{"id":8734,"date":"2022-03-31T16:53:49","date_gmt":"2022-03-31T15:53:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/?p=8734"},"modified":"2022-03-31T16:53:51","modified_gmt":"2022-03-31T15:53:51","slug":"spectacular-disconnections-2022-from-partygate-to-the-schools-white-paper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/spectacular-disconnections-2022-from-partygate-to-the-schools-white-paper\/","title":{"rendered":"Spectacular disconnections 2022: from Partygate to the Schools White Paper"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Dr Chris Beighton explains how the recent White Paper on school reform shows a disconnect between the Government’s vison for an equitable education system and how they seek to achieve it. <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alongside the invasion of Ukraine, two news stories from 29th<\/sup> March 2022 echo recent research carried out in education \u2013 and, interestingly, each other. On one hand, a Metropolitan police investigation<\/a> into \u201cpartygate\u201d showed how social distancing rules were widely flouted at Downing street during COVID lockdowns. On the same day, the government\u2019s Education White Paper<\/a> announced a new policy of reducing inequality as part of its famously opaque \u201clevelling up\u201d agenda. Critics have already suggested that the latest White Paper\u2019s goals are underfunded, impractical\u00a0 and ideologically driven: plus \u00e7a change<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, these apparently unrelated stories provide a noticeable spectacle of disconnection: boozy parties were organized as the nation stoically endured deprivation and grand announcements about \u201ctrust-led\u201d<\/a> education display a lack of evidence or funding in this quest for \u201cperformance\u201d and \u201cuniformity\u201d. Neither show much regard for those really affected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This disconnection reflects recent research<\/a>. March 2022\u2019s White Paper (\u201cOpportunity for all: strong schools with great teachers for your child\u201d)<\/a> and its January 2021 FE counterpart (\u201cSkills for jobs: lifelong learning for opportunity and growth\u201d)<\/strong><\/a>have more in common than just grand(iose) claims.They share more than just another attempt to make young people job-ready through an agenda of back-to-basic skills, apprenticeships and a now-familiar gruel of lifelong, lifewide \u201ceducation\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This recalls a Dickensian universe, where malicious psychopaths like the Squeers in Nicholas Nickleby<\/em> exploit their charges for profit in the name of education. Having thankfully resigned such Victoriana to history, we are now seeing a shift away from strictly concrete educational outcomes towards what French thinker Michel Foucault (1926-1984) called \u201cbiopolitics\u201d. By this, Foucault meant that politics is becoming increasingly involved in cultivating living processes<\/em> rather than the production of actual stuff. Industrial attempts to monetize creativity, wellbeing, even sustainability (inter alia<\/em>) are now familiar educational tropes, and the online quasi-spaces, virtual architectures and hyper-real multiverses, all designed to hothouse them, are discussed at length elsewhere<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Naturally, the 2022 White Paper\u2019s desire to help students \u201creach the full height of their potential<\/a>\u201d is laudable (if semantically questionable). The issue lies in the vision of an effective,  equitable  education system; the way in which both White Papers both seek to achieve it; and the spectacular disconnection that they imply.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Critics of this disconnection readily highlight the admittedly \u201ccringeworthy\u201d spectacle of the Chancellor at a petrol pump<\/a>. But the real disconnect is the one which uses policy to position people  – and society more widely  – as purely biological<\/em> entities. Claiming to  \u201cunlock\u201d our \u201cpotential\u201d by \u201charnessing the incredible energy\u201d  only seeks to \u201cbenefit [our] mental health and resilience\u201d in order to monetize these processes and ablate life\u2019s social, moral and emotional multiplicity. This is because foreclosing the fundamentally social<\/em> value of our lives reduces us to logistical units to be managed<\/a>; excluding the moral value<\/em> of our lives legitimizes unethical behaviour<\/a>; and eliminating the emotional value<\/em> of existence dehumanizes us all.<\/a> It is partying through the spectacle of our own disconnection.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr Chris Beighton is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Humanities and Education Studies.<\/a> <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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