modern project.

To my knowledge, the manifesto referenced in the heading has reached quite a large audience. It was published in 2011 (see link below) by Gert Biesta and Carl-Anders Säfström. It is a brave act to propose a manifest for Education consideringgiven the multitude of perspectives and areas that constitute Education.

I read the manifest as an invitation to a dialogue, hence my remarks. My reading has more to do with the fact that I believe that a manifest should be dialogical rather than the Manifest being dialogical. My comments pertain both to the Manifest itself and to the comments to the manifest separately written by Biesta and Säfström.

 

Some interesting ideas

Apart from the publishing of a Manifesto in itself there are some things I really like about the Manifesto. In this context, I will mention four of these.

Firstly, I like the idea of taking Education back to Educationalists. Too many other research fields and professions have claims on Education that to me seems unwarranted since they are actually not concerned with Education itself but rather with issues at the fringes of Education. Especially problematic is of course the dominance of New Public Management, putting economics, administration and law at the centre-of –attention and the concomitant quest for evidence-based Education.

Secondly, I like that the authors of the manifest try to pinpoint what Education should mean in terms of the here-and-now. Too often Education is the means to something else such as the means for children and young people to be prepared for adulthood and/or as a vehicle to change society. Biesta and Säfström make a tremendously important claim about Education by insisting and underscoring that Education should be meaningful in its very act of occurrence.

Thirdly, the invocation of the possibility of an ironic reading of the Manifesto by Biesta is well taken. Is this a time for Manifestos? Have Manifestos ever changed the world? This signals a well needed self-distance without giving up the idea of a Manifesto altogether.

Fourthly, I also feel sympathetic towards what I want to call the anger expressed by Säfström in his comment. How can the Swedish school system, from being characterized by higher levels of equity than any other system in the world, have developed into its present shape?

Having said this, I will present what I believe is two major shortcomings of the manifesto.

 

Lack of dialogue

The text is quite polemic. Two enemies towards Education are pointed out: Populism and Idealism. Populism is somewhat loosely characterized but is said to simplify and to be instrumental, turning to issues of “what works”. Idealism, on the other hand, is characterized by asking too much of Education being linked to “democracy, solidarity, inclusion, tolerance, social justice and peace”. None of the two antagonistic positions are ascribed any positive values. Moreover, no distinctions between different ways of being populist or idealist are made. However, as is evident in Säfströms comment to the manifesto (labelled “A manifesto for Education!) at least one of the authors proclaims some of these values intensely, which I find reassuring but somewhat contradictory.

However, the point I wish to make concerns the rhetorical format of the manifest. By establishing and homogenizing “the others” there is no opening for dialogue. From the perspective of the authors, nothing is to be learned from these strawmen/women: If You are not with us, You are against us.

 

Lack of clarity

It is a little bit like kicking in open doors to state that there is a lack of clarity in the Manifesto as to the central issue of what Education is since a lack of transparency is admitted to by the authors themselves. However, it is quite clear that Education is something of a the Holy Grail in the document. This illusive Holy Grail it is located in the here-and-now and it is relational, it is neitherot an empty reminiscence of the past, neither nor a quest for the future. It has to do with freedom, these rare moments when “speech” occurs and the resources used in this process are “ethical, political and aestethical in character”. This is about how close we come to understand Education. This of course ties in with the reasoning above about being non-dialogical, in order to use the word Education we now have to abandon most, if not all, of it prior meanings.

 

The future and the past

As has been said It is a little bit reassuring that Biesta in his comment to the Manifesto (A manifesto for Education?) considers the possibility that a Manifesto written today has to be ironic. This too is a little bit contradictory although I find Biesta’s reading more balanced than the writing of the Manifesto. However, I do not read the Manifesto as something that is tied so much tied to the present as being reminiscent of older narratives. Something is endangered by outside forces. This something is holy and so deceptive that it cannot be described properly but the heroes of the narrative will most likely save it. I think we need more modern tales characterized by dialogue and openness to different definitions of what constitutes Education.

 

Link to the Manifesto:

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.2304/pfie.2011.9.5.540


 
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