Preview

I look at the emotional intensity of discourse about the standard, its significance as an article of faith, a basic assumption, an ideological king-pin, and at who gains from the non-recognition of its problematic classification. Specifically, I show how the notion of a standard of behaviour in families helps to maintain the family structure; then I examine in some detail the mechanisms the school uses to maintain "emotional" standards by denying the reality of human feelings, and how this is related to the maintenance of control, of good order.
 

Flags

This language is hard to live with, this description too intense for comfort. We need a softer cushion on which to fall, a more prophylactic myth to justify our allegiances and comfort our losses. As we shall see, we will find such justification in the world of moral values.

These relational structures often have no visual symbol to represent them, though particular versions of them proliferate in the form of corporation logos, school and family crests. These are usually of limited emotional impact. More successful have been brand names for clothes, where the image behind the symbol has been so successfully assimilated that not only are consumers willing to pay much more for the product, but are proud to become walking advertisements. Some Japanese corporations and some sports teams have managed to construct songs that fit the bill. But in general the "flag saluting" within families, schools and workplace has been accomplished more through particular discourses with words and body language than through responses to visual symbols.
 

Discourse and value myths

So what are the key elements of discourse around standards? What are the words and phrases that trigger a "flag" like response? For whilst it is true that most social structures can, if necessary, muster some physical force - in the form of army, police, courts, psychiatric hospitals, masculine muscle - to deal with minor perpertations of the structure, the inherent strength of the structure is vastly greater than such disciplinary mechanisms that may be utilised. Just as in a crystal it is the individual molecular bonds which bind the crystal in its hard, rigid and determinable form, so it is the acceptance and actioning by each person of the appropriate relational roles between people that account for the maintenance and solidity of the social structure. So how constitute a symbolic reminder, a conditioning stimulus, a ritualistic nudge and wink, that stimulates and fortifies the memories of our proper relationships to those who lead us or are led by us, to those who love us or whom we should love, to those to whom dues are owed, or to whom we owe our dues?

The gross but honest dictates of parent-child relations are not effective with adults, or for most children for that matter, raising as they do so much overt rebellious reaction. "Do what you're bloody well told" does not trigger the appropriate response. The linguistic flag carries much more powerful symbols in its armoury. Looking upward, we see Duty, Loyalty, Respect, Discipline and Strong Leadership all emblazoned on the High Standard in gold letters. And looking downward, the cold sharp chisel of Efficiency nestles neatly in the caring hand of Institutional Love.

It is important to understand that once these abstractions are incorporated into a personal value system, so that they become part of a way of being, a way of institutional living, the ground of faith on which hierarchical life is premised, then dependence and obedience all become responses that inhabit moral high ground, for they are necessary to maintain, not the hierarchy, but the values in which it is now delicately clothed. And the violations they entail work efficiently underground in this hallowed space.

Further to this, the more intense and horrible the violations involved, the more pervasive and enduring the myths and values that provide the cover up and justify the carnage. The Freudian myth embodied in psychoanalysis regarding the sexual fantasies of children is a good example. The myth enabled child sexual abuse and incest to be disguised and trivialised for a hundred years, as we are only now beginning to realise; sexual abuse of the child became translated through therapeutic discourse to sexual fantasies of the child aimed at the adult (Masson, 1991; Miller, 1984). The myth of the glory of war has required the joint barrage of visual human slaughter on television, together with an appreciation of the probability of global nuclear extinction, to diminish its insidious hold on our thinking. And even now the monster will not lay down and die.

And there is another aspect of enduring myths that we must not forget. Such myths do truthfully represent a part of the human condition. Many children do sometimes act seductively towards their parents. There is a form of transcendence in the self sacrifice and comradeship that is a part of some men's experience of war. Yet when these myths are used to disguise the carnage, rape and pillage that are their major manifestations, then such myths become not the harbingers of truth, but their disguises.

What I am asserting in this thesis is that the myth of the human "standard" is just such a myth in the more "civilised" wars of structural violation in which our lives are embedded, wars no less destructive of human life and potential because their weapons are so insidious and subtle: Wars to which at this time in our history it is now appropriate to turn our attention, so that we may, in a non-violent way, bring about their cessation.
 

