UNIVERSITY OF OSLO, INSTITUTE OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH:

Paper to the He-Tof: Home Education Colloquium and Festival 23. – 25 of May 2008:

THE DECLINE OF MODERN SCHOOLING AND THE EMERGENCE OF A NEW CIVIC SECTOR OF EDUCATION

Christian W Beck

A. professor and dr. phil.

c.w.beck@ped.uio.no

Abstract

Pisa (2006) shows positive correlation between economical development and learning results in OECD-countries. But specially USA and Norway with highest gross national product per capita (GPC) and highly developed school systems have bad pisa results. Modern schools seem to have passed the peak. Still, more school is tried, to overcome the decline. Alternatives to school like home education, open free schools, unschooling, informal education etc. are not only a human right for minorities, but could be necessary experiments for future education, in general. The emergence of a new civic sector of modern education will be discussed.

1. Modern schooling

There is a positive correlation between high pisa-test results and high gross national product per inhabitant (GPC). Especially countries who of necessity have to mobilize their educational system to get new economic development, score high on pisa-tests (OECD 2007a and b), to example Finland. USA and Norway stand out with highest GPC, highly developed school systems and low pisa-test results. Modernization of societies has been connected to school-growth. Have USA and Norway passed a peak point for positive school development and will Finland and other countries with high pisa-test results soon pass the same point (figure 1)?

Figure 1  School-development

    Pisa results/quality  in education

                             Finland x            .        

.                         .  x  USA, Norway

.                        

.                               

                                              Peak point                         GPC/School development

Both need for more workers at the work market and low wages will push both parents at maximum out in paid work and the children into school, all the time a day when parents are at work. This give schools a new agenda impressed by socialization, with less time and effort for learning of objective knowledge in school. Learning of objective knowledge then turns into a new responsibility for parents. As a paradox then, with more time for children in school, parents are forced in to “home education”.

There is no evidence for that more time spent in school gives better learning results (Nordahl and Gjerustad 2005). The teachers think they are described so much bureaucratic work that this weaken time and energy for teaching and the school quality get worse (Henriksen and Vik 2008). To what degree are the powers and interests which have given us a bureaucratic “all day” school possible to counteract? A basic question gives notice: Is the school institution as it has developed up until today at the end of its historical role?

The long during starting point was informal education with private and society concerns twined together in everyday life. For a long time after the first education law in Norway (1739), there was lack of schools in rural areas and therefore home education was allowed and practised. We can today talk about a new pedagogic mainstream in school. The new can be described in four points:

1. Increased range. More time spent in school both as years individuals life and as hours a day in school and more issues has became school matters.
2. Individualization. Education is adapted to every pupils need and prerequisite.
3. Socialization. More focus on socialization than knowledge in school.
4. New technology. IT (information technology) can give new forms of individual freedom in education, but also gives ground for a new regime of governance in school where bureaucratic factors as plans, evaluations and expositions etc. expand and become electronic archives. Communication in school is under a social-technological regime and power is displaced from teachers, parents, pupils and schools to experts and central governance outside school.

There are three types of knowledge in school:

1. Analytic knowledge, academic, anchored in mathematics, natural science, objectivity and facts. Such knowledge is best measurable in tests.
2. Interpretative knowledge, subjective based and anchored in a humanistic academic tradition, to day a base for post-modern knowledge as communication and social construction.
3. Practical knowledge, anchored in work, everyday life and pragmatism. Learning by doing. Working class knowledge, never established as school knowledge.

Why has Finland so much better Pisa-test results than to example Norway? National economy depending on education, analytic knowledge hegemonic and good pisa-test scores give characteristics for schools in Finland. The country had serious economical crises after world war two and when Soviet Union was disintegrated in1989.

In Norway the situation is different. Norwegian school is not as in Finland, placed with the back to the wall, to guarantee the national economy.. Still Norway has a highly developed school system and a high level of formal education in the population. The oil has created an economical ground for school and education more independent of the economical system. This gives two possible explanations for bad Norwegian pisa-test scores:

1. Comfort. Norway takes high GPC for granted. The oil made us rich. The demand for manpower is strong, you don’t need much education to get work. Then the motivation for education is lowered. When 25 % of Norwegian upper secondary-school pupils drop out, this could be a rational choice. Working class lads may think: this academic, feminine middle class culture in school gives me nothing. I leave school to learn to work and to earn money.

2. New knowledge. There is more room for a new interpretative knowledge in the direction of human understanding, socio-cultural dialogues and bildung. Then important school objectives can be what the Danish philosopher K. E. Løgstrup call “life enlightenment” (Løgstup 1994).  There are similarities between this new school pedagogy and informal learning, unschooling and other out of school ideologies. Norwegian schools focus to day more on such new knowledge and less on analytical and practice knowledge. When analytic knowledge dominates pisa tests, then Norwegian pupils score low on such tests.

