Seeking room for utopian thinking in learning

Abstract

As the pandemic drags on and new variants emerge threatening to make it even more interminable than it already feels, it is possible to think of the pandemic as a form of test for societies. Certainly, much ink has been spilled discussing this notion, so I will not attempt to rehearse too many of those points. I do wonder, however, about the contribution of schools to the outcome of the pandemic across multiple societies, but not necessarily in a comparative manner. These outcomes seem to me far too complex to be resolvable by reductionistic comparison of schooling practices which are possibly decades away from when these students have any form of political influence in the societies they would inhabit. Nonetheless, I wonder the degree to which readers and contributors of this journal may be inadvertently complicit in the ways in which their societies may be broken. This is, of course, a very strong charge to level, and I invite some patience as I try to make the case. By the account of historian Bregman (2017), we in most of the developed world have achieved what many in the earlier generations would have considered an utopian existence. By most metrics of life expectancy, societal wealth, and quality of life, we are a long way off from the times which inspired observers such as Thomas Hobbes to declare life to be “nasty, brutish, and short”. Utopian thinking is most often reactionary, responding to the perceived shortcomings of one’s age, and gives hope, meaning and purpose to its readers. Of course, dictatorships and totalitarian regimes have also promised utopias in the past, to disastrous outcomes for all involved. There is reason to be suspicious of utopian thinking. But then, if we were to eliminate utopian thinking altogether, we will also eliminate the possibility for meaning and purpose to our lives beyond the technocratic rearrangement of our deck chairs. In education, this suspicion of the utopian narrative, this societal avoidance of moralising and thinking about prescription takes the form of an excessive focus on the means rather than the ends. As researchers, we tend to shy away from suggesting that our research in learning can, for instance, ultimately lead towards an awakening of critical consciousness that might address the social problems that accompany a runaway capitalism. Absent from some form of societal moralising, educators essentially acquiesce to the demands of “the economy” for more grist to the mill, ready to be manipulated by a system to demand “upgrades” every few years, never mind the environmental costs of doing so. How can it be otherwise when plastered over almost every city in the world, and in media broadcasts of any form imaginable, the public sphere is full of messages to the effect that one is not complete without the latest gadget, service, or curated experience? How can it be otherwise when there are over 6 billion smartphone users on this planet, each one essentially being piped messaging that is ready to be exploited, for the highest bidder or for the maximum “audience engagement”? LEARNING: RESEARCH AND PRACTICE 2022, VOL. 8, NO. 1, 1–4 https://doi.org/10.1080/23735082.2022.2042927