I'm fairly apolitical by nature. I'm not sure where this comes
from. It's probably form my father.
I grew up in a rural area of Ireland, near the Northern Irish
border. When I eventually discovered Marxism through the Communist
Manifesto (I was around 20), I was blown away by its clarity and
precision. I still believe its the only analysis of political
economy that makes sense. I'm generally not a fan of 'grand
theories', but if there was ever a case for their validity, it lies
in Marx, not Einstein, or Hawking, or anyone else. I still go back
and read some Marx every so often, and it continues to astound me.
I get the same feeling reading Freud. Even at the level of style, I
love their works.
Anyway, as convincing as I find Marxism from a
philosophical/analytical perspective, it's never really 'taken
hold' with me as a political ideology. When I was young and getting
excited about Marx and Brecht and Godard and 'revolutionary'
thinking, I would sometimes try discuss it with my father. He would
always talk about the history of the 'troubles' and the realities
of revolutionary violence. I knew better than to try argue against
that.
Still, even though I'm not political, if I was I would be
communist. In particular, I've always actually liked ideas about
centralised planning. For example, I really loved the idea of the
A.I. computer in The Dispossessed, the one that allocated work
assignments. In the last few months, however, my ideas about
centralisation have been thoroughly put to test.
Our school recently switched its 'franchise' (remember, private
schools in Korea are more like 'businesses' than traditional
schools). Previously, the curriculum was set by our boss. Now, its
set by some office in Seoul that also administers to hundreds of
other academies in the same franchise. We all access a common
file-system (just a cloud based storage system like dropbox), and
the syllabai/schedules are uploaded there every month. Also, there
is a strong 'e-learning' aspect to the syllabus - every night the
students will have to log on to a the franchise' site and complete
digital exercises. The daily schedules correlate with their online
exercises. For example, we might have to cover a page of the book
on 'names of rooms in a house', and that night they will have some
kind of online activity quiz/game based on that content.
So, we have to stick exactly to the centralised schedule. The main
reason for this, as it was communicated directly to us, is that we
have to prepare the students well for their online tasks, because
their parents will probably be present during those. In private
school culture in Korea, the parents are the real boss. 90% of your
job is simply keeping them happy and paying their monthly fees.
At first, it was kind of nice having everything pre-organised by
the central office. All you have to do is stick to the schedule and
everything is fine.
Problems started arising due to the 'complexity' of the curriculum.
A business as big as the one we're currently under naturally tries
to cover as many bases as it can, provide curricula for all ages
and levels. However, our school is pretty small, and in the past
there wasn't any kind of 'management' layer. Even the boss was
incredibly laissez-faire. So, now it's mostly down to the
individual teachers to manage any inconsistencies or quirks in the
central scheduling.
The problem, though, isn't really with the lack of management
structure, it's with the centralisation itself. We've become slaves
to some learning software that the kids do for homework.
I worked in a university for a while and, even though the
structures are different, there are similar problems. Universities
these days, at least in the U.K., are economic powerhouses and
require a lot of management and oversight. As with my current
situation, most of the administrative and managerial tasks are
actually given to lecturers. Even though there is a huge management
structure above the academics, those people mostly deal with things
like admissions, outreach, accommodation, funding, etc.. In other
words, getting people in the door and taking their money. Those
people are also seen as much less 'expendable' than the actual
lecturers, as I witnessed first hand during a period of cuts at my
previous university (of course, I myself was never in danger as an
'adjunct' teacher, my 'margins' were already so wide. I did
however, know some really good, more senior, academics that lost
their job).
The actual day-to-day tasks of organising courses, assessments,
etc., is left to the departments themselves. The academics who are
in charge of these things (for example, a 'head of department') do
not receive extra compensation for their work. At best, their
servitude simply makes them a better candidate for promotion later
on (to 'senior lecturer', 'professor', etc.). This is mostly taken
on faith. At the end of the day, you could easily be outpaced by
someone with a better research profile but no administrative
experience. In academia, however, you're rarely in a position to
say 'no' to these kinds of extra work.
Long story short, our little school now seems to need some
dedicated organisational/management roles. But, I don't think this
would make things better. I hate management systems. What I love is
flexibility and freedom in what you do. In the context of
education, especially, I feel it's a necessary ingredient in
productive learning. We've been on the new system for just over two
months now. It was fun at first. Now, I feel that even the kids are
succumbing to the monotony of the new schedule. It feels like we
are on rails. Some days I have to push the kids so hard because we
are a few pages behind due to a lack of internal communication
within the school. They are definitely learning in a more intensive
and structured way than they were in the past, and maybe this will
benefit them in the long run, but I also feel they can only be
pushed so far, as can the teachers. The thing is, even if you sense
they are going too fast or too slow, there's not much you can do to
change course, to adapt to individual students' needs. You have to
keep chugging along.
Complexity can't be managed centrally. That's why, I think, so many
Marxists are happy bedfellows with anarchists. Marx himself was
against the idea of a centralised 'state' at all, aside from maybe
as an mid-point between capitalism and communism (the proletariat
would take control of the state and gradually decentralise it).
True complex, organic growth can only really take place at a
localised level. Yes, in cases of education there need to be
standards and centralised bodies of knowledge and research. But, at
the end of the day, I feel these should serve more as
'repositories'. Individual organisations and teachers should also
feel free to experiment. It might seem that, in a
post-enlightenment era, 'education' is settled matter. But, I think
that there is still a lot of room to discover new methodologies,
new practices. Especially those that can resist the increasing
technolgization of the classroom and the increseaing marketization
of education.
