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School and future: failed interpellations
Myriam Southwell1
University of La Plata and FLACSO, Argentina
Introduction
The future has been a strong structuring notion of the development of the school from
its origin and until today, we could say that it is an inherent notion to the very idea of
school. Modern school was consolidated through an articulation between education and
utopia: society would be what school made of it.
This notion is reactualized whenever it is argued that some social phenomena
arise as a result of insufficient school education from aspects that can range from
solidarity and democratic values, to traffic laws and tax education.
My interest in this article is to problematize this school / future articulation by
dwelling on the ways in which it is currently enunciated in our schools, as well as on the
evocation usually made of how that formulation worked in the not too distant past.
I am also interested in analyzing whether this is the only way - with a
universalist claim - that the school can be linked to the future or whether it is a
particular story, and thus one of several possible ways. Finally, we will conclude by
proposing some possibilities to recreate that relationship.
Perceptions about the future
To begin, we will present some testimonies of Principals of Secondary Schools
of the provinces of Neuquén, Salta, Buenos Aires and Buenos Aires city (Argentina).
These testimonies were collected through a research program "Intersections between
inequality and secondary education: an analysis of the dynamics of production and
reproduction of school and social inequality in four jurisdictions" which began in 2006
and has been continued through different projects.
A conceptual aspect that should be highlighted is that the principals' perception
of who the school students are and who they can be, what role the community has and
what kind of links with the culture the school must lead, model, configure and
establishes strong marks on the decisions that promote certain training experiences for
the young people who attend them.
Thus, a central conceptual element for our analysis is the perfomatic character of
language, that is, following Austin (1962/1988), performative acts must be considered
in terms of their effectiveness, success or failure, and the effects they produce.
It is about the production of subjects, that is, the constitution of subjects as
effects of the meaning of social discourses, which form significant frameworks that
interpellate subjects through different subjective "types", constituting them (young,
excluded, student, delinquent, etc). As we will explore later, interpellation - as a form of
nomination - produces the subject by establishing the coordinates of their identification
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and therefore their positioning (and existence) in the network of relationships that
structure the social. Interpellation does not address a subject that already exists prior to
this act, but produces it in its own operation. The very gesture that "places us" in the
framework of social meaning, invests us with a power to be and to do. It constitutes us
in the social existence and enables us to be able to do from that positioning.
What perceptions do principals have about the future of their students? What
links exist between these perceptions and the horizon of school action? The following
testimonies arose from consulting the principals about the future they envision for their
students and what is the impact of the school in relation to that future. Responses
significantly varied based on the social sector to which students belong:
The students know that the secondary certificate serves them to be repositories
of merchandise in (supermarket), they know that they arrive there, nothing more, but
the objective of the school would be to achieve something else" (State school, Buenos
Aires city that attends middle-low classes).
They are students who are still pursuing progress, who expect the school to give
them a degree for their job, without many aspirations, of course. The secondary school
gives them certifications ... maybe, in their perspective, the university is not yet much.
Here, for example, many of these families are registered to be police, for the army, for
the Armed Forces in general "(State school, province of Salta, which serves the lower
class).
For these students? I believe that they have no insertion (...) In these cases I
believe that our children are disadvantaged because they are young people who do not
have facilities to access some work, much less thinking about their orientation:
mercantile expert. That's something we see, our graduates are working in a
supermarket, they are not working in an accounting studio, they are helping as
secretaries. (...) "And, I do not know if I see them studying, I do not think most of them
go to the University" (School state, province of Neuquén, that attends to lower class).
I think most of them do not want anything, they want social assistance and
nothing else, they do not have aspirations, they have no future, they will get a taxi
driver" (State School, Buenos Aires province, which serves low sectors).
We also asked principals how they would define "being literate," and what they
think their students should know to live better in the world. The responses in this case
also varied significantly based on the social sector to which the students belong:
P: DO YOU THINK THIS GUIDANCE YOU HAVE, DOES IT TOOLS TO
THE STUDENTS?
