Higher education as public relations

Mary Beard blogged about the Open University's absurd ads for spin doctors.
http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2012/08/university-publicity.html

I commented:


I think they're just seeing how far they can push us without getting their shins hacked. Or their spins reversed.
There's a more general aspect to this zeitgeist stuff. It ties in with the Romantic dissolution of genre boundaries (exploding in the novel form in the Enlightenment, and culminating in things like Brecht's "epic drama" and Joyce's "poetic novel" last century). For some decades now it's been eroding the boundaries between fiction and documentary (ficumentaries and reality shows etc).
The historical ground for it of course is the dissolution of class (ie rigidly, materially hierarchical) society. The philosophical ground is the transition from analytical to dialectical reason/logic (A equals A, you say? Hmmmm). Living, moving and becoming more than dead, static and either/or.
Which affects us in our everyday lives by making us conscious that we are not just living but being seen to live. And exist in a permanent state of metamorphosis through our interactions. We make ourselves (poesis) not just invent, but make, shape.
Except that society (still rigidly class-determined) is struggling to the death against this change. It might as well struggle against the tide of course, but as a result of its resistance all this is happening but no one is aware of it. ("They do not know it, but they do it", as Marx comments in Capital.)
And examples of it happening are all around us, particularly in the US, the most dialectically contradictory country on earth. Like the focus in schools on shaping yourself in relation to your classwork - oral presentation. You are your image. A company or institution is its perception. Careers and billions in profit depend on this.
And people being what we are, we examine it and make a science out of it, excising all the critical bits on the way.
It's international and damn near universal now, because the social transformation is so delayed. The zeitgeist juice impregnates the whole body of the world system deeper and deeper because of the immense material pressures involved.
So humans are the deliberate synthesis of their social conventions and their innate selves. However, the refusal to grasp what's going on means that the innate self bit - the "poor, bare, forked animal" - is obliterated. What's left is the social self that flatters the system. The "furred robes". But since the times are in a state of chassis the unconscious forces itself on us in the form of nightmare and dystopian imaginings. The emperor's new clothes are both furred robes and dissolved in air, flickering before our eyes like strobe lights.
Which means we get spin doctors and social masseurs and Big Media pushing the Big Lie with the straightest of faces and immense self-importance, while a few brave souls (Chomsky, Wikileaks) are busy trying to slow down the strobe and reveal the emptiness at the heart of the Emerald City, so to speak.
Mary is on the side of the angels here, asking who is managing the light show, and why. So our small, voluntary, blog community is standing up to the huge, professionally funded educational institution, and can point to the rising tide, or at least the rising pressure it is exerting.
The nice thing is that keeping the zeitgeist locked up demands a huge amount of effort and resources. And although it takes resources and effort to liberate it, they are infinitesimal in proportion. This will be evident in some decades when capitalism has disappeared down the plughole and sucked bourgeois society down the drain with it.
In the meantime, the truth is a mighty warrior, and a warm and sexy companion to boot. Blake wrote: "Truth can never be told so as to be understood and not be believed." Which is basically what we're doing as we make and shape ourselves in our opposition to the absurdity and inhumanity of the prophet Gobbledegook and incomprehensible Profit.

Why are Finnish schools so successful?

A blog article in the Guardian described the success of the Finnish school system:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/teacher-network/teacher-blog/2012/apr/09/finish-school-system

I commented:

The "free everything" element is not true of higher education. Tuition is free, and that's your lot. Living costs are high, accommodation is hard to find, and materials are not cheap.
The utopian tone of the article is a pity, cos it weakens a very strong case. Finland is riven by class differences and the usual social, economic and political tensions of well-off capitalist countries. Life is hard for wage-earners, and tough for the poor and for immigrants. And the egalitarianism (within class boundaries NB) is soured by Lutheran killjoy look-after-number-one-ism and who-the-fuck-do-you-think-you-are-ism. (Personally I'd rather live in Finland than Britain but that's cos I like saunas and the smell of wood...)
What the schools show is that decent education to a high general standard is possible and can feel natural without a socialist revolution - ie it's a bourgeois democratic aspiration that isn't utopian. All it needs is the political will. 
The proof of this is in the historical record. In Britain during the first flush of the postwar Welfare State local authorities sent hordes of wage-earners' kids to university for free - not just tuition, but the works, maintenance and all. And Britain (if we believe the capitalist mantra of "getting better all the time") in those days was a far poorer and shabbier place than it is today - far less able to "afford" this kind of thing. Which shows that "affording" is not the issue. 
Same thing in Sweden during the "golden years" of their Home of the People (folkhem) welfare state - say '65 to '90. The Swedish comprehensive system, like Finland's but far less formalistic, worked wonders for the kids and national skills, culture, etc. High PISA results for instance. Dazzling performance in research, sports, culture (ABBA :-). In 1991 (I think it was) the Economist even had a panegyric about it. Great high general level of education produces the skills and attitudes needed by business and industry. Trouble is, the article was published just after the then minister of education, Social Democrat Göran Persson, soon to be prime minister, had begun the ruthless dismantling of the system the Economist loved so much. 
Swedes, compromising hypocritical bastards that they are in government, are nothing if not ruthless and single-minded when they want to be (ask any Europeans on the receiving end of the armies of Gustavus Adolfus or Charles XII :-D. They began by emulating Britain, and have now ruined the educational system so thoroughly that Britain is beginning to emulate them (how about "free schools" allowed to operate for profit??).
Again, it's not a question of "affording" anything. Sweden today is pig-richer than ever. It's the political will. If you think (as a bourgeois government) that you can get away with screwing the working class out of past concessions, you'll go ahead. Money is the whole object. And fear the decisive factor. 
So, Sweden and Britain used to be up there with Finland as admirable examples of educational achievement. Now they're slithering in the sewers with the rest and no better than they should be.
For various reasons (including a powerful teachers lobby with real political influence) Finland is still admirable, while Sweden and Britain are despicable.
The main thing I suppose is that there are no miracles or utopias involved. Finland is nothing like Utopia. Nor were Britain or Sweden a few decades ago.