Too much school isolate students from society and counteract school as life-preparing. To achieve life-enlightenment, bildung and practical knowledge it can be necessary to leave school and participate in the real-life outside school in the community, work life, the civic society, homes and families. This could give less school but better education.

2.  New freedom in education

Public school versus freedom in education. New ideologies in education like situated learning (Lave and Wenger 199), unschooling (Holt), learner managed learning and informal learning (Thomas 2002) elevate the importance of openness and flexibility between schools and society and pupils participation in society. Apple (2008) points out how social movements and populist groups affect and change public schools` curriculum. De Calvahro (2001) points out openness to community as important to counteract negative consequences of more school growth. Ivan Illich`s (1972) ideas about deschooling could here be added, also the Russian externates, a restricted, test related offer of teaching (Fladmoe 2004), and obligated education as adult education (Stølen 2007).

The public schools possibility for development defines in term of freedom, with opening and possibilities to some participation in working life, communities and civic society outside school. Lots of  home educators want a solution with some school and some home education. Until today school authorities to example in Norway have reacted negative to such demands (Beck 2007).

Private schools versus freedom in education. New ideas of freedom in education also challenge private schools. Traditional private schools like Summerhill have freedom in education as main principal. In Germany the Christian free school Philadelphia also practices as a school-frame to ensure legality for home education (Mohsemnia 2006). Also in other countries private schools are both real free schools and frames for home education and unschooling. Some of such schools are based on the Sudbury Valley school ideology of freedom pedagogic and relation to real life (Steinberg 199). In Norway some pupils are formal registered in private school, but partly are home educated.

Freedom in education versus IT-technology. Traditional  long distance education has expanded its range as IT- schools. One example is Globalskolen in Norway, which serves international students, home educators and others, by payment. In Norway local school communities give obligated education to immigrants and other adults as IT-education. The Lappish school in Snåsa, Norway give distance-pupils IT-based obligated education on the Lappish language (Samish). In USA there are lots of IT-schools for home educators. One of these, Clonlara, is also operate in Europe, to example Sweden and Germany. Connection to Clonlara gives possibilities for authority-accept of home education. Connection to IT-schools costs money and often imply registration by school-authorities. Home educators give up some of their freedom in education to be accepted.

3.  The new civic sector of education

Control of education in society can be presented as a power struggle between the state, the market and the civil society in the field of education (figure 2). The ideal is a balance between state-, markets- and civic interests in national education. Disagreement in politics of education could be about where in the field the point of balance should be.

Figure 2  The field of education

               ( A )                                                                     ( B )

STATE                                                           MARKET

                           X                                                                     X

                       Interests:                                                          Interests:

                             public                                                           private         

                             equality                                                        freedom in choice   

                             professions                                                   competition

EDUCATION

         X                               

THE CIVIC SOCIETY 

                                          ( C )

                                       Interests:

                                                                 the individual                                                 

                                                                 family

                                                                 popular values

We can from figure 2, talk about a public (A), private (B) and civic (C) sector of education. Home education to example need state protection by a law (A), has to qualify for the labour market (B), but has its motivation and ideology in (C). If one of the sectors gets hegemony, this could end up with:

1. Public education becomes state monopole with a state-authoritarian school. 
2. Private education as capitalism, with profit-making as the overall goal.
3. Civic education with too much space for specific interests rooted in populism and fundamentalism.

The development of global capitalism end increased immigration can give continued support from the population to a public school with extended state governance, with experts and professions having much influence. The population could accept less individual freedom, more IT-based control, more testing and more state programs, if the public schools give better education, more equality and more social integration.

If the quality in public school stays low for many years, then the alliance in educational politics between state (A) and civic society (C) could collapse. This could give two possible consequences:

1. More neo-liberalistic educational ideology and more competition and more space for private interests, with the alliance between state (A) and Market (B) dominating. This could further open for more profit-oriented schools and a larger private school sector than today. Public and private schools can be framed in a common law and private schools can be an integrated part of a state-school system based on competition.

2. This could cause popular deficit in school, which has to be recovered. We could get initiatives, which together could give the raise of a new civic sector of education, with a loosely organized adult-education segment, open flexible school pursued by parent-groups, voluntary organizations, communities, companies, branch organizations or trade unions, and with home education. Public schools could be taken over by teachers or parents, as has been done with small public rural schools in Norway, threaten by closing by the school-authorities (Beck 2007). Use of IT could make such development easier.

Important causes both for unbalance in the field of education and decline of quality in schools, is the deficit of anchoring for modern schooling in the population and lack of pupils` inner motivation. The civic sector of education has its starting point in voluntarism and personal engagement. An expanded sector of civic education could give possibilities for freedom, small communities and give new vitality, more balance and better care of human rights in education and better quality of the total knowledge in society.

Home education, unschooling and informal learning is not only a matter of human rights to small minority groups, it is  important renewing cultural creative forces in general, of modern education.

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