Educational Research - the Ethics and Aesthetics of Statistics

36 M. Depaepe
In the context of democratization, which is naturally conceived as an upward
movement (caused in part by the education enjoyed), the process of social mobility
is relative to the historical circumstances in which it takes place. This understanding
of social mobility has recently been confirmed by the Stanford historian of education
David Labaree at a doctoral colloquium in Bern. In his reading of history, the
problem posed in this way: ‘In the way that education interacts with social mobility
and social equity, both of the measures of social position are purely relative. Both
are cases of what social scientists call a zero sum game: A + B = 0. If A goes up
then B must go down in order to keep the sum at zero. If one person gets ahead
of someone else on the social ladder, then that other person has fallen behind. And
if the social differences between two people become more equal, then the increase
in social advantage for one person means the decrease in social advantage for the
other. Symmetry is built into both measures’ (Labaree, 2009, p.6).
If, nevertheless, an absolute supra-historical measure is sought, for example, in
terms of participation in higher or university education, then one must take the
drainage effect in the category of less educated into account. This is due to progressive
‘pedagogizing’, which obviously results not only in the growth of the middle
classes but also in the perception of the school as a socializing or a civilizing institution
of, for and promoted by the middle classes. Because the more educated no
longer want to be considered manual labourers, increasing modernization (including
the accompanying industrialization, bureaucratization and so on) provides them
with all sorts of jobs in the middle classes. Above all, children, who are sent to
secondary and higher education but no longer count as children or grandchildren
of labourers in the statistics, see to it that these middle classes are indeed able to
benefit the most from the increasing supply of education. Historically speaking, one
might still wonder whether what is involved here are the enduring effects of democratization
in the previous generation. This idea does not necessarily have to rest
on the somewhat naïve, possibly nostalgic myopia that the analysis of qualitative
source material on social progress, intellectual formation and the creation of individual
opportunities for development can readily occasion. It can also be conceived
as the result of more structural modernizing processes in which such a determinative
role need not be ascribed to the school. It is likely that the ‘gastropodal’ way
(Kossmann, 1987) in which the middle groups – here crudely seen as one single
middle category – have taken possession of the modernizing society is the result
of economic and industrial development that was not set in motion principally by
education or by the school. The idea that the school prepares or anticipates a new
society seems primarily inspired by an empathetic reading of the progressive reform
proposals that were formulated in the sphere of the Enlightenment and the French
Revolution (see below). This idea has been popular in educational circles because it
valorizes and legitimates the pedagogical trade (e.g. De Keyser, 1986). This does not
alter the fact that, in accordance with present-day economic rationality, education
can also and primarily be viewed from a market perspective. From that perspective,
it is without doubt a sector, which via the creation of all sorts of jobs, has itself
contributed to building up the social middle field. I have nothing to say here about
the ‘genetic’ hypothesis that it is impossible for everyone to be piloted to the middle
field via this sector. My silence in this matter stems from a wish to avoid being
politically and ideologically misunderstood.