Translated from a text by Freerk Huisken
Correspondence:
“Isn't stupidity a matter of genetics?!”“...A big question mark goes up for me over your criticism of education. I agree that the current education system only serves to train and sort people to meet the needs of the economy. I find it problematic when you criticize the state for anchoring this pedagogical concept in genetics, according to which this or that student is simply ‘too stupid’ for this or that subject. Forgive me for saying so, but isn’t that somehow true? Do you seriously maintain that everyone could be equally good at everything? I might be able to perform heart surgery after 10-15 years of medical school, but if others can do it in 5 years, then that’s just my tough luck....”
My claim on the matter – to begin with – is not that the state’s education system “anchors” the sorting of school children in genetics. Rather, I criticize the fact that education theory legitimizes the distribution of the young through school tracking in accordance with the requirements of the occupational hierarchy by referring to a natural distribution of abilities among the people. The reason for a state-organized distribution principle, by means of which the state still keeps a good half of young people away from further education, and thus from the prerequisites for the better paying jobs, and the justification for this – here by means of a rather arbitrary use of genetic arguments – are two very different things: the reason answers the question as to why the distribution principle exists in the education system; its justification, on the other hand, absolves those state actors responsible for the negative effects of tracking on students’ careers by referring to an aptitude profile that allegedly exists in the young.
Politicians do not delude themselves about the real reasons. They are their own: They wouldn’t dream of seeking the approval of geneticists before deciding, for example, to raise or lower the passing rate from primary to secondary schools by, let’s say, 10%, depending on whether they notice a shortage of graduates qualified for university studies or whether they diagnose a “glut” that the university can’t absorb and for which there is no foreseeable market demand. By the way, the politicians in charge openly say this. It is left to genetic researchers in education to rack their brains as to how it could be possible for the number of gifted young people to increase or decrease by 10% within a very short time period, or more precisely, how the distribution of abilities within the same schoolchildren could suddenly change. Or another example: the policymakers for education who have recently been pushing to give more space in secondary schools and universities to scientific subjects, including computer science and mathematics, are not following some previously done, comprehensive genetic analysis of the young.[1] Rather, they have identified a developing new growth potential on the world market that world market-level domestic capitals must be able to at least keep up with, which is why it must find the corresponding resources in the educated population. How do I know this? Because the development of completely new production technologies and IT products is not only predicted, but has long been part of the experience of every user of smartphones or iPads. Moreover, politicians are open about their motives. They apparently assume that people are not offended by the fact that their career opportunities are derived from what the national capitals are capable of doing in competition on the world market – which always includes upswings and downswings in career outlooks, as can easily be seen from the debate that suddenly appeared about mass layoffs due to the increase in “empty factories.”
It can be inferred from my evidence that the politicians no longer see such a thing as a need to legitimize the measures by which the state sorts the young according to its own interests, i.e. heedless to those of the students, with their nature, consequently presenting itself in its measures as nothing more than a diligent executor of human nature. Unfortunately, however, this is no reason to hope for an end to the type of racism which claims that “the needs of the economy,” in this case capitalism, fits together with human nature in the most wonderful way, and that complete capitalism therefore represents only the perfect exploitation of the natural diversity of talent residing in the state’s people.[2]
* But a few more clarifications are still necessary: even in education theory, the classical theory of aptitude has been shelved – at least for the time being – in favor of the nature-nurture theory.[3] The latter has a practical function in that it can be used to justify one thing or another – dressed up in scientific terms: If the report card clearly states that going to college is not in the cards, then whatever’s “inside the child,” despite all the efforts of the teaching staff, “couldn’t do any better.” If, on the other hand, contrary to all expectations, a child from a “learning deprived home” “amounts to something" after all, then this can easily be explained by the nurture component to which the teachers casually attribute their efforts.[4] The logic of proof is in any case circular: the evidence provided is not the opinion of geneticists – what could they possibly provide?[5] – but solely what has to be proved. In the case of the “ungifted” child, this goes as follows: when asked how to explain why a school failure is due to a child’s lack of gifts, the nurture-nature theory that accentuates the theory of giftedness always has one classic answer ready: Without doubt, this can be inferred from the school failure.