If I have to be honest, I do not think so. (...) We cannot get them to read and
write well; decades ago, a pupil who could not read and write well could not approve
or finish primary school. Now ... one day we receive them, and they finish secondary
school without knowing how to read, write and understand. Thus, they will not be able
to understand the texts of study at the University. (State school, province of Buenos
Aires that attends to lower class).
We do not succeed, the school fails to overcome what they bring, they bring a
lack of reading and writing, some grammatical errors and a lack of understanding that
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the secondary school years can not reverse. Despite all the efforts made at school when
high school is over and professional studies are started ... the teachers themselves tell
them that they have a very low level, and that they can’t continue ... then they fail (State
School, Buenos Aires city that attends low- and middle-low sectors).
I imagine some of the students on their land because, given the agricultural
orientation of the school, the activities they have in their homes, I imagine them in their
land. To other students I imagine them working in the companies because they long to
work in companies. And others, quiet. (State school, province of Salta that attends low
sectors).
Students talk a little, as is customary in their homes ... And it is something that
will not allow them to be able to perform in the labor market, and continue university
studies. (...) What I hope is that they continue studying. And I do not know if they will be
able to continue studying, I think that as things stand, it will not be possible, at least for
the majority. (State School, Province of Neuquén, that attends lower class).
Let us focus on some of the highlights that leave these testimonies. There seems
to be no future surplus for students, especially those belonging to the most
impoverished sectors; what could be a recognition of diversity (multiculturalism and
different levels of knowledge) ends up describing a situation of social inequality that
disrupts the life of the school. From diversity to inequality: this is a displacement that,
on many occasions, "naturalizes" the different levels of knowledge as an inexorable
product of social origin. There is a school production of its own, and not just a
reproduction: to the extent that origin is seen as destiny, and just like that, there is an
action done by the school (Dussel, 2008).
There is also a general view that the school has very little impact on that future,
an almost null possibility of altering inexorable destinies; the possibilities of
transforming and improving conditions seem to involve not the school, but rather more
general political and economic institutions away from school. Frequently, the horizon is
restricted to providing basic skills (associated even to primary schooling). Secondary
schooling would not be an extension of this basic training, but a recovery of time lost in
previous years. These perspectives conspire against the formation of reflexive and
critical subjects, with an impact on collective dynamics.
In the testimonies included, there are references to behavior that are associated
with a certain social sector (even when social class issues are not directly mentioned). In
some cases, although there is not so much discontinuity in the social sectors of teachers
and students, a vision of separate and opposing worlds persists (Dussel, 2008). In that
sense, there is a consideration of the "inferior condition" of the new social subjects who
entered secondary school in the last decade and is expressed in a construction of an
opposition: "they", young people, new students and a "we": the adults, who were
already here. "They" have different codes, different values. Expressions such as "we"
receive them but "they" fail to reveal that dichotomy us-them and does not provide the
best conditions to think about the incidence of what is done daily in school so that
students have better tools for through a complex world.
In the scenario that we have been describing, institutions are positioned in
different ways based on the idea of the future that they favor for their students and
different ways in which they read their own formative potential. Likewise, the values
raised by the principals account for a nostalgia that the school "before" contained a
perspective of the future and was effective in that task, nevertheless, our present schools
seem to have irretrievably lost that horizon. This can be seen in different aspects, for
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example, a growing "resignation" with which they understand the conditions of
departure of their students, the potentiality they assign to the school or socio-cultural
characteristics of the nearest environment. In short, because the school does not
empower the future that used to have as a horizon, then, that strengthens the feeling that
there is no future for these students.