Standards and discipline

In the public arena, whether that be the political castle of public affairs, the media circus of public relations, the disciplinary field of the public service, or the common ground of the public house, talk of raising standards is invariably linked with the idea of better discipline. Contrarily, the cause of lowering standards is clearly tied in public discourse to soft leaders and the inevitable anarchy which that is fantasised to produce.

So "standards are also values to which people aspire or lament the decline in or lack thereof." (Norris, 1991, p335). People talk about raising standards when they perceive a slackness in the ropes of control, when they see a sloppiness infiltrating the verities of life, when they begin to be fearful about life's diminishing certainties. Talk of standards is talk about conservation, about protecting the past in its imagined superiority and security, and defending the future through strong leadership. "Discipline," "Respect," "Standards," "Leadership" are almost interchangeable words in a discourse that lauds the good old days and decries the soft underbellied freedom and license of the present. It is the language of the old talking about the young, of the powerful talking about the rest of the world, of the mind talking about the body, of men talking about women. And these days, let us be fair, of some women talking about men. By implication, it is discourse that defends appropriation and privilege, and the structures of inequity in which they flourish.
 

Suffering together

Through such languaging the notion of standards and their conservation becomes emotionally tied to our deep sense of wanting to belong, wanting to have our place in the social world. And of course, our place in the social world is dependent on the survival of that social world in which we have our place.

At the very least, discourse about standards will be emotionally charged. Talk of changing educational standards is like talk of changing the flag. It triggers all the fears of change in the social realities, be they ever so violating, for which the standard, and the flag, are symbols.

By insisting in this thesis that educational or ability standards have no empirical reality, I cut much more deeply into the social fabric. For such a claim not only undermines the standard, but also by association denigrates the social reality that it represents. The metaphor is not changing the flag, but destroying it, on the grounds that the social order that it pretends to represent is a delusion, very different to the one that it does indeed refer to. A delusion whose continuance, furthermore, is largely sustained through the emotional effects of the inviolability of its recurring symbol, the flag.

The person who destroys the flag is inviting extreme social response, for such is its emotional content that many people will identify this map with its territory. For them, to destroy the flag is to destroy the social order it represents, and thus to destroy their identity within that order. Emotionally, social symbol and social reality are contiguous. For many people, this contiguity overlaps and symbol and referent become identical. In this state of mind, cognitive arguments and empirical data have as much impact as falling animals crashing into rocks. As much impact on the rocks, that is.

In an analogous way, to criticise the notion of educational or job standards on the grounds that they cannot in practice be measured or logically sustained is to destabilise the symbol of the meritocritous society, the competitive capitalist order that it supports, and the cult of individualism that, almost alone, it defines and constructs. Emotionally, these four constructs - standard, competition, meritocracy, and individualism, are deeply intertwined. To threaten one of them is to threaten all. And to threaten all is to threaten each one of us, you and I and him and her. For it is to threaten that social order in which we all, in our own way, or more likely in a way that the structure has imposed on us, has found our place.
 

Fact or faith - the sociological imperative

Likewise the notion of a standard: It is a notion, an idea, a social construct that helps bind together the social structure that brings order to our lives. If, as I have suggested, it is a very fundamental construct, one which is central and crucial to other social constructs which in this time and place are thought to have particular value in constructing (and thus validating and justifying) the social relations in which our lives seem inextricably enmeshed, then even more reason for letting it alone, for not subjecting it to too critical inspection, for not undermining a fundamental article of faith.

Articles of faith do not need empirical evidence to support them, and are extremely resistant to empirical evidence that casts doubt on their logical consistency or their stability or their contradictions to other articles of faith. For articles of faith tend to develop around themselves other ideas and ways of relating that are reasonably consistent with them. These coordinations then constitute a way of living in the world, a set of habits that helps give a sense of stability and thus timelessness in a world in which change is inevitable on every street, and chaos is just around the corner. They constitute, in other words, what we call social reality. They might more accurately be called the social fantasies we construct and live that help make the conditions of our lives, and the lives of selected others, more bearable.

And if this cuddly teddy bear turns out to be a real dragon, destroying the lives of many more than it supports, then all the harder to slay it.
 

The psychological imperative

This is the load the assessor carries: for the students themselves usually accept the judgments made of them, and compose their lives accordingly. This is self imposed as much as it is dictated by any external agency. So through their assessments, teachers have monstrous effects on the future lives of their students. This is an acceptable load if the assessments are very accurate, and do in fact measure the capability of the student. But if they are enormously in error, what then? What is the psychological price of instigating massive inequity, enormous misplacement?
 

