Hermes, Harksen, Coca-cola Popstars and B. Com Samoosas - Symmetries/Asymmetries in Formal and Informal Forms of Education
Enter plain text and/or HTML tags. In this paper I shall begin by painting verbal pictures drawn from experiences in the classroom. Some of the patterns I discern in the classroom will then be tracked to our window on the world inside our homes and behind closed doors, the television screen and the latest fad in reality- TV �Popstars�.The purpose is to examine the connections I see between what I do in education in post-1994 South Africa and ubiquitous influences epitomised by �Coca-cola Popstars� and the con-man Jurgen Harksen, that result in those with what were customarily promising qualifications finding themselves at a loss in the chaos and disorder of today. In the process it will be shown that a very fine yet porous line separates, ideal, fantasy and illusion from reality and to tell or even want to tell one from the other requires, for the most part, enhanced agency. As a participant-observer and from the specific perspective of the teaching of English I shall first point out the changes taking place in formal education in South Africa and elsewhere to make it more like highly influential business and media contexts of real life. The intention at the outset was to move from the elitist �ivory tower� image and be more like life itself as we attempt to undo the damage of the past and catch up with the rest of the world busy globalizing itself. But outcomes-based education, the panacea, specially chosen by a select group of people who probably meant well to undo the damage of differentiated apartheid education, is taking shape to emphasise the economic more than anything else. The language used to propagate the new form of education (according to UN �s Professor Chinappa the only country in the world to do so) reflects the paramount cultural value, the �economy�, reinforcing the message that the economy is what matters bar everything else. In part this is understandable given the economic slump and the high employment and skills deficit. Because of this it is the economic which also determines what is now taught in English modules at Vista University. And the anti-apartheid, social redress and justice are conflated into economic and bottom-line imperatives. It is the ethos of business that has turned English from the teaching of literature to business communication the predominant focus area of lecturers trained mainly in the literary disciplines. To be sure ENG5001, the literature module which is still featured in the university prospectus may not be perfect since among many other possibilities it is also basically training for the teaching of literature. In comparison to ENG5009: Reading and Writing Skills for Business English, however, it is wider ranging, more challenging and demanding. In accord with the outcomes-based educational philosophy the latest module is thoroughly worked through and meticulously sequenced into discrete, measureable skills. As the manifestation of the dream of politicians assisted by hand-picked educators the miraculous cure for all that ails us, ENG5009, is programmed so as to leave very little room for learners to become anything more than performing machines for nine credits and six weeks of tuition. Under an economic rationalist ideology and no matter the humanistic overtones the individual under the dispensation of ENG5009 becomes other than the self to be inferred from the new constitution. In fact training, learning and post-1994 South Africa, albeit with a permutation to a more equitable level (in racial terms given apartheid differentiation), are almost like perverse twists (though purportedly reformist) of the social engineering that we have already been subjected to. ENG5009 is managerially orientated by its focus on the workings of groups in business, how to identify and manage conflict situations, conduct meetings, compose notices, agendas, minutes, reports, presentations and manage time and basic language rules. It meets vital life and professional needs peripherally as language is reduced from being an object of attention in its own right to an instrument, a medium for exchanging information. Moreover, it is understood as reflective of reality, scientifically exact and objective, assumptions which are interrogated in ENG5001, which is now taken by twenty-percent of the Vista 2002 student intake. Edward Said at a conference in 2001 in South Africa warns about instrumental, automatised reading and writing because of "the lazy rhetoric, automatic language and distorted ideological discourses that have so often covered up abuses of power" (2001:8). The contradictions and tensions between political rhetoric and actuality I find can be explained by doing what Said asks us to do, analyse, turn over, probe the language to reveal the subtext, the deep structure of the discourse. Linguistically words are elastic and open within bounds to interpretation, a tendency that can be used to serve certain ends. As explained by the linguist Ruqaiya Hasan words used liberalistically can make the unpalatable palatable. Like words liberalism in the hands of the questionable can also be instrumentalised.. The truth (or truths) that lurks somewhere in-between can be discerned by those trained to see beneath obfuscating layers of verbiage. Our new constitution from this perspective and made manifest in outcomes-based education and in particular ENG5009 becomes more amenable to consensus and public assent. From the vantage-point of 2002 palatability and the sugar-coated pill are necessary in matters of governance and political rhetoric since the capitalistic mole burrows everywhere in globalized trade; contracting out