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1. THE TEACHING PROFESSION
AT THE CROSSROADS:
COLLECTIVE DYNAMICS AND STRATEGIES BEFORE THE
CHALLENGES OF THE KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY
Mariano Fernández Enguita
Universityof Salamanca, Spain
www.enguita.info
Sophia University, Yotsuya Campus, Tokyo
June 23, 2010

2. Abstract
The acceleration of social change, up to the point that A. Giddens has depicted
as a runaway world, is rebuilding the coordinates for education processes, the
school system and the teaching profession. The overflow of information
paradoxically provokes a further inequality and hierarchization of knowledge and a
relentless struggle for attention between the school and other socialization and
communication means. The teaching profession, which so successfully conducted
us into the Gutenberg Galaxy, seems to be ill equipped to do so into the Internet
Galaxy.
In this context, the move towards professionalization runs the risk of deviating
into a fall in professionalism, i.e. into an strategy of dual closure which simply
pursues to put the profession out of reach either of the democratic state or of the
public to be educated. This corporatist strategy is aided by a distortion and
instrumentation of the old discourse of the political left, which allows the wrapping
of corporatist interests with the flag of the public interest. The alternative is the
(re)creation of an old/new democratic professional model, as different from our
bureaucratic origins as from our liberal temptations.

3. INFORMATION, KNOWLEDGE, ATTENTI
ON
• Information Society means information is
abundant, ever cheaper, democratically
accessible.
• So knowledge becomes more necessary, more
scarce, more hierarchical
– Growing social stratification around knowledge
– A third industrial revolution
• So attention becomes scarce
– Problems for the school side by side with the city, the
media, the internet
– Arbitrariness as a point of departure

4. TWO ICT REVOLUTIONS,
BUT ONE SCHOOL, ONE PROFESSION
• Gutenberg galaxy
– One speaks (writes) to many
– Teachers were born with it: they were readers, and
writers (calligraphers, even authors)
– Ancient philosophers, like Plato, feared the effects of
writing: see Phaedrus dialogue.
• Internet Galaxy
– Many speak/write to many
– Change acceleration erodes age and teachers’ status
– ICT and IKS mean distributed info and knowl.
– Teachers are digital immigrants, pupils are native

5. How would you qualify the situation of the
school system and its academic level?

6. SOME SUCCESFUL BOOKS, WRITEN BY
TEACHERS AND FOR TEACHERS
• The Anti-Pedagogic Pamphlet (Moreno)
• A Teacher in the Trenches (Tortosa)
• The Pedagogical Sect (Ruiz Paz)
• Education Destroyed (Orrico)
• The Educational Smash (Salvador)
• The Great Swindle. The rape of common sense in
education (Delibes)
• Archipiélago Orwell (Rosúa)
• Educational Genocide (Tamburri)
…and so on so forth, some with more neutral titles

7. SPANISH TEACHERS SALARIES IN THE EUROPEAN CONTEXT
(EURYDICE, 2001-02, 34 countries)

8. SPANISH TEACHERS’ MOST CHERISHED
COLLECTIVE DEMANDS
• Early retirement
– Voluntary at 60, with 30 years at work, with full
salary.
(Mandatory is at 65, soon will be 67, pension
depending on 15 last years contribution)
• Continuous working day
– The concentration of lecturing hours in the
morning, 9:00-14:00)
(Paid work week is 37,5 hours at public school)

9. The problem of recognition
• CIS: Barometer 07/04, general population:
– In your opinion, how do you value the work of professors
in prmary and secondary schools: very
good, good, regular, bad or very bad?
Very good + Good = 63,9%
– And how do you think that society values it?
Very good + Good = 33,5%
• IDEA/FUHEM, 2006, pupìls’ parents
– “My family values teachers positively”
Strongly agree + Agree = 83,7%
– “Society values teachers work *positively+ enough”
Strongly agree + Agree = 38,8%

10. A PARADOXICAL SITUATION
• Teachers collective attitudes
– Deep unrest
– Strong tendency to detachment
– Victimism, suspicion…
• Notwithstanding their objective position and
evolution
– High social valuation
– Comparatively high wages (compared nationanlly to
ISCED5 and internationally to teachers)
– Full time wage, part time job
– Work conditions fast and widely improved

