Some tentative provocations on #highered and social justice: Caught between the curriculum as Prozac, protest, pontification and performance

Paul Prinsloo
University of South Africa (Unisa)
@14prinsp
Invited presentation in the Doctor of Distance Education Program (EDDE 804),
Athabasca University, 23 February 2017
Some tentative provocations on #highered
and social justice:
Caught between the curriculum as Prozac,
protest, pontification and performance
Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/lost-places-old-decay-ruin-factory-1549096/

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• I don’t own the copyright of any of the images used and hereby
acknowledge their original copyright and licensing regimes. All the
images used in this presentation have been sourced from Google
Images or Pixabay and were labeled for non-commercial re-use
• This work (excluding the licencing regimes of the images from Google)
is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0
International License

Confessions of a sceptic
The notion of ‘sceptic’ does not refer to those who
doubt, but to them who investigate or research, as
opposed to those who assert and think that they have
found
Miguel de Unamuno
(29 September 1864 – 31 December 1936)
I have not found what I’m looking for
(with apologies to U2)

Not all the…Tentative points of
departures for
thinking about the
role of #highered
and social justice
Image credit – John Gray: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gray_(philosopher)
Image credit – Heresies –https://www.amazon.com/Heresies-Against-Progress-Other-Illusions/dp/1862077185
An imaginary conversation with John Gray –
Author of ‘Heresies’ (2004)

Not all the…
may be
“Belief in progress is the Prozac of the
thinking classes” (Gray, 2004, p. 3)
“History is not an ascending spiral of
human advance, or even an inch-by-inch
crawl to a better world. It is an unending
cycle in which changing knowledge
interacts with unchanging human needs.
Freedom is recurrently won and lost in an
alternation that includes long periods of
anarchy and tyranny, and there is no
reason to suppose this cycle will ever
end” (Gray, 2004, p. 3)
Image credit –https://www.amazon.com/Heresies-Against-Progress-Other-Illusions/dp/1862077185

Not all the…
may be
Image adapted from
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:All_persons_fictitious_disclaimer_English.PNG
“In ethics and politics, however, no
gain is irreversible. Human
knowledge grows, but the human
animal stays much the same.
Humans use their growing
knowledge to promote their
conflicting goals – whatever they
may be. Genocide and destruction
of nature are as much products of
scientific knowledge as antibiotics
and increasing longevity ”
(Gray, 2004, p. 4)

Not all the…
may be
Image adapted from
“The lesson of the century that has
just ended is that humans use the
power of science not to make a
new world but to reproduce the old
one – sometimes in hideous ways.
This is only to confirm a truth
known in the past, but forbidden
today: knowledge does not make
us free”
(Gray, 2004, p. 6; emphasis added)

Not all the…
may be
Image adapted from
“The core of the belief in progress is
that human values and goals converge
in parallel with our increasing
knowledge. The twentieth century
shows the contrary. Human beings use
the power of scientific knowledge to
assert and defend the values and goals
they already have. New technologies
can be used to alleviate suffering and
enhance freedom. They can, and will,
also be used to wage war and
strengthen tyranny”
(Gray, 2004, p. 106)

If we accept, for now, that progress is not
inevitable and that increases in knowledge
and understanding do not, necessarily,
result in a more just and equal society,
where does it leave teaching and learning?
Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/lost-places-old-decay-ruin-factory-1549096/

Not all the…
may be
Image adapted from
Image credit:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Imperial_Federation,_Map_of_the_World_Showing_the_Extent_of_the_
British_Empire_in_1886_(levelled).jpg
Overview of the presentation
• Curricula as the stories we (don’t or/and are not
allowed to) tell our children, our students, and
each other
• The curriculum as contested and contesting space:
a brief history
• The curriculum as Prozac
• The curriculum as protest
• The curriculum as performance/agency
• The curriculum as multiple and intersecting
narratives
• The curriculum as fragile
• (In)conclusions

If we see curricula as the
stories we tell, are allowed to
tell, don’t tell, forget to tell…

… where are the stories from …
…folks that live outside the norm? Where are the feminist
theories of …? Where are the queer theories of …? Where are
the not-able-bodied theories of …? Where are the immigrants
to Canada theories of …? Why do folks that do not occupy the
'norm' have to subscribe to largely white-patriarchal theories
of …, as reported by largely questionnaire-based studies of …
theories, on largely white male leaders [scholars][scientists]
[politicians][activists]?
(Adapted from a student question - David)