Instrumental value

Let's see this in action in two hierarchies; first in relation to respect in the home; then in relation to emotion in the school.
 

The family

That this standard has no empirical stability (certainly not for the group and generally not for the individual) is insignificant in the light of its logical necessity to maintain the structural stability of the family. After all, how can a parent ever demonstrate the extent of power difference if that difference is never confronted with an explicit, implicit, or fantasised challenge?
 

Sexuality and school

So how are emotions in a school controlled through the imposition (or better still the personal incorporation) of standards? Firstly there is the professional standard of distance, of objectivity, of detachment. Emotional involvement, whether positive or negative, is taboo. Professionally the emotions are controlled by pretending that they do not exist. On the positive side the standard is that low level of affect described as "friendly interest." For young children this may be expanded to "fondness" unless you are male and the student is female. On the negative side the standard, the limit of negativity, is a low key sternness that accompanies correction. Essentially these low level affects are seen as acceptable nuances of cognitive behaviour.

Neither anger nor love have any place within the professional role of the teacher. To indulge either is seen as a breach of professional ethics. Such standards are justified by claiming that any relationship with students involving emotion would be dangerous to the students involved and unfair to the others. Dangerous because escalation could lead either to violent or sexual outcomes. An example of the catastrophic consequence justification. This disguises the stronger and more immediate danger, of course, which is to the stability of the power relations. Legitimate anger at the inequities hidden in that structure, or of love that transcends it, both pose fundamental threats to its continuance.

For the student in school emotions are also ignored. They have no place and so do not exist. Any acting out of emotions however is given high priority and the school disciplinary structures are immediately brought into play. The emotions are ignored, but the behaviour is punished. This is equally true regardless of whether positive or negative emotions have inspired the behaviour. Indeed, the school authority is much more comfortable with handling the acting out of negative feelings of fear or anger or revenge or envy than it is with any overt expressions of love or sharing or student cohesion, so easily interpreted as solidarity and hence politically suspect as potentially destabilising.

Emotional intimacy between students, or between a student and teacher, is rightly seen to be incompatible with the power relations that define the school structure. Two students who actively demonstrate their passion are likely to be dealt with more harshly (probably by expulsion) than are those who actively act out their hostility. Hostile students allow the school to demonstrate its own power. Loving students can only highlight the emotional vacuum of the school's structure; and incidentally expose the obsession with sexuality that underlies its prohibition. That the taboo is so seldom breached is evidence of the school's enormous power, especially so during adolescence, where for many students it is their major preoccupation.

Demonstrated or inadequately disguised love between a student and teacher, even if completely non-sexual in its overt manifestation, evokes a response amongst teachers almost as powerful as the response to incest. Outside the context of the school, love between people of different ages is an accepted norm, so long as the differential is not too great. Within the school context, it is condemned on the grounds that it is an abuse of power. The assumption is that the teacher has abused his or her power over the student and manipulated the student's affection. Now whilst this may be true in some circumstances, and whilst the roles in the school have doubtless influenced the relationship, intense emotional relationships that develop between the two people (rather than between their partial selves in role) are much more than this. They are as common and as intense and as potentially fulfilling as are such relations occurring in any other social context.

To understand the strength of the taboo we must understand that it is not so much the abuse of power that is involved here, but its elimination, its disintegration, its transcendence. Love and power are incompatible relations (Laing, 1967). Love is a state of openness and mutuality in which the other is accepted in his or her wholeness, where there is trust in the flow of positive affect, of cohesiveness. Control is the denial of such trust, and structures defined by hierarchical power relations are thus structures permeated by mistrust (Maturana, 1980). Hence the necessity to control and punish.

So love relations between a student and teacher are not taboo because they might lead to sexual relations, or because they are unfair to other students, or because they represent an abuse of teacher power, or even because they might represent a malicious manipulation of the teacher by the student. Or because of the many additional justifications for the taboo that we could construct and fantasise. All would possibly at times contain some grain of truth, and all would miss the target by rendering it invisible. The fundamental immorality of such relations is that they are contradictory to the structure of the school, to its defining power relations, and are thus a fundamental threat to its continued existence.