when the very basics of life are involved is disallowed. The palatability factor is also at work at a more down-to-earth level in the Vista classroom where unprepared students, products even to this day of far-reaching transmission modes of teaching and more recent intellectual consumerism eagerly reach out for cut-and-dried rapid responses to literacy problems. It is truth to tell with the consent of the recently enfranchised that more reading, decoding, interpreting, understanding and complex writing tasks are rejected for the surface image and instant gratification of the easier module. It is however another story at UCT, Rhodes and the University of Pretoria where I learnt from colleagues that they have healthy 2002 enrolments for their literature courses. This turn of situation may be viewed as a further permutation of differentiation and divisiveness which will have long-term effects in relation to the qualities future employers are on the look out for and prospective life-styles and earnings. With no crystal-ball available to see what the future holds at best learners need to be able, so I have gathered, to be adaptable, make informed choices, reveal aptitudes of mind, demonstrate skills in communication, analysis, be quick-study, have staying power, confidence and committment to see things through. The student who settles for ENG5009 only to fulfill basic literacy needs is thus also redefining the self; the view is that the self is occupationally competent, an economic subject but reductively given what is brought to the module in the first place and what the self leaves with compared to the possibilities of ENG5001 taught for twelve weeks for eighteen credits. Like a mirror-image of business and media processes the module ENG5009 is broken down into separate performance chunks sequenced in lock-step fashion. At the instrumental level literacy and learning become exact procedures, practices and lists of operating principles which depending on how it is done could easily revert to the past transmission mode of education, easily assessable objectives and right answers for narrow bits of words - - in short, the restricted and perverse use of memory, a far cry from the promise held out by outcomes-based education. Memory a complex, multi-dimensional and not yet completely understood process of the brain, which tells us who we are and makes us what we are is for the purposes of the reformist anti-apartheid exercise summarily dismissed and totalized as regurgitation. The module which massages the mental synapses of memory associated with the performative gives the impression of being specially focussed and career-targeted hence the popularity of its content appropriately apportioned into predictable standardized segments. In contrast the literary module subscribed to by only twenty-percent of the Vista 2002 student intake comprises a number of texts by authors specifically chosen to reflect Africa and examine stereotypical ideas about identity, reality and meaning in a far less organized and sequenced wholistic process. Whatever its shortcomings given the limitations of our current understanding of teaching and learning, it is an endeavour nonetheless to teach critical thinking, analysis, synthesis and writing more that minimal clusters of words, all of which do not easily translate into steps in a formula for predictable outcomes. Yet in juxtaposition with ENG5009 the literary module is implicitly and inexorably degraded by students who considering their learning background and other shortcomings and attitudes, such as intellectual-consumerism, are in reality operating within a restricted horizon of choices brought on both by past legacies and themselves unquestioningly influenced by the informal education that is in the very air they breathe outside the classroom. With an eye on the short- and not long-term the millenium generation, so termed by Codrington, are highly expectant and aspirational but distrustful of adults, want their information like TV programming and the one sentence paragraphs of journalism if they bother to read at all, in twenty-second sound bites. In the age of the visual image mainly determined by the male gaze what can be seen is believed and trusted. Images for the eye are constructed with technological ether as 21st-century values worth pursuing. Along with that democracy, like words, is deliberately shaped and formularised as we have seen televised in the Australian series �Idols� and the South African version �Popstars�, both sponsored by the multi-national Coca-cola. Fame, celebrity and fortune associated mainly with the camera eye of TV and other media are packaged in a fast-track sequenced recipe for success that starts off in a rush of publicity holding out hope to the masses. The culture of spin plays into the artificial importance of celebrity that critical masses all over the world are enthralled by. The craving, almost like compressed seven deadly sins or, from another perspective, like Maslow�s hierarchy of needs all squashed together, is exploited, reproduced, distributed and consumed as millions worship not at real achievement but at the false altar of drivel put out by publicists who control the airwaves. The finally selected pop-group-- 101-- in South Africa fits into the international mould of an instantly recognised product specifically and rapidly invented. As an image of a brand the group is synonomous with the infectious, highly narcotic, excessive pop culture which every single facet of media builds up constantly for, if nothing else, the duration of Warhol�s fifteen-minutes of fame. The procedure plays on the promise of democracy as it allows ordinary people who are rarely seen on screens the space for an image