Page 103 - Šolsko polje, XXIX, 2018, no. 1-2: The Language of Neoliberal Education, ed. Mitja Sardoč
P. 103
m. sardoč ■ an interviw with henry giroux
Why large-scale assessments and quantitative data in general are
a central part of the ‘neo-liberal toolkit’ in educational research?
These are the tools of accountants and have nothing to do with larger vi-
sions or questions about what matters as part of a university education.
The overreliance on metrics and measurement has become a tool used
to remove questions of responsibility, morality, and justice from the lan-
guage and policies of education. I believe the neoliberal toolkit as you
put it is part of the discourse of civic illiteracy that now runs rampant
in higher educational research, a kind of mind-numbing investment in a
metric-based culture that kills the imagination and wages an assault on
what it means to be critical, thoughtful, daring, and willing to take risks.
Metrics in the service of an audit culture has become the new face of a cul-
ture of positivism, a kind of empirical-based panopticon that turns ideas
into numbers and the creative impulse into ashes. Large scale assessments
and quantitative data are the driving mechanisms in which everything is
absorbed into the culture of business. The distinction between informa-
tion and knowledge has become irrelevant in this model and anything
that cannot be captured by numbers is treated with disdain. In this new
audit panopticon, the only knowledge that matters is that which can be
measured. What is missed here, of course, is that measurable utility is a
curse as a universal principle because it ignores any form of knowledge
based on the assumption that individuals need to know more than how
things work or what their practical utility might be. This is a language
that cannot answer the question of what the responsibility of the univer-
sity and educators might be in a time of tyranny, in the face of the un-
speakable, and the current widespread attack on immigrants, Muslims,
and others considered disposable. This is a language that is both afraid
and unwilling to imagine what alternative worlds inspired by the search
for equality and justice might be possible in an age beset by the increasing
dark forces of authoritarianism.
While the analysis of the neoliberal agenda in education is well
documented, the analysis of the language of neoliberal education
is at the fringes of scholarly interest. In particular, the expansion
of the neoliberal vocabulary with egalitarian ideas such as fair-
ness, justice, equality of opportunity, well-being etc. has received
[at best] only limited attention. What factors have contributed to
this shift of emphasis?
Neoliberalism has upended how language is used in both education and
the wider society. It works to appropriate discourses associated with
101
Why large-scale assessments and quantitative data in general are
a central part of the ‘neo-liberal toolkit’ in educational research?
These are the tools of accountants and have nothing to do with larger vi-
sions or questions about what matters as part of a university education.
The overreliance on metrics and measurement has become a tool used
to remove questions of responsibility, morality, and justice from the lan-
guage and policies of education. I believe the neoliberal toolkit as you
put it is part of the discourse of civic illiteracy that now runs rampant
in higher educational research, a kind of mind-numbing investment in a
metric-based culture that kills the imagination and wages an assault on
what it means to be critical, thoughtful, daring, and willing to take risks.
Metrics in the service of an audit culture has become the new face of a cul-
ture of positivism, a kind of empirical-based panopticon that turns ideas
into numbers and the creative impulse into ashes. Large scale assessments
and quantitative data are the driving mechanisms in which everything is
absorbed into the culture of business. The distinction between informa-
tion and knowledge has become irrelevant in this model and anything
that cannot be captured by numbers is treated with disdain. In this new
audit panopticon, the only knowledge that matters is that which can be
measured. What is missed here, of course, is that measurable utility is a
curse as a universal principle because it ignores any form of knowledge
based on the assumption that individuals need to know more than how
things work or what their practical utility might be. This is a language
that cannot answer the question of what the responsibility of the univer-
sity and educators might be in a time of tyranny, in the face of the un-
speakable, and the current widespread attack on immigrants, Muslims,
and others considered disposable. This is a language that is both afraid
and unwilling to imagine what alternative worlds inspired by the search
for equality and justice might be possible in an age beset by the increasing
dark forces of authoritarianism.
While the analysis of the neoliberal agenda in education is well
documented, the analysis of the language of neoliberal education
is at the fringes of scholarly interest. In particular, the expansion
of the neoliberal vocabulary with egalitarian ideas such as fair-
ness, justice, equality of opportunity, well-being etc. has received
[at best] only limited attention. What factors have contributed to
this shift of emphasis?
Neoliberalism has upended how language is used in both education and
the wider society. It works to appropriate discourses associated with
101
