From: Robin Usher and Richard Edwards (1994). Postmodernism and Education.

London:
Routledge.

LOCATING EDUCATION IN THE POSTMODERN

Education does not fit easily into the postmodern moment because educational theory and
practice is founded in the modernist tradition. Education is very much the dutiful child of the
Enlightenment and, as such, tends to uncritically accept a set of assumptions deriving from
Enlightenment thought. Indeed, it is possible to see education as the vehicle by which the
Enlightenment ideals of critical reason, humanistic individual freedom and benevolent
progress are substantiated and realised. As Lyotard argues, the project of modernity is deeply
intertwined with education, modernity’s belief being that progress in all areas will emancipate
‘the whole of humanity from ignorance, poverty, backwardness, despotism…thanks to
education in particular, it will also produce enlightened citizens, masters of their own destiny’
(Lyotard 1992:97).

The very rationale of the educational process and the role of the educator is founded on the
humanist idea of a certain kind of subject who has the inherent potential to become self-
motivated and self-directing, a

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rational subject capable of exercising individual agency. The task of education has therefore
been understood as one of ‘bringing out’, of helping to realise this potential, so that subjects
become fully autonomous and capable of exercising their individual and intentional agency.
Thus education is allotted a key role in the forming and shaping of subjectivity and identity,
the task of making people into particular kinds of subject.

Insofar as the postmodern is a celebration and tolerance of plurality and difference, it presents
‘a much more ambivalent and less fixed positioning of subjectivity’ (Lash 1990:198). It is
equally clear that the emphasis in postmodernism on the inscribed subject, the subject
constructed by discourses and signifying systems, ‘decentred’ through language, society and
the unconscious, denies the existence of a ‘natural’ subject with inherent characteristics and
potential and thus seems to contradict the very basis of educational activity. As Lovlie
(1992:121) argues, the postmodern critique ‘stabs at the very heart of the most cherished
ideals of Western culture [particularly that of] personal autonomy as an educational goal’.

As well as its challenge to the conception of the subject who learns, the postmodern moment
also constitutes a challenge to existing concepts, structures and hierarchies of knowledge.
Education as a socio-cultural structure and process is, in all its various forms, intimately
connected with the production and dissemination of foundational knowledge and therefore
with the re-creation and reproduction of the differential valuations and hierarchies of
knowledge which we touched upon in the earlier discussion of feminism.

Within the postmodern moment, the problematising of epistemological structures and

hierarchies provides the conceptual resources for thinking anew the effects of education at
both the personal and structural levels. Education is itself going through profound changes in
terms of purposes, contents and methods, changes which are themselves an aspect of the
uncertainties of the postmodern moment. Debates over the curriculum, pedagogy and the
organisation of education resonate with the challenges of the postmodern but often without
the reflexive understanding of a postmodern position. Thus postmodernism becomes part of a
curriculum, incorporated into the modern practice of education, but without resulting in a
reconstruction of the curriculum. By contrast, trends of inter-disciplinarity and experiential
approaches to teaching and learning can be seen as changes taking place under the impact of
the postmodern and therefore very much part of it. In other words, there is no uniform, unified
postmodern discourse of education. However, it is through these changes that the
Enlightenment tradition and the place of education within it is increasingly questioned,
exposing the certainties and ‘warranted’ claims of educational theories and practice to a
critical examination, a shaking of the foundations. Since a postmodern perspective is itself a
questioning one, it does at the very least provide an alternative discourse (a different way of

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speaking, thinking and acting) which can be appropriated for a critical examination of the
theory and practice of education. […]

The postmodern reminds us that we construct our world through discourse and practice and
that therefore, with a different discourse and a different set of practices, things could be
otherwise. However, because the world so constructed then ‘turns around’ and constructs
us—and here education plays a crucial role—making things otherwise is no easy, once-and-
for-all task—although, ironically perhaps, education can have a crucial role to play here too.
The fact that reality is constructed through social and discursive representations does not
make ‘reality’ any the less real. But it does mean that ‘reality’ can be seen differently and
difference can be seen in ‘reality’. This is a task which can only be carried out through
changing our social practices, including the practice of education—a practice which itself
plays a significant part in bringing about change.