On the slippery slope in education

Or the ‘N’ word (Neoliberalism)

Chair nervously waiting to be problematised. Photo by Willian Justen de Vasconcellos on Unsplash

Slippery slope fallacies in education would be amusing were they not so pervasive. The slippery slope fallacy is one where a relatively small first step leads to an unintended cascade of events that end in some kind of disaster. In broader society, one of these scenarios might end in a collective Fascist turn, complete moral breakdown, mass human destruction, or worse, irrelevance thanks to AI and the singularity. In education discourse, we have our own set of equally predictable and clichéd slippery slopes. 

One corker that springs to mind is this peer-reviewed (yes) paper on the coercive power of the humble classroom chair. This slippery slope is where every attempt to put boundaries on the behaviour of wilful adolescents is seen as evidence of neoliberal control. Being quiet, sitting in chairs, observing designated times to talk to friends and go to the toilet – all tools of neoliberal oppression! 

Here’s a quote from the abstract:

students’ bodies (are) seen as objects to arrange and constrain in ways deemed conducive for learning. The paper problematises this de-socialised view of classrooms, alongside the underpinning sense of design solutionism and (mis)appropriation of ‘learning science’ by product designers to justify their products’ capacities to somehow cause learning to take place.

To put my English teacher hat on, I’m interested in phrases like, “deemed conducive.” The passive voice suggests someone other than the teacher is deciding they don’t like teaching twenty-five 14-year-olds who are trying to write while standing up. I also replay the word ‘problematises’ in my mind and try substituting it for a Jerry Seinfeld routine, where he asks the audience, “What’s the deal with chairs?” There’s an intellectual equivalence there, I’m sure of it. 

What about this slightly hysterical call-to-action? Escape Oppression Now! Disrupt the Dominance of Evidence-Based Practice. I added the exclamation point but I didn’t need to. The imperative was more than enough. What I find truly ironic is the suggestion by the headline that teachers are just unwitting pawns in our own – yes, again – subjugation by invisible neoliberal forces. What we ignorant fools need is for the AARE blog to open our eyes to the evils of worked examples. 

Perhaps my favourite slippery slope in education is the claim of eugenics. I’ve seen this in reference to any mention of student ability, but now also in discussion of reforms to initial teacher education in Australia. The new, mandated core content covers, among many other things, learning and the brain. The argument in the paper goes something along the lines of – and I’m paraphrasing a little here – educational psychology = eugenics. As we know from the great Freddie de Boer, perhaps not everything is eugenics. The examples he lists don’t even come close to this one. 

And because I’m now on a tear, even the sentence can’t escape scrutiny. The (free) resources on teaching writing, developed by AERO, are put under the microscope. Efficiency in teaching is bad (the alternative?). Philanthropy in education is evidence of explicit instruction chemtrails. I’ll break this one down: sentences = explicit teaching (bad) = commercialisation of education = you guessed it, neoliberal oppression. 

I’ll attempt to explain what seems to have happened here, based on my minimal knowledge of this kind of research in education. It seems that there may have been a mythical golden age of teachers being qualified at more like a trade level, where literacy and numeracy were higher; there was a concurrent and notable lack of administrivia, but also a dearth of data and accountability. The world has moved on. We know the impact of a good education (and a poor one), and teachers are increasingly held accountable, their work driven more and more by compliance. And we also know that many of the standards fail to set a standard. So, it’s little wonder that outcomes in Australia have not improved. 

Is neoliberalism to blame for this? Or is the science of learning somehow standing between teachers and professional self-actualisation? And are these the questions that really matter to the average teacher? Behavioural change is notoriously hard to achieve, so this supposed threat of explicit teaching taking over classrooms only highlights the gap between academic theory and the lived reality in actual schools. We don’t need academic opinion pieces to lift the veil on our oppression. We just want students to learn.

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I’ve been a part of a fantastic school-based research project for the past two years and the final report has been published. It’s a very useful how-to guide for implementing self-regulated learning, specifically study skills, in schools. It looks quite stunning and it’s so gratifying to see the hard work of the team in one document. Download by clicking the button.