Conceptions of future
As we mentioned at the beginning, the notion of future structured the very idea
of school from its origins. However, we would like to dwell on two aspects. On the one
hand, this generalized and unquestionable notion of the future consisted of a peculiar
construction that consolidated a particular set of values. Secondly, in the schools where
our research was carried out, there was often a conviction that "futures were those of the
past", but it is necessary to examine whether the Argentine school of the past decades
was constructing an inclusive, promising and equalizing future for the whole
population. We will begin by examining this second aspect in order to expand the
argument on the former. Our analysis will be maintained at the middle school level, as
will the testimonies with which we have begun the same.
Brief history of the school model
When analyzing the relationship between secondary school and the horizon it
opens for young people, it is important to revisit the history of the secondary level, as it
provides some structuring elements of school organization and its founding myths that
are still valid (see Dussel , 1997 and 2008, Tenti, 2003, Southwell, 2011). The history of
secondary school in Argentina raises substantive differences to that of primary
education. While primary education was aimed at the whole population, with an
institutional organization that provided massive coverage, in secondary education its
role was linked to the formation of elites, a characteristic that - with the expansion of
the level - remained as part of its internal logic.
The first secondary schools - even before the construction of the Argentine
educational system - were thought of as preparatory education. This was defined by
their relationship with university education, on which they depended. They shared their
same characteristics, the titles conferring only made sense within the longer course by
university studies. Its main objectives were the formation of aristocracy and
bureaucracy, colonial first and national later. To fulfill these functions, the preparatory
schools had a strongly ritualistic and formalist character.
In the period 1863 - 1890, the model of National Schools (like public school)
was developed in all the important cities of Argentina; the National School model
carried a unified model of liberal education in big cities of the country. The humanities
became a sign of cultural distinction, but also a technology of the self, in terms of which
involved a governing work of the individual's passions and inclinations (Dussel, 1997).
Being able to speculate and contemplate nature, or "high culture" were part of a more
general transformations in the ways in which individuals should govern themselves
(Hunter, 1988). It was an educational modality that covered a very low percentage of
the population (less than 1%), belonging to the upper class of society. This model
persisted with slight modifications throughout the 20th century, and included the
existence of some educational institutions as reference models for all institutions.
The expansion of secondary schooling did not take place until the late 20th
century, in the first decades of which different vocational modalities were created for
social sectors that would’t enter higher education. However, as Gallart’ (2006) and
Acosta’ (2008) studies have shown, new vocational modalities had less social value
than than "bachiller" (Upper Secondary Education Graduate) for upper and rising
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middle clases, in the first decades of the 20th century. Throughout the twentieth century
there was an expansion of enrollment (in 1960, 24.5% of young people and adolescents
aged 13 to 18 attended secondary school). However, as the system grew more, as
droped out grew up. Tedesco (1986) points out in 1886-1891 period drop out in the
National Colleges was 68%. Several recent papers indicates that the graduation rate was
50% in 1950. It achieved a positive evolution in the mid-1960s when nearly 70% of
students graduated. This rate abruptly declined towards 1980s and was around 40% in
the 1990s, a rate lower than 1950 (Acosta, 2008).
Between 1960 and 1980, there were attempts to modify the traditional structure
of secondary school by other more "appropriate" modalities for massification processes.
At that time, most establishments continued to form programs of the late nineteenth
century, only partially modified in 1957 and ideologically retouched in 1983. With the
return of democracy, in 1983, there was an increase in enrollment (whereas in 1960,
24.5 per cent of young people and adolescents between the ages of 13 and 18 attended
secondary school, in 1996 the figure was 67.2 per cent). Also maintained an
institutional model based on the rigid model of the humanist baccalaureate.
The school appeared as a rigid, almost prison space that allowed confronting,
opposing, and also recognizing itself in that mirror of differentiation and identification
that constitutes adolescent subjectivity (Kancyper, 2003). It is worth asking, how much
of this matrix remains and how much has been transformed? This description does not
seem to correspond with the Argentine secondary schools we know today, although
some schools are still attached to certain rigid rituals and disciplinary guidelines, it is
not generally perceived that a school is felt as a prison institution, or that the authorities
or schedules are totally inflexible.