** “Do you seriously maintain that everyone could be equally good at everything?” you write, drawing a false conclusion from my criticism of the theory of aptitude, namely an inversion of the argument. It goes like this: If it is not natural aptitude that determines what a child amounts to in school, then it can be said that every person can be equally good at everything. From my rejection of the theory of aptitude as an explanation of school failure or success, it is wrongly concluded that aptitude does not at all exist, that consequently all people are genetically a tabula rasa, which implies that “everyone could be equally good at everything.” The subjunctive won’t save you here either: Of course, biological differences in humans can’t be denied! But, in my opinion, there are no genetically precise findings yet as to what they mean for development and for learning. And even if there were, these wouldn’t be natural prerequisites for learning nor nature-given determinants![6] You yourself choose, as an example, different learning times, which you simply assume to be genetically determined: “I might be able to perform heart surgery after 10-15 years of medical school, but if others can do it in 5 years, then that’s just my tough luck....” And if what you assume were the case, then only one thing would be noticeable: Some theoretical operations would be easier for one person than another, so one person would need more time for them, another less, etc. But then why would the slower one then have “tough luck”? In terms of learning outcomes, both medical students would have the same level of knowledge! But to them it seems quite self-evident that a lot more depends on the learning time than the time spent on learning. In fact: only the same limited amount of time is allowed to each student for learning certain sequences and for testing them – purely for the sake of fairness, of course![7] – so that differences will be determined between learners. This is how the learning competition in school produces winners and losers! The school grading system therefore deliberately ignores the fact that students have very different learning speeds – whatever the reason for this may be.[8] Slower learners are also unlucky in another, life-determining respect: the length of time they spend learning determines whether they win or lose in the competition for the better paying jobs on the labor market. And now comes the next brutal equation, validated by education policy: According to the motto that each gets what they are owed, it is then considered completely fair if poverty goes hand in hand with ‘stupidity’. Something like that is taken for granted, and the theory of aptitude provides additional justification for the idea that the contrast between rich and poor is due to human nature.
*** Finally, a separate word about stupidity, which you probably intentionally put in quotation marks. So be it! Here a student is considered stupid because he shows his lack of understanding of this or that by making mistakes in written or oral tests. It’s nothing more than that. The student who makes such mistakes in deciding on an answer to a question, in solving a problem, or in repeating previously thought out ideas has devoted himself to the same intellectual activity as the person who points out his mistake. His tough luck is: Because, when no teacher will take the trouble to correct his thinking, he is left with his defective mental activity, and the judgement is quickly made that someone is stupid. The faulty attempt at comprehending a thing then becomes a characteristic of the person. And drawing conclusions about aptitude or a lack thereof is child’s play for educational psychology.[9] The school then puts into effect the lousy report card that it has given him – based on the basic value of equality in grading. And the teachers know, having been through what remains of the extra vulgarized course of studies in education theory, which continues to be thoroughly legitimizing, that it could not have been because of them that these students may later get to know the seriousness of life in the lowest wage brackets, if at all. Their abilities simply aren’t suited for anything else: The students are just stupid.
This is a statement that is itself nothing but a stupidity, if one takes a rational approach to the criticism of stupidity.[10] What the ‘stupid’ students are accused of is not certain mental mistakes – which could easily be corrected – but of not amounting to anything because of their disposition and their lack of effort to compensate for nature’s shortcomings. That this judgment is a racist false statement has been demonstrated above: successful execution of the goals of school policy is blamed positively or negatively on the nature of those who have been sorted; education policy uses the young as a maneuverable mass to fulfill the capitalists’ demand for suitable and worthwhile workers, and this is presented as a service that the state performs for the existing resources of talent among the citizens. This gives the false statement its function, which makes it stupid. With false judgements, the student’s situation is interpreted in such a way that it fits what the politicians and businesses intend to do with him; which means that every failure in the competition for occupations is recorded as his own 'failure’. A well educated student can then do this to himself: take as right for him how he has been set up by school with precisely these false judgments – as a school winner or loser. This is stupidity: to accept the false judgements that he learns about everything under the sun in school as ideologies to be adopted and to apply them to social life.
[1] How could they?! A sudden change in the genetic disposition of the entire younger generation, who have already been schooled for years, would fall within the realm of biological miracles.
[2] See on this: Where does racism come from and how does it work? and also: F. Huisken, Erziehung im Kapitalismus, Hamburg 2016 (untranslated).
[3] If this is what you meant by “somehow,” then the following paragraph will be of particular interest to you.
[4] See: F. Huisken, Erziehung im Kapitalismus (untranslated).
[5] The small problem they would face – if one were to take them seriously – would be to separate what is genetically inherent in their potential from what the children have already learned in family and school over the past 10 years.
[6] An admittedly problematic example from sports can explain the connection between prerequisites and determinants: If you want to be a high jumper, you need long legs. But if you have long legs, you are not forced to be a high jumper.
[7] The fact that there are now procedures that allow for all kinds of compensation for disadvantages, which are calculated precisely and included in the grades, does not change the principle described above: because schoolchildren are not given as much time as they need to learn. And learning aids, whose job only ends when children have really grasped the school material, are not also provided for.
[8] This can have various causes. They range from accumulated learning deficits to illnesses, unrecognized damage to sensory organs and decisions of the will. It is also said to be the case that someone is simply not interested in certain material. It is part of the principle of equal treatment in learning competition that the school here should be indifferent to all of this.
[9] A line of argument that can be found everywhere in psychology and educational psychology – regardless of the logical nonsense that a certain mental activity can never have its basis in the absence of any predisposition.
[10] See: Stupidity – a useful tradition in the service of democracy.