Not all the…
may be
Image adapted from
The Fight Between Carnival and Lent, Pieter Bruegel 1559, Den Bosch. Image credit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnival
In considering the nexus between higher
education and social justice, we need to
consider…

What are the “absences and
silences” (Morley, 2012) in our
curricula and staff and student
profiles? And why?
Who/what is ‘visible’ and
who/what is ‘invisible’ in our
curricula and institutions?
“…how do you make people
look at you when they can’t
even see you? How do you
make them take notice in the
first place?”
(Murphy, 2016, par. 11)
Image credit: https://samanthaburgoyne.wordpress.com/2014/06/15/the-invisible-man-book-cover-design/

Not all the…
may be
If “Belief in [a particular notion of?] progress is
the Prozac of the thinking classes” (Gray, 2004,
p. 3) – where does it leave the role of
#highered in service of social justice?
(Adapted from a student question - Rita Prokopetz)
Image credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kapsula.png

Who controls the past controls
the future. Who controls the
present controls the past.
George Orwell
Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/vaulted-cellar-tunnel-arches-keller-247391/

The ‘what’, the silences
and absences in
curricula and higher
education institutions
are determined by
those who lay claim to
own the future …
… and they will protect
their claims at all cost
Image credit: https://www.amazon.com/Who-Owns-Future-Jaron-Lanier/dp/1451654979

Higher education and its curricula are therefore a
“contested space” (Prinsloo, 2007) and “an arena of
struggle” (Shay, 2015)
Image credit: Canadian Gunners in the Mud, Passchendaele by Lieutenant Alfred Bastien, 1917, oil on canvas. Retrieved from,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_art

Not all the…
may be
Image adapted from
Image credit:
The curriculum as contested and
contesting space: a brief history

Not all the…
may be
Image adapted from
Throughout the ages, what was considered to be “legitimate”
knowledge depended on the context; the societal value added by
the knowledge; as well as the validation of the knowledge by
persons/organisations who claimed the power to legitimate or
declare some knowledge as worthy or illegitimate/unworthy

There is no evidence or examples of instances
where knowledge production and its
dissemination were not controlled, regulated
and legitimised, whether in the early Academy
of Plato (385 BCE), the Buddhist Nalanda
University in Bihar, India ( 5th century BCE), the
University of Constantinople, established in 425
BCE, or the medieval Madrasahs founded in the
9th century CE.

Craft associations and guilds, whether the mask carving
association in Benin, or weavers in India – all had the same
basis, namely:
• the celebration and acknowledgement of expertise (the so-
called master craftsmen and craftswomen);
• exercising the monopoly on their craft in a particular
geographical area; and
• regulating and sanctioning access to the specific expertise
base
(See Davenport and Pruzak, 2000)
Image credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Novgorod_torg.JPG

“Guilds protected their special knowledge;
governments prohibited the export of
economically important skills. France, for
instance, made exporting lace-making
expertise a capital crime: Anyone caught
teaching the skill to foreigners could be put to
death”
(Davenport and Pruzak, 2000). (Also see Belfanti, 2004)
Image credit:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lace_Panel,_16th_century,_Italy,_Linen,_needlepoint_lace,_punto_in_aria,_Re
ticelli_pattern,_buttonhole_stitch.JPG

Not all the…
may be
Image adapted from
There is a gradual move of power away from the
knowledge producers to those who have the power
or standing to classify knowledge as legitimate,
as profane or sacred
(also see Bernstein 1996, Bourdieu & Passeron 1977)

Not all the…
may be
Image adapted from
Image credit:
1. The curriculum/higher
education as Prozac

A show/pill a day…
• Homo economicus – Consuming/amusing
ourselves to death…
• The constant need to ‘fit’ in to the demands
of the market
• The neoliberal prescription of lifelong learning
– always falling short, always lacking, always
defective, always in need of more training,
more development, more skills, always facing
obsolescence and joining those classified as
the “collateral casualties of progress”
(Bauman, 2004, p. 15)
Image credit: https://mytwocents.wordpress.com/2009/03/25/what-im-reading-amusing-ourselves-to-death-2/

Image credit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choice
What is the potential of higher
education as the ‘red pill’?
Image credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/stevetroughton/17072638696

Not all the…
may be
Page credit: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/why-facts-
dont-change-our-minds
Houston, we have a
problem…

Not all the…
may be
Image adapted from
Image credit:
education as
protest/counter-
narrative

Not all the…
may be
Image adapted from
What is the potential for higher education
to formulate counter-narratives,
alternative visions of a more just future?
Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/hand-arm-fist-outreach-protest-1482801/

