Education
as a Design Process
The Influence of Pop and Consumer Culture on Knowledge
Transfer and the Marketing of Education
REINIGUNGSGESELLSCHAFT
"Lifelong learning" is a concept to enable people to learn on their
own initiative throughout their entire life. It focuses on the ability of individuals
to locate, assess and use knowledge. It implies the permanent and lifelong self-organised
acquirement of knowledge. It is considered as a key qualification not only in
the de-regulated job market.
In addition to school and vocational training, learning is required also in
on-the-job training and in further education. Furthermore, the learning in everyday
life, changing work conditions and the requirements of a constantly changing
society lead to new forms of informal learning. Other than that mentioned, learning
as a collective process plays a key role in development of new organisational
structures in institutions and companies.
"Lifelong Learning" is designed to help strengthen social relations
and to avoid marginalisation. The aim of the strategy in the framework of educational
policy is to increase the participation of large parts of the population in
education and to give all people more opportunities for individual social and
vocational development according to their strengths.
On close inspection, the concept of "Lifelong Learning", is impossible
to describe precisely. Never stopping to learn also implies making mistakes.
The constant acquisition of knowledge and a change of perspectives through new
acts of cognition creates a culture of failure management. It provides a basis
for the conclusion that knowledge gained individually has only limited validity.
Any claim of willingness to adopt lifelong learning also encounters resistance.
Critics interpret it as a paring-down of education to the improvement of learning
processes for purposes of economic usefulness. The role and function of education
in the structural change of society becomes apparent through the economic and
political predestination of educational contents.
The overall concept of "Lifelong Learning" could be understood as
the "anything goes" of the 21st Century. The motto "Lifelong
Learning" is included in every single entrepreneurial mission statement
and in all political party programs. The development of an educated elite promises
advantages in terms of location and competition. The decision on the contents
which are acquired in each case are made by the market and the job agency respectively.
The ubiquitous demand for flexible "human capital" and "human
resources" is an expression of that. According to this critique, ""Lifelong
Learning" leads more than ever to an increasing social exclusion. Because,
those who are not able or willing to adapt, reduce their chances of social participation.
There is a lifelong pressure on the individual to learn even more and more extensively
in shorter periods and to gather as much information as possible. But there
is no guarantee or safe outlook for the sustainability of the knowledge gained.
This is even more visible in the case of knowledge gained for vocational qualification.
In spite of the fastening obsolescence of knowledge it is important to do everything
to keeping track of the current standard of knowledge. Only those people who
are constantly striving to improve their marketability have the right to participate
in the "rare good" of labour .
Companies which demand "Lifelong Learning"" of their employees
however do face this deliberate critique of society only in rare cases. In fact,
the strong leaning towards accepted customs and a lacking readiness to take
responsibility for one's actions, make evident the instinctive resistance towards
an increasing pressure to perform. In addition to this, the learning processes
in business are subject to the conditions of a formalised implementation and
therefore barely provide room for personal identification.
The motivation of staff becomes an over stressed keyword of in the field of
corporate management. In times of growing unemploymewnt, the promise of job
security gains growing value and becomes the driving force behind a new willingness
to perform.
Against the background of these developments in society, we must ask the question:
who owns education? Educational goals are defined not by individuals, but by
the predominating context. Education is determined not only by economics, but
also by history, language, and culture. The knowledge and information society
is characterised by its immaterial core values. Its conditions contribute to
the commercialisation of knowledge and education. Something which can be described
as an education industry comes into being. It works in a market- oriented fashion
and tries to reach customers, win their loyalty, and make profits.
Who designs knowledge? The content of educational material is defined by curricula
set by governments. Within this clearly defined frame of conditions, publishers
of schoolbooks have some scope during the production. As service providers,
they are interested in the constant development and improvement of their products.
The sales department is responsible for the contact with schools and teachers,
and at the same time it acts as a sort of market researcher. They are the link
between the customers, i.e. teachers, and the designers.
The target groups are clearly defined, the main contact persons for sales activities
are the teachers. Due to the increasing privatisation of educational opportunities,
parents are of growing importance when choosing the educational materials, particularly
since they have to bear an increasing share of the costs. The actual users of
the schoolbooks and educational materials, the pupils, appear only at the very
end of this chain of relations.
What responsibilities
can or should a business take over within the field of education under the conditions
of intensified competition? How marketable is education? The products and services
of the education industry should satisfy the needs of the education market completely.
They should be adopted in a useful way and contribute to an improvement in education
and learning possibilities. This goal makes high demands on the quality in form
and content.
On the other hand, there is strong competition amongst the players on the education
market. The traditional market in schools is shrinking due to a decreasing number
of pupils and therefore subject to fierce competition . The occasional practice
of handing out whole class sets of books free of charge to gain market share
illustrate how fierce the fight is. It creates existential pressure among the
competitors, under which they have to strike a balace between company growth
and responsibility for the products.