11. DUAL PROFESSIONAL CLOSURE EMPLOYER, SOCIETY
(Frank Parkin’s concept, adapted)
USURPATION:
solidarity, mobilization
PROFESSION
EXCLUSION:
differentiation, legalism
PUBLIC, CLIENT

12. PROFESSIONAL MODELS
BUREACRATIC , Organizational
(Civil service:
hierarchy, discipline, procedur
es) HISTORICAL
ORIGINS
TEACHERS DEMOCRATIC:
- Initiative vs. hierarchy
PRESENT -Teamwork vs. solo practice
ASPIRATIONS - Partnership vs. paternalism
LIBERAL, Market
(Autonomous practice:
jurisdiction, exclusiveness)

13. SOME PARADOXES OF EDUCATORS RADICALISM
• Widespread anti-globalism, being a global institution
and a global profession
• Widespread anti-(neo)liberalism, in a bureaucratic
profession which fosters a liberal professional ideal
(medicine)
• Pretended anti-authoritarianism, while exercising an
authority-invested role before pupils and parents.
• Meritocratic utopianism, acritical stand before power
based on or associated to skills and knowledge

14. THE MEANING OF TEACHERS RADICALISM
• The bulk of intellectuals criticism must be
seen as a result of status incongruence
• Criticism of others’ advantages combines with
the defense of own privileges
• A rhetoric that advances group interests as
universals values: teachers  school system
 (children ) society as a whole
• A dangerous rhetoric in the coming of
knowledge society

15. THE SOCIAL CRITICAL TRADITION
• Liberalism as a critique of authority
– Eliminated personal dependence
– It failed to criticize power in voluntary relations, such as property
or wage labour
• Marxism as a critique of property
– It exposed them as power relations, particularly capitalist property
– It underestimated personal freedom (factory despotism, class
dictatorship, etc.)
• None of them was as critical of qualification
– Most liberals, hostile to people education
– However, Weber, Young, Illich…
– Marxism, celebrating revolutionary vs. petit-bougeois intellectuals
– Wright (Neomarxist): skill assets
– Mannheim: freischwebende Intelligenz

16. MULTIDIMENSIONALITY OF POWER: SOCIETY
AS A SYSTEM
System elements MATTER ENERGY INFORMATION
Economic system MEANS OF WORK (DEAD IFORMATION
PRODUCTION AND ALIVE) AND
CAPITAL AND KNOWLEDGE
LABOUR
INDUSTRIAL FIRST (STEAM, SECOND THIRD (ICTs,
REVOLUTION FACTORY,ETC.) (TAYLORISM, NEW
FORDISM, MATERIALS,
STAJANOVISM) BIOTECH.)
EMERGING PROPERTY AUTHORITY QUALIFICATION
POWER
FORMS OF ECONOMIC, SOCIAL, CULTURAL,
CAPITAL REPRODUCIBLE RELATIONAL EDUCATIONAL
WIDENING CAPITAL AND MANAGERS AND PROFESSIONALS
SOCIAL DIVIDE LABOUR MANAGED AND UNSKILLED

17. What’s going on?
• School is not a firm, but a very different kind of
organization: an institution
• In institutions, the main force is neither the proprietor or
employer, nor the whole of members (pupils, parents) or
the public, but the profession(s)
• As an institution, school is particularly asymmetric: age
gap, knowledge gap, conscription
• Teachers are not part of the working class in any sense, but
a professional group, with professional interests, privileges
and strategies
• Good for the profession does not mean good for the
institution, much less for is public or for society, but the
rethoric of the political left is easy to instrumentalize

18. SOME PAPERS IN ENGLISH
(ABOUT THE TEACHING PROFESSION)
School Democratization and Teachers'
Professionalism
Schools, Teachers and Social Change
Get to Know Yourself, or Better Not
Alland more at: www.scribd.com/enguita

19. THE TEACHING PROFESSION
AT THE CROSSROADS:
COLLECTIVE DYNAMICS AND STRATEGIES BEFORE THE
CHALLENGES OF THE KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY
Mariano Fernández Enguita
Universityof Salamanca, Spain
www.enguita.info