Looking at historical and current perspectives, the role of secondary school as
preparing for distinction and social hierarchy, has remained present even when
classrooms were occupied by students who did not belong to the elite. This history
constituted a persistent matrix -with slight modifications- throughout the entire
twentieth century. As Dussel (2008) argues: "among the elements of this lasted
grammar, we can emphasize the centralized organization, (...); the encyclopedic
humanistic curriculum as the basis of the hierarchy of knowledge established by the
school; the organization of classrooms, rituals and school discipline that followed rigid
forms, centered on adults and designed for the elite formation; the structure of schedules
that perpetuated the fragmentation of knowledge and the disarticulation of the formative
proposal in small topics”. Moreover, there is an aspect that defines secondary schools
identity: during all that time, a sense of "belonging" to a select group, and that
belonging implied a formation that gave certain identity that unified teachers and
students in the perception of doing something meaningful for their lives, and for the
country.
The current secondary schools are the result of two tendencies in the face of the
challenge of massification: the tendency towards the continuity of the institutional
model of the elite humanistic schools in the face of the tendency of rupture that
supposed new modalities produced in the moment of expansion of the school high
school. This form of configuration of secondary level institutions functioned as a model,
an image for the schooling of young people, which often constituted a limit to the
principle of equality of the republican proposal (Acosta, 2008). On the other hand, this
model included a perspective of the future oriented to the inclusion in the administration
of the State that was being formed and expanded, to dialogue with a certain hierarchy of
academic knowledge where some social experiences were left out (such as manual labor
and trades ), in order to fulfill already expected and scarce social roles and leaving aside
other vital experiences while being a student: parenthood and work among others.
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Perhaps the appeal to that horizon of academic formation, rigid and ritualistic in today's
middle schools - in another society and with broader social sectors - is the basis of a
failed interpellation; a mismatch between institutional and curricular organization, on
the one hand, and forms of relationship, authority and expectations.
Interpellations about the future
In the previous sections we raised a problem about the future prospects in our
schools. I wrote that in these assessments operates a historical matrix of the school that
is central to the adults of the institution, but that does not seem to affect the young
people who study in them. We call that failure an unsuccessful interpellation. We will
briefly dwell on a conceptual analysis of the notion of interpellation.
The notion of interpellation was described by Althuser in 1969 as a function by
which individuals recognize themselves as subjects, that is, in this process the subject is
articulated, constituted and subject to recognition in a specific identity. Althusser refers
to the ways in which subjects are called to place themselves in certain social roles,
interpellated by various ideological apparatuses (family, Church, school, among others).
We will take the Rosa N. Buenfil Burgos’ definition (1993) on interpellation as
an educational act:
What specifically concerns an educational process consists, from an
interpellation practice, that the agent is constituted as an active educational
agent incorporating some new content, behavioral, conceptual, etc., into this
interpellation, that modifies his daily practice in terms of a more grounded
reaffirmation. That is, from identification models proposed from a specific
discourse (religious, family, school, mass communication), the subject is
recognized in said model, feel alluded to or accept the invitation to be that
which is proposed (Buenfil, 1993: 18-9).
Following the Pilar Padierna’ analysis (2008), we will characterize interpellation
as a process of invitation to recognize oneself in a discourse and be part of it, which
involves a series of phases:
1. one related to discursive production from the issuer; this production of an
interpellatory discourse is overdetermined by a series of factors that converge in
its production
2. that refers to the incorporation or rejection of elements of that
interpellation by the subjects
3. the resignification and enactment of the new identity configuration as
well as the production of own interpellations (Padierna, 2008: 109-10).
