On Processes of Change and Clinging to Tradition - From Crisis to Crisis?

Slavko Gaber

First of all, I should like to briefly touch upon the relation between tradition and change in our societies. There is indeed no linear or simple relation between continuity and discontinuity. It is therefore hard to predict when change will take place or when things will remain the same.

Social sciences have not been at all successful in predicting change, and authors like Foucault or Durkheim have claimed that there is no logical connection between socio-economic development and that of education, science and culture. Second, I should like to emphasise that currently we are facing an economic downturn but not a crisis. Of course, we are observing severe economic problems, also at the individual level, but we are still far from a wider social and political crisis that would demand radical change.
One may be right in saying that profound changes or even revolutions occur around times of crisis. But substantial changes do not appear when the problems are greatest or when totalitarian rule is most severe. On the contrary: change is more likely to take place when the grip of the prevailing regime is softer in terms of ideology and power.
The French Revolution in 1797, the October Revolution of 1917, the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, the collapse of Former Yugoslavia: all these changes were not predicted even five years before they took place.
What does all this mean for educational change? After 1989 it was observable that numbers went up in most post-Socialist systems, but the quality of education did not follow the quantitative improvement. These countries mainly faced a drop in education quality, reduced financial resources, and less stability. These difficulties increasingly started to influence people’s way of thinking. Finally, some of the countries were able to escape from this trap of the early democratic period – in different ways, at different paces and with varying success.
Money is not everything. Let us look more closely at the relation between investment in education and the results of student assessment. A comparison of GDP and PISA results shows substantial differences between post-Socialist countries and countries like Finland or Norway. But interestingly enough, higher investment in education does not mean better education performance in all cases. Although huge investments were made in the Norwegian education system, even higher than those in Finland, the Norwegian performance is only comparable to that of Poland, which (with limited financial means) recently managed a successful education reform. However, whereas higher financial investment does not always lead to better education performance, scarce finances will definitely not allow us to pursue change towards better education.
Education systems face an important conceptual reconsideration related to their future. One of the reasons is the future role of work. Changes in the domain of paid activity (work) will, it seems, have significant influence on the content and methods of teaching and learning. The sharp increase in unemployment rates in our societies, especially amongst the young and old population, will have to be encountered by changing the current character of work. This shift is already taking place, though it is still not being reflected systematically in our education planning. The Finnish researcher Pekka Himanen claims that a new work ethic, which he calls the “hacker ethic”¹ , is already replacing the old Protestant ethic. Jeremy Rifkin and André Gorz emphasise that the domination of work has gone too far in our societies. The limitation of natural resources inside and outside of us is becoming more and more evident. Available time has already become a prominent factor for the quality of life and personal well-being. And technological progress has given us the means to overcome this problem.
This reconsideration of the work ethic means that we have to think beyond the present to an instrumental incorporation of education in economic logic. We definitely need more time: for education oriented toward knowledge for its own sake and the enjoyment of knowing, for proper research, for education and for simple existence. Contrary to the widely accepted plea for more vocational education, it is more general education that is needed. I am aware that this position is against EU policies. Nevertheless, what we have to do is to re-establish the balance between instrumental and non-instrumental education, between what is vocational and what is general in education. Re-establishing this balance will be for the benefit of EU competitiveness, too.

¹Pekka Himanen: The Hacker Ethic and the Spirit of the Information Age, Random House: New York, 2001