The educational utopia has changed sides

Where does utopia come from and where does it go?

The word utopia was first used by Thomas More in the early 16th century to describe an imaginary, ideal society. The roots of the word come from the Greek "topos" (place) with the prefix "u" meaning: without place, or in the absence of place. Utopia is therefore an ideal society that struggles to be embodied in a place. Wikipedia offers the following definition

Utopia: "An ideal, political or social view that takes no account of reality".

But for Gramsci, pedagogical utopia is a goal that will be achieved when cultural dominance comes to an end. Numerous social movements have sketched out their utopias and tried to embody them in very real spaces. With Bruno Latour's 2017 essay"Where to land ", the question of the concreteness of the earth, the limits of matter and the world appear very real.

Utopia would be to ignore that the world is limited, to deny the influence of humans on climate. What we know about the development of a tree, limited by its growth in height or circumference, we are in the process of learning about our societies. They too are limited. The Anthropocene era is no myth. Humans are modifying the environment, nature and the climate, and the traces of this process (fires, deforestation, droughts, soil artificialisation, disappearance of freshwater surfaces, etc.) are visible from the International Space Station, 409 kilometers away. But we can't see anything under our noses.

It used to be said that a utopian was someone who dreamed of a society that would transform and humanize itself, of sharing and learning together. The utopian was the one who dreamed with eyes wide open, detached from all material contingencies. He was looked upon with incredulity, even a touch of disdain. The ideal school or city he invented was condemned to remain on the margins. The perfection he aimed for was even perceived as totalitarianism.

Sometimes, utopias brought together a broader base of aspirations, in which case the utopian became dangerous and had to be brought down because he threatened the social order as a whole. Educational ideas that were too liberal (see, for example, Summer Hill's Libres enfants, 1970) or theories that were too out of step with current beliefs had to be combated. Many of these utopias were fueled by a need to redress injustice and build a better future. Education and living together are at the heart of all utopias. Utopia is still that principle of hope that makes the present sustainable, that moment when the illusion of the sensible becomes intelligibility.

Realists, pragmatists and serious decision-makers have rarely belonged to the utopian camp. They have taken the initiative to ensure that whatever is transformed is done so in convergence with their interests, often so that nothing changes significantly. But without realizing it, they have become the new utopians.

Today, the utopian is the person who believes that nothing is going to change, that excessive consumption and damage to nature can't be helped and that it's not that serious. The utopian dreams of unlimited oil and energy, of technological progress that solves all problems, absolutely all. He says "it was better before, we have to go back", which Michel Serres (2017) contests, telling us with malice and a wealth of examples (famine, poverty, disease, ignorance, etc.)"Before, I was there and it wasn't better".

Utopia on the other side of the world

Utopia has changed sides, because you have to be naive to believe that everything will continue as it is. Educational utopians believe in a single method valid for all, in the excellence of a few to lead the rest. They denounce"pedagogism", which they characterize as exaggerated egalitarianism and a passion for leveling down. They have an obsession with level and measure, even though learning and living are synonymous and life is immeasurable.

They imagine that a few excellent leaders above the rest are enough to lead a society. They discovered that during the health crisis, those who risked and saved lives or provided and distributed food were often the humblest.

Too often, they confuse the leader as a person who exerts influence, and leadership as the shared social energy that makes common projects feasible. It's not enough to educate a few leaders for this social energy to take hold; it's a question of everyone having their place and feeling that they can take initiatives and achieve a destiny. Utopians maintain multi-speed systems to create machines for sorting the wheat from the chaff.

Elite schools capture maximum resources, while others are left to fend for themselves. Individualistic, materialistic education is pure utopia when everyone realizes the scale of the collective commitments required to help the planet. A school that strives to create leaders forgets to make leadership accessible to all, according to their power of initiative. Too many leaders and not enough leadership.

That leaves us with the dystopia of alternative utopias.

Today's educational and materialistic utopia is deadly unrealistic given the current climate and societal crisis. It produces leaders who are negligent of the common good, and who do their utmost to maintain at arm's length the educational and social system that has produced and justified their careers, even though this system accentuates imbalances.

Alongside "green whashing" comes "social whashing". Reality remains stable, only the "elements of language" change, twisting even the meaning of words, creating distrust of all towards all, and populist one-upmanship.
A worthwhile dystopia would consist not in fighting against the system in place, but in imagining creative resistance in the interstices and on the margins of educational systems.

It's less a question of denouncing and fighting what's dysfunctional, as this tends to reinforce the system, if we are to believe the work of Chiapello and Boltanski (1999), than of creating desirable alternatives everywhere, demonstrating their added value through action. In the field of education, it is possible to support alternative projects and, in particular, to seize digital wastelands, to invest in a terrain that is not entirely locked down. Educational entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs can distill new ideas and test solutions wherever they are. They have no choice but to be excellent and prove their added value for the common good.

Sources

Le rouge et le noir - teaching today, the reign of pedagogical utopia
https://www.lerougeetlenoir.org/opinions/les-inquisitoriales/enseigner-aujourd-hui-3-le-regne-de-l-utopie-pedagogique

Latour, B. (2017). Where to land?- Comment s' orienter en politique.
https://www.decitre.fr/livres/ou-atterrir-comment-s-orienter-en-politique-9782707197009.html

Meirieu - Moving from the illusions of the sensible to the evidence of the intelligible

Wikipedia - Thomas More - https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_More

Wikipedia - Utopia - https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopie

Linternaute - Utopia - https://www.linternaute.fr/dictionnaire/fr/definition/utopie/

Roza, S. (2016). Between authority and emancipation. Gramsci's pedagogical utopia in the 12th Prison Notebook.

Anthropology & Materialism. A Journal of Social Research, (3). https://journals. openedition.org/am/622

Chiapello, E., & Boltanski, L. (1999). The New Spirit of Capitalism (No. hal-00680085)
https://www.decitre.fr/livres/le-nouvel-esprit-du-capitalisme-9782070131525.html

Serres, M. (2017), C'était mieux avant
https://www.decitre.fr/livres/c-etait-mieux-avant-9782746512887.html

Neill, A. S., Laguilhomie, M., & Mannoni, M. (1970). Free children of Summerhill.
https://www.decitre.fr/livres/libres-enfants-de-summerhill-9782707142160.html