Zizek (2001), supported by Lacanian studies, affirms that in order for the subject
to be "hooked" in the identification process, interpellation is necessary (but not any)
insists that a presymbolic mythical intention, present in the phantom created by the
Other, is necessary. That is, the hidden reference to some element that in the fantasy of
the subject will fill the lack. Thus, the subject identifies himself with an interpellation in
a retroactive way, that is, he engages in the chain of the signifier (interpellation), and
once the sense is fixed, it means retroactively. Thanks to the retroversion effect, the
identification is lived by the subject as full, as something that has always been there and
that responds to his desires.
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The adherence of the subject to the interpellatory discourse is not given in block,
but with specific elements in which it is represented. The elements put into play through
interpellation play an important role in achieving membership. No discourse can fully
encompass a social space to account for all the feasible conditions to be retaken by
subjects to adhere to their cause; in the same way, the subjects questioned do not accept
this invitation as a whole, but rather they are inclined towards different elements that fill
the fault (not rational, nor capable of being filled). Through interpellation a serie of
practices is developed that allow subjects to recognize themselves as members of the
group and carry out actions to achieve their objectives. The subjects are constituted by
identifying themselves with speeches that address them from multiple references. Not
only large social spaces form subjects, the identification process is also possible in
small spaces, in the local community, in the intimacy of the family, etc. (Padierna,
2008: 111-2).
In short, interpellation is one of the factors that significantly influences the
conformation of social identities. From the adhesion or rejection of various
interpellations, subjects recognize themselves as members of diverse collectivities,
perform actions, allow them to signify their social practice and elaborate new discourses
leading transformation, to a greater or lesser extent, of the social grammar
Young people who attend secondary school today are not interpellated by the
formative proposal, nor the notion of the future proper to the historical matrix that we
have characterized, although some elements of that old discourse are resignified and
relocated in new formulations. Many analyzes associate this difficulty with young
people’ disinterest or their difficult living conditions. In short, one of the factors that
significantly influences the conformation of social identities is interpellation. From the
adhesion or rejection to diverse interpellations, the subjects recognize themselves as
members of diverse collectivities, perform actions that allow them to signify their social
practice and elaborate new discourses that lead to the transformation, to a greater or
lesser extent, of the grammar Social.
The young people who attend secondary school today are not questioned by the
formative proposal, nor the notion of future proper to the historical matrix that we have
characterized, although some elements of that old discourse are resignified and
relocated in new formulations. Many analyzes associate this difficulty with "disinterest"
of young people or their difficult living conditions. It is necessary to attend to the heart
of the problem: purpose, conception, model and organization of secondary school itself.
Is the secondary school merely transmitting the demands? What place does the
school have in the offer of other social and cultural possibilities? Can it do something to
distort what is perceived as "social destinations"? What symbolic and material universe
does it offer to students from different social groups?
The ways in which students are understood, intergenerational bonds in which we
include them or forms of estrangement with which we conceive them, generates
different paths for the potential of schools and the futures that are opened. These lines
can contribute to expansion of educational outlook to different social spaces where
subjects are developing novel practices not only in big spaces, but also interaction with
media and languages.
A future for everyone?
In the above explanation the question was explored whether future promised by
school was democratizing. As some studies have suggested (Power et al., 2003) the
history of the school is the history of the middle classes, especially in secondary school,
for the reasons we have outlined above. And this is true, not only because the middle
class were the ones who made the most out of education system, but - above all -
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because they managed to make education system take their values, conceptions and
ways of life as their own and disseminate them as values of schooling and consecrate
them as the universal values to which every educated person should adhere. In this way,
those certain ideas associated with schooling were shaped as the universal sense of it.
This construction in Argentina was articulated with academic curriculum and with a
hierarchical social model.
Let us dwell a moment on that relationship between the universal and the
particular that we outline. We have learned with Ernesto Laclau that universalism and
particularism are two ineradicable dimensions in political identities, but the form of the
articulation between the two is not evident. Among historical forms in which a
relationship between universality and particularity was thought of, there are those in
which the individual realizes in himself the universal - that is, he eliminates himself as a
private individual and becomes a transparent medium in which universality opera - (the
idea of pedagogical civilization and school culture has enough of this); or they denied
the universal affirming their own particularism (Laclau, 1996: 47).