Not all the…
may be
Image adapted from
Page credit:
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/02/protesters-hang-
refugees-welcome-banner-from-lady-liberty.html?mid=twitter-
share-di

Not all the…
may be
Image adapted from
Image credit:
education
performance/agency

Not all the…
may be
Image adapted from
Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/isolated-transparent-white-1513515/
From pontification to agency:
tentative pointers

Research by Stamm,
Clark and Eblecas (2000)
COVERAGE UNDERSTANDING ACTION

The problem-path model
(Stamm et al., 2000)
Stage 0
Unaware of
situation
Stage 1
Heard about
situation, but
can’t say if it
is a problem
or not
Stage 2a
Situation is
NOT a
problem
Stage 2b
Situation IS
a problem
Stage 3
Thinking
about
solutions
Stage 4
Identification
of solutions

Critique of the
problem-path model
Stage 0
Unaware of
situation
Stage 1
Heard about
situation, but
can’t say if it
is a problem
or not
Stage 2a
Situation is
NOT a
problem
Stage 2b
Situation IS
a problem
Stage 3
Thinking
about
solutions
Stage 4
Identification
of solutions
Disengagement

A future-oriented
impact model
Stage 0
Unaware of
situation
Stage 1
Heard about
situation, but
can’t say if it
is a problem
of not
Stage 2a
Situation is
NOT a
problem
Stage 2b
Situation IS
a problem
Disengagement
Stage 3
Thinking
about
solutions
Stage 4
Identifi-
cation of
solutions
Stage 5
ACTION
Armchair
pontificators
Change
agents

Not all the…
may be
Image adapted from
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:All_persons_fictitious_disclaimer_English.
PNG
Image credit:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Imperial_Federation,_Map_of_the_World_Showing_the_Extent_of
3. The
curriculum/higher
education as multiple
and intersecting
narratives

Imagecredit:https://pixabay.com/en/binary-code-man-display-dummy-face-1327512/
A social cartography of higher education
Neoliberal
CriticalLiberal
de Oliveira Andreotti, V.,
Stein, S., Pashby, K., &
Nicolson, M. (2016). Social
cartographies as
performative devices in
research on higher
education. Higher
Education Research &
Development, 1-16.
Spaces for deviance,
disruption, anger and
hope

Liberal
• Serving the public good – defined by those in power
• Increasing equality and access to individual freedoms
• A strong state role in welfare and re-distribution
• Higher education as key in achieving national development
goals
• Increasing access and the massification of higher education
• Economic growth as driver
• Everyone can be a success – from poverty to riches and the
individual as an autonomous, rational agent
• Let-us-forget-the-past-and-go-on-
with-our-lives-the-future-is-bright-
just-take-off-your-glasses-and-pull-
up-your-socks

Neoliberal
• Austerity measures and defunding of higher education
• Commodification of the curriulum and the
rationalisation of the PQM
• Students and industry as customers
• Increasing administrative, well-paid staff and the
outsourcing of teaching to contract and adjunct faculty
• Institutional prestige and global university rankings
• “In this orientation, the role of the nation-state is to enable and to
protect, with military force if necessary, the rights of capital and the
smooth functioning and expansion of markets” (p. 91).
• Faculty have become “individualist strivers competing for grants,
publications, promotions, salary increases, better jobs elsewhere
according to a set of rules as market driven as anything dreamed up by
administrators” (Jemielniak & Greenwood, 2015, p. 73).

Critical
• It explores and exposes the inherent epistemological power and
patterns of violence in curricula
• It highlights capitalist exploitation, processes of racialization and
colonialism and other forms of oppression at work in seemingly
benevolent and normalised patterns of thinking and behavior (p.
91)
• The inclusion of more diverse voices but contrary to the production
of a singular and homogenous narrative of a nation-state, it “aims to
transform, pluralise, or replace these narratives through historical
and systemic analyses of patterns of oppression and unequal
distributions of power, labour and resources” (p. 91)
• This orientation contests and confronts the
notion of the university as “an elitist space,
and ivory tower” (p. 91)

Not all the…
may be
Image adapted from
Image credit:
education as fragile,
potentially deviant space
for alternative futures

Not all the…
may be
Image adapted from
Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/fragile-text-wood-brown-antique-354606/
Handle with care