and a voice. This tradition which stems from 19th-century vaudeville and minstrelsy reaches new mind-boggling heights in reality TV. The key moment is called "The Money Shot", title of Laura Grindstaff�s study, that explores the phrase that talkshow staff use to describe the moment when guests erupt with joy or rage when they learn of secrets kept from them by those closest and dearest. The term more commonly associated with orgasm scenes in sex movies implies the pornography in these new types of programmes, purposely created tableaux of sentimental exploitation and degradation. The two things constituting a successful programme are, Grindstaff learnt from talkshow staff, lies and breasts and, I should add a third, youth. Many participants in reality TV shows are poor and on their first trip from home. They are sold the lie of instant celebrity (notwithstanding the fifteen-minutes of fame), made to tell their life-stories in a way seemingly to effect purgation and transformation harking back to the ancient Greeks and Aristotle�s dramatic poetics. Cultural diversity is also part of the illusion to make the range of images more carnivalesque performances. Such shows commodify emotion and impoverish reality as working class participants are enjoined to emote, not analyse. It is in this kind of atmosphere of drenching effects that the context is created for the rise and fall (just as exploitable) of the Hermes-avatar, Jurgen Harksen, the dyslexic who has done nothing but cast doubt on the efficacy of any kind of education by creating the illusion of success and achievement with what he has managed to pick up incidentally first in his home-country Germany and now in South Africa. The image that I have in mind is Harksen of the TV programme �Special Assignment�, who cheated his way from Northern Europe to the Southern tip of Africa by preying on human frailties of fear and greed. He did this by lying with conviction and cultivating the friendship of accountants and lawyers to produce and reproduce the image of a trustworthy investor. A keen student of human nature and the media and paper culture he made the incredible look credible by strategic use of pillars of society, the well-heeled professional as witness and referee for his nefarious schemes. Like a will o� the wisp he slipped to and from reality and virtual reality. He blurred the lines between reality and TV when he dragged the soapie "Dallas" and its characters into his authenticating documentation to prove his credentials to doubting Thomases. Like a weaver of dreams, the master conjuror used the real/or stage name of Ken Kercheval on some Chase-Manhattan Bank correspondence and did the same with the name of the character Sue-Ellen. Harksen in his achievements, no matter how immoral, is in a world of topsy-turvy values greeted with awe and even outright if not grudging respect. This is because in a twisted kind of way he gives new meaning to the significance of the worker of today who has to be highly motivated, self-managing, and personally committed to his work. But he is not an entity unfamiliar and brand-new to us; he comes not from conspiracy theories or the overheated imagination but like reality-TV from deep within the collective unconscious, from archetypal patterns of human behaviour. At the advent of the 21st-century he is an avatar of the Hermes archetype which Neville sees as being best loved and friendliest, despite his slippery, deceiving, seductive and non-heroic character. Like proliferating TV-images the mythical creature is known by many names and takes many forms. He is described by Neville as <blockquote dir="ltr" style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> the god of travellers, the god of shepherds, the god of merchants and markets, the god of persuasiveness, the trickster, the god of lies and deceit, the god of gamblers, the god of thieves, the god of illusions, the god of shamanic medicine, the god of cross-roads and boundaries, the god of connections, of quicksilver, of fast footwork and smooth talking. He is the divine entrepreneur, a con man without ethics and without malice. He has no values of his own, no concern for substance. He enjoys doing deals, being clever, playing the game. He is the herald of the gods, the connector, the carrier of information, the god of secret knowledge (and insider trading). He does not manage anything, like Zeus, or lead us to understanding like Apollo, or ensure the smooth functioning of society, ... He does not fight like Ares, or nourish, like Demeter, or protect the weak ... He loves paradox and process, trickery and risk. He is ambiguous and many faced. He is everybody�s mate (1995:51). </blockquote> We need not have far to look to see why the present age is considered by Neville as Hermes-inflated. Another familiar from deep within our communal memories is Prometheus. As Neville writes: The worshippers of Prometheus do not take kindly to being told they are simple-minded. <blockquote dir="ltr" style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> Prometheus inspires them with his own arrogance, They see themselves as revolutionaries, heroically defying the conservative forces ... The myth tells us explicitly the Prometheus takes from them their ability to foresee the future. Infatuation with technology leaves no room for doubts about where technology might lead (1992:236-252). </blockquote> In the age of Hermes the literate individual is the economic subject and connections with others are economic relationships. What counts as literacy is the result of prevailing socio-economic shifts and changing expectations. At the forefront are relatively limited conceptions of literacy and the individual and personal growth and