User:Themsen/RW4

20141110 -dividuals/individuals

• ---divided/individed
  • "man is no longer man enclosed, but man in debt"
  • "the disciplinary man was a discontiuous producer of energy, but the man of control is undulatory, in orbit, in a continuous network" (Deleuze)

• enclosed space/extension of enclosures
  • ---extension of enclosure vs. dividuals?

The greater mobility among students and teachers are most likely due to three main modifications; a strong philosophy in teaching how to learn, the decentralization of schools in relation to a main centralized body of authority and the emphasis on mainstreaming the skill of all its students. These prerequisites clearly relate to one another and could symbolize a step from what Steve Rushdon calls the conduct of “representation”, where the representatitve power of the teacher has given way to the conduct of a teacher’s “performance”. Why I believe so is because of the highly unusual action of a representative institution, such as a board of schools, giving authority to the nodes in its networks by letting the principal and staff manage the teaching. By dislocating its power the impact on the school organ’s subjects have become more local and less absent. Another trend which shows in finnish schools is the great investment the government makes on keeping a diverse and highly skilled workforce of teachers. Not only do the students improve, but their teachers improve as they are given more possibilities for observation and testing of teaching-methods in the learning environment. As the teachers are also academics, requiring a masters degree in the correct area only to teach, many articles are released which can be proven to work. Through the decentralization and lightening of teacher’s duties (teaching plans seen as guidelines, not necessarily prescriptions). The deterritorialization of educational institutions can also be perceived as a new trend particular to the society of control; as the originally centralized organization of education was too slow to react to trends and new flows of information. This focus on the performance of education as opposed to the disciplinary representation of its institutions has diversified the mode of teaching in finnish schools.

• sovereign society - disciplinary society - society of control
  • --- society of control mixing attriubutes from sovereign society and disciplinary society?
  • barely visible singular boss - invisible singular/multiple boss - barely invisible multiple/imaginary boss (?)

According to Mark Poster the society of control mixes different attributes from the former societies, appearing to be a society of appropriation. The decentralization and deterritorialization of the finnish school reminds one of the sovereign society where the foundation of power was based on a symbolic leader without a strong centralized seat of power, where the production of this society was dependent on the taxes (or tributes) of its subjects. The disciplinary society can be gleaned in the traditional school curriculum, and in traditional methods of teaching. The continued academical discourse among teachers also speak of a strong tradition of observation and documentation.

• work/study
  • man of control in continuous network - school/institutions, atomicism no longer as strong = finland as progressive country for education, reason?
  • all equal according to the hierarchy of super-panopticon (computer), [collective individuation]

Speaking of discourse, Foucault mentioned the use of power as a tool of presenting reality. Without a virtual component it becomes difficult to distinguish what is real and what isn’t. When Deleuze mentions disciplinary society he defines it as one of transition, to the new ‘monster’, as Foucault puts it. The society of control is this predicted monster. Returning to Poster’s ideas about control society’s tendency to fold into older areas of power, the complexity of this new societal model is, according to Deleuze, more complex than its earlier versions. Deleuze’s illustration of the control society’s animal metaphor is the serpent slithering across the power structure. It isn’t a single entity, most likely multiple as its main source of power is information. In the society of control information is a tool for domination and control more than it is for the disciplinary society. The society of control is operated by the computer and partly shaped by its structures of information. In the society of control the individual becomes the dividual, a networked, always in orbit actor according to Deleuze. The structure of the finnish school appears to cater to a dividual interpretation of data. The learning of each school’s students are made on a decentralized basis, mainly working as a platform for the self-improvement of the person. Nonetheless there can be no doubt that the structure on which the finnish school rests on is a continuation of the disciplinary school, although modified.

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"Finnish education often seems paradoxical to outside observers because it appears to break a lot of the rules we take for granted. Finnish children don’t begin school until age 7. They have more recess, shorter school hours than many U.S. children do (nearly 300 fewer hours per year in elementary school), and the lightest homework load of any industrialized nation. There are no gifted programs, almost no private schools, and no high-stakes national standardized tests.

