Educational Research - the Ethics and Aesthetics of Statistics

186 I. Munday
in numerals. This might be due to the fact that the number is somewhat inexact.
However, there seems to something obscene about using numerals in this instance
that goes beyond their relation to reality, something disgusting about the equation of
numbers with such horror. One might even go further and say that writing 6,000,000
out in words sutures over the horror of the Holocaust and that there is something
unethical about humanising it in this way. What I am trying to touch on here is
that bleakness accompanies numbers/statistics, whether they appear as words or
numerals.
This perhaps explains why policies designed to boost the stats are given names
like ‘Every Child Matters’ (a British invention) and ‘No child left behind’. Both
these phrases have become slogans. ‘Every Child Matters’ need not mean (and from
a humanist perspective should not mean) ‘every child must gain added value on
their minimum target grade’. There is a sense in which the phrase ‘every child matters’
in its internal linking carries a humanist quality to it. In contrast ‘no child
left behind’ has a rather more forced quality to it that shows up its’ sloganeering –
the phrase is adapted from military imagery of leaving no man behind on the battlefield
(though there is also perhaps a hint of Hansel and Gretel about it). In at
least two respects, these slogans have a suturing effect in that (1) they hide what
they are about and (2) they become mantras – they dissolve into the public body.
However, importantly, slogans are more vulnerable than statistics even when (or
perhaps particularly when) they are married to them. This is due to the iterability of
language mentioned earlier – for a slogan to be a slogan it has to be repeated. It will
draw on words that have a rich history. Consider the fact that both slogans include
the word ‘child’. Much of the recent discourse in British schooling had abandoned
this word due to its progressive connotations and replaced it with ‘student’. Policy
makers and politicians were presumably unaware of this word’s origins: ‘A student,
let us remember, is originally a lover (Latin, studere – to love)’ (Standish, 2005,
p. 60). What we are bearing witness to here is the aforementioned ‘iterability’ of
language.
I am going to tell a story to reinforce what is perhaps at stake here. I recently gave
a lecture to teacher trainees on ‘behaviour for learning’. Prior to this lecture I was
asked to refer to the ‘Every Child Matters’ agenda, as Ofsted inspectors would check
that the students had been repeatedly introduced to it. I did not feel too happy about
this and grudgingly referred to it in passing. The ‘phrase’ elicited a groan from an
audience who are still quite new to sloganeering. Suddenly I found myself defending
the notion that every child matters with a discussion of the fact that when many of
the students come across a certain kind of ‘child’ and that individual will bear little
resemblance to the sorts of human being (civil, non-violent, articulate) that they
would previously have encountered (many of the students are privately schooled
Cambridge graduates), resisting the temptation to write that child off will require
considerable mental and emotional strength. Putting things this way introduces the
term ‘every child matters’ into a context that is neither technical nor humanist (in
any sentimental sense). Perhaps, in certain respects, this story exemplifies Derrida’s
account of professing.