Would You Like a Fluxus Teddy Bear? Yes or No?
Curious. The artist Tom Phillips has discovered that his daughter’s A-level textbook spells his name wrong, and commits a number of other egregious errors. He writes:
This seems not to be written for but by a student, and one moreover none too bright or knowledgeable, or even literate.
In the current TLS T.P Wiseman quotes a Higher Education Funding Councils report:
enriched appreciation of heritage for culture (for example, as measured by surveys)…. Audience or participation levels at public dissemination or engagement activities (exhibitions, broadcasts and so on). (letters 28/05/2010)
In the Soviet Union Victor Shklovsky caught this well:
Art must move organically, like the heart in the human breast, but they want to regulate it like a train.
The people who wrote this are not concerned about the clarity of their language. However, they are clear about their purpose – to increase the numbers who use culture (and if university departments cannot increase these numbers they may not be funded). To use something is itself a positive value, it seems. A newspaper measuring success by the number of its readers is understandable, but a gallery by the number of people through the door? But utility is the modern disease, for which we wait the antidote.
The goals are all too familiar. In the public sector for years there have been targets, attempting to improve services by measuring it more accurately. Some targets are easy – the number of unemployed (though it is remarkable how many times this measurement has changed over the years). But many targets try to capture the impossible – can you quantify culture? A little thought experiment:
Who is more cultured? A person who has a membership card at the Tate, visits all new shows, but has little understanding of art, but likes the general atmosphere, using the space to meet friends and socialise. Or a Cambridge don who visits a few galleries a year, mostly on the continent, but who has a wide and deep appreciation of both modern and Renaissance art, particularly sculpture.
So what is going on? As the “market” becomes more pervasive so the corporations grow, the institutional framework expands, and our lives become more regulated. And power shifts to these bureaucracies, who control and distribute their resources according to their own rules and priorities. Indeed, it creates its own rules, in order to be able to do so. Thus we have a textbook that may have been written by an admin officer.
These changes are camouflaged of course: the populist rhetoric suggesting it is we the people, or the majority, that decides, even though our ability to influence these decisions is severely limited. Indeed, the nature of that decision-making process is changing, as we are turned from citizens into consumers, exercising our vote in the shopping mall, rather than the town council.
For education, like so much else in our society, is now a product – to be sold and marketed. Of course, quality is important: at the top end people pay good money for the best; the state and corporations need new software and weapon systems. However, in general quality is of secondary importance, it takes second place to the ability to shift units. Education, like all the professions, is an industry and with the penetration of Capitalism into all aspects of our life and culture it is inevitable it will transform them, usually carving out their value and meaning. In education it follows that the Administrators and Vice-chancellors are more important than the academics. And if they continue their imperious rule? One day William Wordsworth may find himself removed from the library shelves.
This seems not to be written for but by a student, and one moreover none too bright or knowledgeable, or even literate.
In the current TLS T.P Wiseman quotes a Higher Education Funding Councils report:
enriched appreciation of heritage for culture (for example, as measured by surveys)…. Audience or participation levels at public dissemination or engagement activities (exhibitions, broadcasts and so on). (letters 28/05/2010)
In the Soviet Union Victor Shklovsky caught this well:
Art must move organically, like the heart in the human breast, but they want to regulate it like a train.
The people who wrote this are not concerned about the clarity of their language. However, they are clear about their purpose – to increase the numbers who use culture (and if university departments cannot increase these numbers they may not be funded). To use something is itself a positive value, it seems. A newspaper measuring success by the number of its readers is understandable, but a gallery by the number of people through the door? But utility is the modern disease, for which we wait the antidote.
The goals are all too familiar. In the public sector for years there have been targets, attempting to improve services by measuring it more accurately. Some targets are easy – the number of unemployed (though it is remarkable how many times this measurement has changed over the years). But many targets try to capture the impossible – can you quantify culture? A little thought experiment:
Who is more cultured? A person who has a membership card at the Tate, visits all new shows, but has little understanding of art, but likes the general atmosphere, using the space to meet friends and socialise. Or a Cambridge don who visits a few galleries a year, mostly on the continent, but who has a wide and deep appreciation of both modern and Renaissance art, particularly sculpture.
So what is going on? As the “market” becomes more pervasive so the corporations grow, the institutional framework expands, and our lives become more regulated. And power shifts to these bureaucracies, who control and distribute their resources according to their own rules and priorities. Indeed, it creates its own rules, in order to be able to do so. Thus we have a textbook that may have been written by an admin officer.
These changes are camouflaged of course: the populist rhetoric suggesting it is we the people, or the majority, that decides, even though our ability to influence these decisions is severely limited. Indeed, the nature of that decision-making process is changing, as we are turned from citizens into consumers, exercising our vote in the shopping mall, rather than the town council.
For education, like so much else in our society, is now a product – to be sold and marketed. Of course, quality is important: at the top end people pay good money for the best; the state and corporations need new software and weapon systems. However, in general quality is of secondary importance, it takes second place to the ability to shift units. Education, like all the professions, is an industry and with the penetration of Capitalism into all aspects of our life and culture it is inevitable it will transform them, usually carving out their value and meaning. In education it follows that the Administrators and Vice-chancellors are more important than the academics. And if they continue their imperious rule? One day William Wordsworth may find himself removed from the library shelves.
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