Yet over the past decade Finland has consistently performed among the top nations on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a standardized test given to 15-year olds in 65 nations and territories around the world." [trust-based, horizontal, collective individuation]

('Finnish Education Chief: 'We Created a School System Based on Equality', The Atlantic, Christine Gross-LOH, Mar 17 2014, http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/03/finnish-education-chief-we-created-a-school-system-based-on-equality/284427/)

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“We prepare children to learn how to learn, not how to take a test,” said Pasi Sahlberg, a former math and physics teacher who is now in Finland’s Ministry of Education and Culture. “We are not much interested in PISA. It’s not what we are about.” "The national goal for the past five years has been to mainstream all children." [dividualistic?]

"A class of first graders scampered among nearby pine and birch trees, each holding a stack of the teacher’s homemade laminated “outdoor math” cards. “Find a stick as big as your foot,” one read. “Gather 50 rocks and acorns and lay them out in groups of ten,” read another. Working in teams, the 7- and 8-year-olds raced to see how quickly they could carry out their tasks. Aleksi Gustafsson, whose master’s degree is from Helsinki University, developed the exercise after attending one of the many workshops available free to teachers. “I did research on how useful this is for kids,” he said. “It’s fun for the children to work outside. They really learn with it.”" [nudging?]

('Why Are Finland's Schools Successful', Smithsonian Magazine, LynNell Hancock, September 2011, http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/why-are-finlands-schools-successful-49859555/?no-ist=&page=1 )

• Keywords from texts:
  • equal school system
  • human capital
  • vocational education
  • mainstream learning
  • cooperative teaching
  • guidelines & not prescriptions

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• Notes on keywords:
  • mainstream learning, equal school system; removal of hierarchy, horizontal learning
  • human capital; one definition of masses in control society
  • vocational education; undulatory, in orbit, man of control
  • cooperative teaching; corporation(?), results through merging of tactics, merging of teaching (?)
  • guidelines & not prescriptions; nudging
  • teachers, principals deciding and not government (teachers choose when their students attend strict exams); decentralization

--- Definitions

• Corporation: a commercial entity legally seen as an individual led by an organization of associates. Any group of persons united or regarded as united in one body.

• Cooperation: an act or instance of working or acting together for a common purpose or benefit; joint action.

The cooperative teaching currently being developed by finnish pedagogues might not be as far from the foundations of corporate action. One body could be easily taken out of its material or formally agreed upon context and mean, to take the saying literally, 'working as one'. As was seen in 'The Waldo Moment' the body of a corporation is multiple, the unity of many; this also applies to cooperative teaching. The virtual image of the corporation is a clear-cut image, and so does the virtual image of the cooperate teacher also has to be in order for education to reach its optimum. The cooperative teaching is one body, where the teachers work towards a unified goal using both of each one's strength. Cooperative teaching might be the version of the control society where it spreads from person to person, and corporations may be the manifestation for crowd-controlling masses. Each use homework, or working at a distance, as their ways of observing and affecting subjects even outside their enclosures; teaching merely has a more consistent history of home-work.

(Disciplinary) influence -Deleuze and Mark Poster, examination and observation, new layers folded into former layers, [increase in complexity] -Teachers with master degrees, teaching/learning by observing but without much weight on examination [no real mandatory or regular exams] ---Mix of disciplinary and control in education? -Getting to know their students, not their grades Examination not necessarily exams?

--- examine: to test the knowledge, reactions, or qualifications of (a pupil, candidate, etc.), as by questions or assigning tasks.

• Use of 'soft power', biopower?
• Power produces reality - Foucault
• "as power becomes more anonymous and more functional, those on whom it is exercised tend to be more strongly individualized; it is exercised by surveillance rather than ceremonies" - Foucault

• 'we are the subject and object of knowledge' - tied to foucaults discourse on power
• teacher observing, controlling examination of students - teacher as the unit of observation
• atomized/networked schools - decentralization of educational school institution
• centralized school institution as representative, decentralized school as dependent on performance
• representation of learning/teaching vs performance of teaching/learning
• 'teaching how to learn'

• Cornerstones of Disciplinary Society
  • Surveillance
  • Discipline
  • Training
  • Individuality
  • Self-regulation
  • Normalized judgement

• Student as neoliberal performative subject
  • generates information & connectivity
  • constantly in the mode of performance

• authority of teacher to examinate or wait - codes of passage
• biopower of teacher extended through the self-learning of their students [nudging]