When education reforms widen the education gap
by Carl Bossard*
(21 December 2021) Education always creates disparity. That’s the way. And at the same time, schools must ensure equal opportunities. That is the mandate. But to what extent is it made more difficult by the current wave of reforms?
For almost 30 years, one school reform has followed the next. There are hundreds of sub-projects. And the effect on the whole? Hardly anyone has an overview; the outcomes are not infrequently sobering.1 But reforms are continuing – always with the aim of achieving more equality of opportunity in the face of unequal starting chances or creating equal opportunities, as the new term postulates.
Parental status is shaping
Countless empirical research projects deal with the learning success of young people and their social background. This field is probably one of the best-studied areas of research in education. Correlations are made, books in the parental home are examined, educational certificates are counted and the children’s academic qualifications are predicted from them. The result is always the same: young people from socially weaker backgrounds have a harder time than children of academics. The famous Matthew effect is diagnosed: “to him who has will be given.” The general conclusion from the studies on educational inequality: parental background shapes, socioeconomic status determines.
The figures show it: in 2016, according to the Federal Statistical Office, 43 percent of students came from families in which at least one parent had a university degree.2 As a result, there are calls for measures at the systemic level, interventions in the structures, for example, later transfers or even the abolition of the transfer examination.
What the discourse on education policy often forgets
And yet many succeed in the famous advancement through education. We know from research: it is not primarily structures that achieve an effect; the systemic alone hardly creates the hoped-for effects and learning successes. Equal opportunities and educational justice on a systemic level ultimately remain utopian – just like the slogan of being able to achieve social equality through educational equality. Impact always comes from people, in schools specifically from the individual teachers.
What is decisive is what happens within the structures, what happens in the interpersonal interactions – or in other words: how good the teaching is. This is quickly forgotten in the discourse on education policy. A misconception!
Changing the attitude to learning
And there is something else we know: every area of a conducive encounter is personal and depends to a large extent on how much we as a person are touched and feel addressed. This is especially true for teaching. That is why, on a personal level, teachers can make a difference and, above all, support the less privileged children and young people in their learning and on their path in life. They have it in their hands that (also) these pupils are especially supported and, above all, challenged, both academically and personally. This is why Roland Reichenbach, professor of education at the University of Zurich, emphasises: “it is not tablets and digital technologies that are urgent, but rather many children and adolescents today need more guidance, support, feedback and encouragement.“3 And this can only be done by people who are vitally present.
Self-determination requires guided learning processes
What is important is the teacher and, crucially, his or her teaching. Empirical teaching research proves this many times over. That is why Reichenbach calls for guided learning processes. They achieve high results. At the same time, it is always surprising how many school reformers solely look at all pedagogical thinking and action exclusively from the perspective of the learner. They thus marginalise the importance of the teacher and degrade the teacher to a mere learning facilitator. Under the propagated “shift from teaching to learning”, the teacher is no longer allowed to be a teacher, but only a “guide at the side”.4
Leading to responsibility for autonomous learning
This reform pedagogical over-optimism is based on the child’s ability and capacity without any guidance. However, various learning psychologists, such as the Bernese university lecturer Hans Aebli, show that children’s cognitive development proceeds from the outside in and – depending on the prerequisites – is more or less guided by a more competent counterpart.5
Learning, thinking and problem solving are initially always social. The I becomes a self at the You – in dialogue between initially unequal partners. Gradually, learners take responsibility for their learning and their autonomous progress. But only a few of them do this on their own. The philosopher Georg Friedrich Hegel summed up the essence of education as “being by oneself within the other”. Or, to put it more concretely, in the pedagogical arena: especially weaker and moderately strong children and adolescents are often overburdened with self-organisation and personal responsibility for their learning; every committed teacher knows this, every experienced pedagogue is aware of it.
Help from the parents
Many modern reforms, however, are based on the utopia of self-regulated learning and self-organised education. With this perspective, learning is unnoticeably delegated first to the parents – and ultimately handed over to the children and young people themselves. Does this strengthen the much-cited equality of opportunity and educational justice?
Two examples illustrate the tendency. The reform has many names: writing by ear, phonetic writing, reading by writing or the “Reichen method”, named after its inventor, the Swiss reform pedagogue Jürgen Reichen.6 The children learn to write texts with a “phonetic table” – self-directed. They then write without paying attention to spelling. The teacher is not allowed to intervene or correct. Professor emeritus of education Jürgen Oelkers, University of Zurich, says: “pupils memorise their own mistakes by writing incorrectly. Our sons learned to write according to this principle. But my wife and I just always corrected it at home.”7 The advantage of the educationally affine parental home! And the other children?
Widening gap in the educational environment
A second example: various public schools are doing away with official homework. Equality of opportunity is postulated. Education, however, knows the “law of unintended side effects”. It was formulated by the philosopher and educationalist Eduard Spranger. Hardly anyone pays attention to it – perhaps as little as to the leaflet inserts of medicines and their possible side effects. Those who abolish homework do not abolish it, however. Education-conscious parents will continue to repeat and anchor knowledge with their children. They know the value of practising and consolidating. Children from other families may not have this opportunity. The unintended consequence: the gap in the educational milieu is widening.
Young people have only one educational biography. This distinguishes them from industrial production goods. You can experiment with workpieces; you shouldn’t with young people. For this reason, education policy-makers should follow the ancient Roman motto: “[...] et respice finem” – assess the consequences. A principle without an expiry date!
| * Carl Bossard, 1949, former principle of the cantonal college in Nidwalden, director of the cantonal college in Lucerne, founding principle of the college of education Zug (PH Zug), lecturer at the college of education in Zug. Today he is active as a course instructor, speaker and school councillor. Carl Bossard regularly comments on education policies and pedagogy. |
Source: https://www.journal21.ch/artikel/wenn-bildungs-reformen-die-bildungsschere-weiten, 24 October 2021
(Translation “Swiss Standpoint”)
1 Martin Beglinger: «Das ist vernichtend!» Die Antworten der Bildungsforscher über die Wirkung der Schulreformen in der Schweiz sind ernüchternd. In: NZZ, 31 August 2018.
2 https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/de/home/statistiken/bildung-wissenschaft/bildungsindikatoren/themen/zugang-und-teilnahme/soziale-herkunft-hs.html [accessed: 23 October 2021]
3 Roland Reichenbach (2020): Homeschooling, Distant Learning und das selbstorganisierte Kind. In: Merkur 08, p. 38.
4 Ewald Terhart (2018): Eine neo-existenzialistische Konzeption von Unterricht und Lehrerhandeln? Zu Gert Biestas Wiederentdeckung und Rehabilitation des Lehrens und des Lehrers. In: Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Pädagogik, 94 (2018) 3, p. 479.
5 Hans Aebli (1978): Von Piagets Entwicklungspsychologie zur Theorie der kognitiven Sozialisation. In: Gerhard Steiner (Hrsg.): Die Psychologie des 20. Jahrhunderts. Band VII: Piaget und die Folgen. Zürich: Kindler, p. 604–627.
6 Barbara Höfler (2019): Sind fiele Feler schädlich? In: NZZ Folio 4, S. 32.
7 https://www.wireltern.ch/artikel/wer-sagt-dass-kinder-sich-nicht-anstrengen-sollen [accessed: 23 October 2021.