Soft-reform
space
Radical-reform space Beyond-reform space
Modernity’s life support Modernity’s palliative care
Recognitionofepistemologicalhegemony
Never have
been
happier,
healthier,
wealthier
Problems
addressed
through
personal
transformation
Problems
addressed
through
institutional
change
The game is awesome! Everyone can
win once we know the rules
The game is rigged, so if we
want to win we need to change
the rules
The game is harmful and
makes us immature, but we’re
stuck playing
Playing the game
does not make sense
Recognitionofontologicalhegemony
Recognitionofmetaphysicalentrapment
Racism
Capitalism
Colonialism
Heteropatriarchy
Nationalism
Race, capital,
heteropatriarchy
as modernity
(unfixable)
Alternatives
with
guarantees
Hacking
Hospicing
Other modes
of existence
based on
different
cosmologies
? ?
(Adapted from de Oliveira Andreotti, Stein, Ahenakew, & Hunt, 2015,p. 25)
FOUR SPACES OF ENUNCIATION

(In)conclusions
Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/stairs-architecture-secret-curve-1636573/
Deviance, disruption and hope are
conscious but always incomplete,
till-further-notice, compromised
and compromising decisions

47
The curriculum as fragile, deviant
hope
‘Maybe’ comes with no guarantees, only a chance. But ‘maybe’
has always been the best odds the world has offered to those
who set out to alter its course – to find a new land across the
sea, to end slavery, to enable women to vote, to walk on the
moon, to bring down the Berlin Wall.
‘Maybe’ is not a cautious word. It is a defiant claim of possibility
in the face of a status quo we are unwilling to accept…
(Young in the Foreword to Westley, Zimmerman & Patton, 2006)
Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/key-stump-nature-forest-1683108/

THANK YOU
Paul Prinsloo
Research Professor in Open Distance Learning (ODL)
College of Economic and Management Sciences,
Office number 3-15, Club 1, Hazelwood,
P O Box 392
Unisa, 0003, Republic of South Africa
T: +27 (0) 12 433 4719 (office)
prinsp@unisa.ac.za
Skype: paul.prinsloo59
Personal blog: http://opendistanceteachingandlearning.wordpress.com
Twitter profile: @14prinsp

REFERENCES
Bauman, Z. (2004). Wasted lives. Modernity and its outcasts. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Belfanti, C.M. (2004). Guilds, patents, and the circulation of technical knowledge. Northern Italy
during the early modern age. Technology and Culture, 45(3), 569–589.
Bernstein, B. (1996). Pedagogy, symbolic control and identity: theory, research, critique. London:
Taylor & Francis.
Bourdieu, P., & Passeron, J.C. (1977). Reproduction in education, society, and culture. Beverly
Hills, Calif: Sage.
Carrington, V. & Luke, A. (1997). Literacy and Bourdieu’s sociological theory: a reframing.
Language and Education, 11(2), 96-112.
Davenport, T.H., & Prusak, L. (2000). Working knowledge: how organisations manage what they
know. Ubiquity, (August 1 - August 31). Retrieved from
http://ubiquity.acm.org/article.cfm?id=348775
de Oliveira Andreotti, V., Stein, S., Ahenakew, C., & Hunt, D. (2015). Mapping interpretations of
decolonization in the context of higher education. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education &
Society, 4(1), 21-40.
de Oliveira Andreotti, V., Stein, S., Pashby, K., & Nicolson, M. (2016). Social cartographies as
performative devices in research on higher education. Higher Education Research &
Development, 1-16
Gray, J. (2004). Heresies. London, UK: Granta Books.

REFERENCES (cont.)
Jemielniak, D., & Greenwood, D. J. (2015). Wake up or perish: Neo-liberalism, the social sciences,
and salvaging the public university. Cultural Studies? Critical Methodologies, 15(1), 72-82.
Murphy, M. (2016, January 9). The costs of being invisible. Social Theory Applied. Retrieved from
http://socialtheoryapplied.com/2016/01/09/the-invisible-man/
Prinsloo, P. (2007). The curriculum as contested space: An inquiry. In Contesting spaces: The
curriculum in transition (pp. 44–59). A monograph containing selected papers from the
African Conference on Higher Education held in September 2006, Pretoria, Republic of South
Africa. University of South Africa.
Shay, S. (2015). Curriculum reform in higher education: a contested space. Teaching in Higher
Education, 20(4), 431-441.
Stamm, K.R., Clark, F., & Eblacas, P.R. (2000). Mass communication and public understanding of
environmental problems: the case of global warming. Public Understanding of Science, 9,
219–237.
Westley, F., Zimmerman, B. & Patton, M.Q. (2006). Getting to maybe: how the world is changed.
Canada: Random House.

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Some tentative provocations on #highered and social justice: Caught between the curriculum as Prozac, protest, pontification and performance