The separation between the universal and the particular is ineliminable and - this
we are interested in emphasizing - the universal is nothing other than a particular that at
one point has become hegemonic. For this reason, our point of departure has been to
situate school format as the way in which a contingent and arbitrary series of reasons
and instrumentations became hegemonic. We must also say that modern school format
had tensions around the particular and the universal but built a hegemony based on
some particularisms that became an inscription surface for all that was meant as a
school and, even more, as education.
The best of the enlightened ideology and the educational systems that embodied
it was a policy of massive distribution of knowledge; in that logic, the presence of the
closest environment projected to a more universal scenario contributed to ascending
social mobility and an opening towards other worlds. It must also be said that nothing
indicates that these knowledge were emancipatory, nor egalitarian, nor inclusive by
themselves. We have sought to put this in evidence with the description of the historical
matrix of the Argentine secondary school, designed to include the population
considered in a position to prosper and direct. Today, the inclusion of social sectors that
had not had a massive presence in secondary school has posed challenges for that
historical matrix that was constituted as a typical identity of "us" in front of the
confusion and the problems that were posed by the arrival of "the new ones". This own
force that has the historical matrix in the imaginary of those who "make" school,
facilitates that young people are looked at very frequently in terms of deficits that
become - sometimes - insurmountable.
This not only happens as a consequence of social inequality but also as a result
of institutionalized patterns of interpretation and evaluation that constitute someone as
not deserving of respect or legitimacy to occupy a certain position. School translates
social inequality with clues that reproduce hierarchies and long-standing school
classification systems, especially in relation to the old elitism of secondary schools, but
that are updated and renewed with other languages. What are the options? To leave out
of school those who are new and whose schooling must be guaranteed by law? Or revise
the particular conception of the future that proposed that matrix and renew it to make it
more inclusive?
If the old mandates have declined in their enunciative efficacy, that is, in their
power to interpellate and constitute subjects, we will have to examine what we
understand by secondary school and with what future possibilities we can enrich it.
Examine, also, if what we recognize with the name of secondary school includes the
type and multiplicity of experiences that take place today in the concrete schools.
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A possibility of democratization, then, is linked to new practices that in our
society had restricted the universalism of our political ideals, that is, to limited sectors
of the population. It is possible to retain the universal dimension at the same time as
spheres of its application are expanded, which in turn redefines concrete contents of this
universality. Universalism, as a horizon, expands, while breaking its necessary link with
all particular content.
A new look on the notion of the future
We want to return to the problem with which we started this article, because we
continue to worry that our schools coexist with a feeling that there is no future for the
students that attend and that it can not be reversed. Once we affirmed that the
generalized conception of the future was and is a particular construction that became
generalized as universal, because it managed to be hegemonic and that we established
the need for new forms of interpellation as practices for the constitution of subjects, we
can - and that is our proposal - affirm that the notion of the future is an empty signifier.
With the use of empty significant category we refer to certain terms that are the
object of an ideological struggle in society. Therefore, these terms tend to be
tendentially empty signifiers - never totally empty - due to the fact that, given the
plurality of conflicts that occur around them, they can not be fixed to a single discursive
articulation (Laclau, 1996). Also, this characteristic of emptiness is what makes them
liable to be articulated to different meanings and, therefore, a powerful ground for
different positions. If, on the other hand, they were very fixed terms, they would not
have the potential to become an inscription surface of different meanings and therefore
they would lose potentiality as enunciators and articulators.
Futuro is an empty signifier that functioned as an inscription surface for different
conceptions, models of society, notions about the insertion of young people and the
integration of different social sectors. Also at present, in that presupposition that the
school no longer qualifies for the future, those notions sedimented around the notion of
future are updated.