It can be done, it has been done, and it can also be undone. ABOVE ALL, IT IS NOT A QUESTION OF BEING ABLE TO AFFORD IT.


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Access to higher education and privilege

Mary Beard's blog:

March 16, 2007

Is university entrance squeezing the middle class?

Reinventing the wheel often causes a flurry of headlines. This time (once again) it is about university entrance and the decision to have information about parents included on the University (UCAS) application form. The idea is that it will help to “widen access” if admissions’ tutors know what the potential student’s Mum and Dad do, and whether have been to university themselves.

Squeals of horror from the usual (middle class) suspects.

There is in fact nothing new at all here.

For a long time parental occupation was a question on the special Cambridge application form. Some years ago (I can’t remember exactly when) that question was abolished. The idea was, I think, that this information was encouraging us to discriminate AGAINST the under-privileged – as if we were sorting through the forms and picking out the ambassador’s daughter and chucking the postman’s daughter into the “reject” pile. Socially elite dons looking for students in their own image -- or so the paranoid fantasy went.

I always thought that it was actually working the other way round. Knowing more about where the kids were “coming from” really did help to judge their potential and make a more level playing field.

To put it another way, when I am interviewing a student who wants to come and read Classics, one thing I want to know is whether they have made the most of their opportunities to find out about the ancient world. And it all depends what those opportunities are. If, for example, a girl who has had several long Greek holidays has never once taken the trouble to visit an archaeological site or museum, I will have some qualms. If someone who has never left the country, but lives within a mile of Hadrian’s Wall and has never visited it – well, similar qualms are raised (but I wouldn't hold against them the fact that they had never seen the Parthenon).

The point is that we are looking for those, from whatever background, who have potential – and the capacity to benefit from the course. More information helps (particularly now that the school’s reference is open to the candidate and can be almost useless).

The middle classes really don’t need to worry. I am not looking to favour the stupid daughter of the postman over the clever daughter of the ambassador. I am looking for intellectual potential wherever it is found. Exactly as I have always done.

Posted by Mary Beard on March 16, 2007 at 08:16 AM | Permalink

(There are some good comments, too.)

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Choppa's response:

Marx's reflections on The Jewish Question in 1844 might help us clear this contradiction up a bit.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/jewish-question/

In a crucial passage he writes:

"The perfect political state is, by its nature, man’s species-life, as opposed to his material life. All the preconditions of this egoistic life continue to exist in civil society outside the sphere of the state, but as qualities of civil society. Where the political state has attained its true development, man – not only in thought, in consciousness, but in reality, in life – leads a twofold life, a heavenly and an earthly life: life in the political community, in which he considers himself a communal being, and life in civil society, in which he acts as a private individual, regards other men as a means, degrades himself into a means, and becomes the plaything of alien powers."

Thus he distinguishes between the human being as citizen (member of the state), with equal rights etc, and as "bourgeois" (member of civil society) with unequal possessions, wealth, clout, etc.

If we substitute "class" for "religion" in the first sentence of the next paragraph, we read: "Man, as the adherent of a particular *class*, finds himself in conflict with his citizenship and with other men as members of the community."

So basically what academics and universities are doing in their selection process is resolving this conflict between abstract equality and concrete privilege - a conflict that will last as long as the capitalist state itself - as best they can given the built-in contradictions of the task and the varying wiggle-room for different (often mutually exclusive) criteria given by the rules at any particular time.

In my day (the postwar retreat by the capitalist class known as the welfare state) working class students were sucked into higher education with grants that actually enabled them to live and study, and the glorious false flag of "academic freedom" flew over spires and lecture rooms.

Nowadays, with the resurgence of the capitalist class and the rolling back of the welfare state, this is no longer the case.

The solution is not to change the rules of admission or even the grants system (though this might help temper the glaring inequalities a bit) but to change society so the interests of the penurious human majority can no longer be steamrollered by the interests of the inhuman moneybags minority.