It is equally important to understand that this fundamental reason for the taboo will be disguised in any particular case by evoking the concept of standards. The teacher is at fault because she has breached a professional standard of conduct which involves the abuse of power. The student will be at fault because he has not realised his vulnerability and has not allowed himself to be sufficiently protected by the benevolent authority which has defined the standards of student behaviour. Like so many rules in a school, this one, about loving teachers, does not appear in the rule book. Even so, no student would truthfully claim they did not know that it breached the standard of acceptable behaviour. And few would be able to rationally justify its abolition.

As described earlier, the appearance of the standard invokes an emotional response rather than a cognitive one. It bypasses notions of equity or justice that might grow out of a rational debate on the power-control issue, on the limitation of personal freedoms. It sidesteps any possibility of an ethical discourse by asserting that a standard has been breached, and thus by implication some act at the best unsatisfactory, and at the worst grossly immoral, has occurred. As the interpreter of standards, the school authority no longer seems to punish in order to defend its unequable structure. It now punishes in order to defend a high moral principle encased within "society's" standards. A violation of human rights has become a defence of all those things that "society" holds sacred, which become classified under the general rubric of "responsibility." And the use of the "standard" is the primary mechanism through which this mystifying ideological scam is accomplished.
 

Mind games

Taken as an assertion about the nature of human learning, this is ridiculous. To assert that the best way for children to learn is to sit them down at desks in a teacher dominated classroom containing thirty or forty other children and change to a different topic every forty minutes is to deny most of what we know about the variety of learning styles and efficient learning environments. It denies a hundred years of research about how people learn.

Yet still the statements about good order, which in practice means being obedient and conforming, are central to the school philosophy. The reason is that such claims are not amenable to educational discourse. They are political statements, not educational ones. They are ideological statements designed to preserve the structure, and not therefore touched by empirical data. As articles of faith, as fundamental assumptions, they are flag waving slogans, amenable perhaps to emotional manipulation, but not to rational discourse.

All of which is not to deny that in an authoritarian-dependency structure, good order is necessary for effective "syllabus" learning to take place. It is, of course. But beyond that, and more pervasively, it is that structure itself that is inimical to learning. And it is largely in reaction to that structure that disorder occurs.

The ideology of order is necessary to protect those power relations from the dangers of rational debate, and the destabilising effect of empirical information that such debate might make visible.
 

Teacher stress

While teachers "stress out" in droves trying to maintain order, this is considered a second order phenomena. Their "real" function is to teach knowledge and skill, and school authorities consider it unfortunate that personal deficiencies on the part of the teacher might cause them stress.

In South Australia, "Stress Leave" is only available to teachers who are classified as "sick". Stress is a deficiency label attached to the teacher, a medical condition divorced from relational life. It may not be claimed by describing either the overt or covert violations within the structure of schooling, or by explaining it as attributable to professional or personal conflict with managers or students. The price of obtaining stress leave is the absolving of the institution for any part in its causation. (Section 30: (2A), Workers Rehabilitation and Compensation Act, 1986, South Australia)
 

Standards and destabilisation

Regardless, the notion of error is intrinsic and fundamental to any notion of measurement, and hence to any notion of measuring a standard as it is understood in the academic literature. Singer (1959) goes so far as to claim that "while experimental science accepts no witnesses to matters of fact save measurements and enumerations, yet it will pronounce no verdict on their testimony unless the witnesses disagree" (p101). So experimental science requires differences in measurements before it can decide what the "best" estimate of the measurement is, and the very notion of measurement is predicated on the notion of error. On the other hand any error in measurement is unacceptable if the notion of standard is to fulfil it's societal function in the categorisation of people. Who would accept failure or exclusion on the basis of a mark of 49 percent - plus or minus 15? Or even plus or minus one?

The simple professional and ethical solution is to attach an estimate of error to every application of a measurement of the standard, a habit deeply ingrained into practice in the physical sciences. However, this so contradictory to structural stability in the social world that to my knowledge the issue has never been seriously raised in professional debate about examinations, and when on rare occasions "ability" scores are presented as bands rather than lines they are based on reliability rather than validity considerations, so are gross under-representations of error; they are fudged instrumental errors, rather than errors in assessment.
 

Summing up

Notions of standard have a very high emotional charge, and those who defend standards inhabit the high moral ground, as they defend the faith.

So challenges will be rare, and will be seen by most people as immoral, because they threaten the social fabric.

In the remainder of this thesis, one such challenge will be mounted.