What perspectives are open? Trying to restore that future construction that
accompanied the constitution of the Nation-State and the slow expansion of the system?
Is not this failed restitution of the notion of the future that accompanied another social
model? Is that restitution productive to analyze contemporary society and the young
people who are students today?
If democracy is possible, it is because the universal has neither a necessary form
nor content; On the contrary, diverse groups compete to give their particularisms a
function of universal representation. Society generates a whole vocabulary of empty
signifiers whose temporary senses are the result of political competition. It is this final
failure of society to constitute itself as a society, which makes the distance between the
universal and the particular insurmountable and, as a result, puts the "concrete social
agents in charge of this unrealizable task, which is what makes the democratic
interaction" (Laclau, 1996: 68).
Our proposal is then to articulate the future signifier with other notions that,
instead of restoring certain social structures and hierarchies of knowledge that were
consolidated on the basis of a restricted and expulsion school system, allow us to think
about an approach to the future that includes in a richer way characteristics of our
contemporary society and students as an expression of it.
The history of designed reforms for that level is very extensive, we could say it
has more than one hundred years of history. In those reforms was present the persistent
question for who was a school?, whom to include and for what social place? But in
addition, permanent concern about its reform or revision, realized very early on some
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crucial aspects were not included in classic model, the one that -in occasions- is exalted.
There were necessary knowledge that the old model did not contain: preparation
for the labor market (a problem that persisted throughout the 20th century), a more
autonomous cultural model that was not a simple adherence to the European model,
conceptions about young people they will not always imply a relationship of
subordination, the incorporation of autonomous paths or local adaptations, among other
aspects (Dussel and Southwell, 2008).
We believe that analysis we have done allows us to address the key problem:
purpose, conception, model and organization of the secondary school itself. Examine
your internal logic, your priorities, the horizon for which you educate, how it is
inscribed in the culture, what selection of it teaches, what it includes and what it
excludes, are some significant issues. Thus, we can avoid the blaming of young people
for not possessing what school does not manage to generate in them. We allude with
this to the revision of the school culture. This concept, used by historians of education
since the second half of the nineties, is defined as "a set of norms that define the
knowledge to teach and the behaviors to inculcate, and a set of practices that allow the
transmission and assimilation of said knowledge and the incorporation of these
behaviors "(Julià cited in Viñao, 2002: 203). This category seeks to emphasize that the
school is not a simple reproducer of the global culture that is intended to transmit
institutionally to new generations. School culture is one that can only be acquired at
school and whose production involves teachers, government officials, students,
managers, parents, experts and other agents involved in the field of education.
A revision of the school format can enable the production of other discursive
constructions, ensuring that other future productions include a plurality of meanings
around the diversity of the formative experience and, therefore, relocating other
particularisms in a new hegemonic conformation. A discursive construction where
notion of school does not continue to be equivalent to middle class, urban, Western
European values, referenced around elite education but can include young workers, with
different codes and provisions, with greater openness to new knowledge and
experiences. But in addition, another question that becomes evident is that school form
can be modified so that it is not the target population that must transform its internal
logic; it is their effectiveness and not that of the individuals that must be put under the
spotlight. An exercise like this should give us the chance to redisplay invisibilizaciones,
injustices and exclusions that included the most widespread form school as a way to
question, tighten and, why not renew the school. This path can advance in a proposal
that is not a return to a school model that has shown its limits, but rather to foster a
renewed link with society and culture.
I would like to end with a reflection by a manager interviewed:
- How do you see your students in the future, how do you imagine them as
citizens, as workers?
- First of all, as coworkers. (Private technical school, province of Buenos Aires,
which serves the middle and lower-middle sectors).
Notes
1 islaesmeralda@gmail.com
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Submitted: November, 20th, 2017
Approved: December, 8th, 2017