Educational Research - the Ethics and Aesthetics of Statistics

116 N. Hodgson
The objects of statistical analysis, the presentation of data and the way in which
citizens are addressed in terms of questions of happiness and well-being are seen
to be constitutive of not only the European citizen but also Europe itself. The creation
of European citizenship as a formal legal category by the Maastricht Treaty
in 1992 has since required measures to create an allegiance to Europe among this
citizenry. The creation of symbols of Europe, such as the flag and the currency,
is particularly a visible example. Educational and cultural measures, in particular,
have also been used to interpellate individuals as European citizens, for example,
through the promotion of a shared European heritage (see Shore, 2000) and through
educational exchange programmes between member states (e.g. SOCRATES and
ERASMUS). More recently, developments have taken place at the local political
and individual level as Europe has sought to standardise practices of measurement,
presentation and accountability within and across the member states, for example,
through the Bologna Process to create a European Higher Education Area
(http://www.ond.vlaanderen.be/hogeronderwijs/Bologna/) and the Lisbon Treaty,
which came into effect in 2009 (http://europa.eu/lisbon_treaty/index_en.htm). This
process of what has been termed the “Europeanisation” of Europe (Shore, 2000,
p. 221) requires the categorisation of phenomena as European. Concepts such
as “European citizen”, “common European values”, “European culture” and
“European public opinion” have become part of our vocabulary that renders them
less open to question. They “become part of the fabric of our subjectivity” (Shore,
2000, p. 29).
I will first provide some recent background to the development of happiness and
well-being as objects of political concern. This is not to suggest that these have not
been a matter of governmental concern previously but that they appear in a particular
way in the current context. I will then provide examples of the way in which
this academic and professional knowledge has been taken up at different levels of
governance (e.g. OECD, Europe, national government) and formalised to become an
accepted way of understanding what such organisations should seek to measure, and
how this relates to the wider discourses prevalent in policy-making today of transparency,
democracy, sustainability and social justice. I will then turn to discuss how
the discourse of happiness and well-being operates in a specific educational context.
8.2 The New Science of Happiness
In recent years, GDP (Gross Domestic Product), the well-established measure of a
country’s progress and wealth, has been criticised for its inability to fully account
for the complexity of societies and their populations. The EU now speaks of moving
“beyond GDP”. According to one European Commissioner for Economic and
Monetary Policy:
GDP was never intended to be anything but an indicator of economic performance. It cannot
distinguish between activities that have a negative or a positive impact on wellbeing. In fact,
war and even natural disasters may register as an increase in GDP...Of course, economic
growth can bring about an improvement in quality of life, but only up to a point. Indeed,