How is education designed? How is the content transferred and how is the end
user reached? Education is a process of design. This applies to learning strategies
as well as to the conditioning of educational contents. School materials often
contain sub- cultural elements which reach their audience geared to the target
group. An identification with cultural patterns of youth, or at least with some
part of it, which is considered still digestible by designers and teachers,
is a valid sales argument. Our culture of everyday life is increasingly transported
by images and symbols. The influence of lifestyle and consumerist aesthetic
cannot be ignored, for instance when cartoon and graffiti styles, tags and Manga
copies find their way into educational materials.
New trends in fashion, consumerism, lifestyle or music are often started by
small groups, which therefore stand in opposition to the mainstream. Alternative,
Gothic or early Hip Hop are examples for that. Hackers are a subculture in the
world of technology. Nowadays mainstream and subculture increasingly mix due
to the commercialisation of new trends by interested industries. Also people
who go in for special sports, for instance skateboarders or surfers, have their
own subcultures. Skateboarding, according to many boarders, is an expression
of individualism rather than a sport. Skateboarding is still rooted in subculture
due to the experiences of conflicts and criminalisation, which arise from use
and appropriation of public space, from the dropout mentality of surfers and
the creativity needed.
Types of sport which find a lot of followers within a short period of time,
for instance inline skating, can be called trend sports. One reason for the
fast growth in popularity of trend sports are reports in the media. TV programs,
radio reports and magazines often emphasise the pleasant effects on body and
soul or the special fun or buzz of so called leisure sports like for instance
hacky sacking, mobile phone pitching, paintball, rafting or fingerboarding.
The attempts of designers to include certain elements of youth and popular culture
resemble a process of recycling, which seizes certain patterns of culture and
feeds them back into education as second-hand goods. This process which blurs
the borders between copy and original brings up the question of authenticity
of the proposed interfaces of learning.
The anticipation of comic/manga/kitsch/pop/street/skateboard culture suggests
creativity and imparts the spirit of nonconformity. In this way the pupils are
offered a possibility to discover educational contents through their own cultural
behaviours. Learning offers are taken on with an extra motivation when elements
of the private sphere mix with the common social sphere under the aspect of
assumed involvement and participation. From the typology of illustrations we
can detect the growing influence of a functionalised aesthetic and consumerist
culture.
A striking characteristic of many educational materials is the trivialised and
"disneylike" design, an indication of a world wide levelling of culture
and education under the sign of increasing infantile tendencies. This includes
the massive appearance of Diddl mice and happy bears, but also the dino hype
and Pumuckl adaptations. The reference to the ideal world of babies sweetens
everyday school life , which is considered boring, and seduces to the simultaneous
acceptance of educational and consumerist offers in the name of "sweet
education".
The increasing infantilism, that is stagnation of development at a childish
level and the adherence to childish behaviours can be seen as an attitude of
blocking excessive demands and frustrations. It appears as social or emotional
underdevelopment or as particularly affectionate behaviour. It offers the possibility
to abandon the stressful everyday life. A related phenomenon are those learning
and consumerist offers which give the possibility to identify with popular animals
like teddy bears, cats, dogs, ponies etc.
The desire for romanticism leads to the formation of cultural stereotypes, which
can also be found on educational materials, for instance sunsets, lovers or
the apotheosis of the urban milieu of self- realisation in form of sax players
in front of skyscraper horizons. Also elements of fine art and architecture
lead increasingly to the access of educational worlds and point early to creativity
and self-autonomy as keys for individual ways of life.
Some educational materials pick up the trends towards the irrational, magic
and transcendental, as they appear in references to Harry Potter or the Lord
of the Rings. There is a wide-spread philosophical movement within western culture,
which understands itself as an alternative to Christian religion and modernism
rooted in the enlightenment. Against the background of the progressive exploitation
of nature and people it strives for a new holistic concept of life and cognition.
There are relations to ecological, esoteric and new religious tendencies of
various kinds.
Attributes
of past eras like mediaeval times or the age of pharaohs, refer to a historicising
appearance. At the same time a concept of dissolved space and time establishes
elements of an esoteric cyber world and a cult of technology. The worlds of
fantasy are on a par with the wish for valorisation of everyday life by means
of mythicization. As myth can be a collective imagination which serves to help
overcome human primal fears and hopes, it is essential to be integrated into
a circle of insiders. The motif of affiliation for instance to the community
of multi-roleplaying online fantasy games is often the feeling of togetherness
and community.
Educational materials as a direct or indirect advertising medium, point to products
and commercial possibilities for identification. Surreptitious advertising is
considered to be the expression of a staged and commercialised youth culture.
Their virtual and real heroes are additionally transferred into countless product
forms by a comprehensive merchandising industry. Even if no concrete contents
are provided, consumability is the issue. The identification of the end users
is created by conformity.