individuality are cut down to the size that serves the interest of the workplace. If this is enablement and empowerment then it is only to serve more efficiently and productively and not to question servitude. The wider sense of a liberal education is fast eroding and the affective human is largely ignored. Valued competencies are those that are clearly instrumental outcomes which the B.Com samoosa-maker of my title clearly understood but not as well as she needed to since she has failed to find conventional employment. There are a number of ways to explain her lack of success, foremost of which is that she may have gone too far to improve herself if the B. Com degree is compared to ENG5009. On the other hand, however, there is no guarantee the ENG5009 competent will do any better in the depressed and fast changing economy. The language of skills uttered ad nauseam by politicians and their cohorts, leaders from business and former educators, makes them all appear tough, practical and as if they are really doing their jobs. The language continually repeated soon becomes beliefs, then naturalised common sense understanding and finally apolitical truths. Like the use of language and TV images the strategy of using the vocational focus is to separate the lack of skills from the ailing economy and place the total responsibility for unemployment on the unemployed, which in some ways is not always untrue. At the same time, however, Apple (1987) sees within the political economy of capitalism the structural problems of poverty, of the de-skilling and elimination of jobs, of capital flight, of systemic racism (no matter 1994) and sexism (whatever the constitutional assertions), problems that are naturally generated out of current economic and political arrangements. Aronowitz and Giroux (1985) add the factors of social and economic inequality and political powerlessness. To all of which has to be added the latest bookkeeping legerdemain of companies such as Enron and WorldCom to name but two of a growing number of Harksen-like, �now you see it, now you don�t�, TV-like, Hermes-inflated companies. The South African Chamber of Commerce estimates that there are 500,000 vacancies and thousands, like the B. Com-samoosa-maker, with tertiary education qualified in fields not required by the growing sectors in the economy, such as technology. The B.Com graduate should have had proper guidance that would have directly led her to employment. But it is not as simple as that as Apple, and Aronowitx and Giroux have pointed out. Donald Moerdijk (2002) who has high hopes for the new form of education in South Africa warns about global apartheid�s programmes for subaltern skills. He also goes a step further than Ruqaiya Hasan (2002) to alert us to liberalism as practised today, which to him is a hoax, a label designed to hide the alliance of corporate business and the authoritarian state, much like it clearly was during apartheid. He sees Bantu Ed 11, Global Bantu Education taking place outside South Africa; little does he as yet grasp the workings of globalised structures that our new leaders single-minded seek out to reform distortions of the past. With the consent of leaders invasion and regimentation are not only enforced by means of air-tight aid strictures but more insidiously by seduction through the eye and human weaknesses and frailties. There is nothing mysterious about mind-control since decisions are made by human agents to make policies look natural. The public discourse drowning out or more shrewdly creating the space within itself for slighter noises of alternative discourses within overarching frameworks of power and control covers unavowed interests. That which is unspoken which I have tried to give some idea of is simply the sum of ascertainable facts, probabilities and relationships I see in the classroom now determined by market forces and student demands and my immersion outside the classroom in all the distractions from really getting to grips with real problems. The mise-en-scene of smoke and mirrors creates a fragmented view of reality as memory, history and the more exacting mental activities are effaced. Under the spell of immediacy human experience is despoiled of specificity and nuance. The generalizing image completely de-realizes the human world of conflicts and desires under the cover of illustrating it as the medium becomes the message with a vengeance. The unapproachable, the obscure and obscured is entangled in the images and stories prolifically and repeatedly spun; but as I have tried to show the collaboration between word and image can be probed to defy representation. The visual/verbal culture that predominates apparently provides overloads of information and knowledge perhaps to overwhelm and stultify even as it commodifies and fetishisizes certain identities and legitimises certain postures. It breaks the boundaries of the optical and creeps into human experience so thoroughly we tend to be unaware until it is formally brought to our notice as a vision of emptiness. And while this continues without pause the interaction of word and image by Hall of Mirrors Inc. in the postmodern globe of porous boundaries is also busy fostering the rough beast that for now slouches in the shadowy backdrop of screens and headlines. <strong>References:</strong> Apple, M. 1987. Foreword in Lankshear & Lawler M (eds) Literacy, Schooling and Revolution. London: Falmer. Aronowitz S & Giroux H. 1985. Education under siege: The conservative, the liberal and radical debate over schooling. South Hadley: Bergin &Garvey. Codrington, G. 2001. Life stages endure, but attitudes change with each generation. Sunday Business Report. The Sunday Times, February 18, p. 3. Hasan, R. 2002. Globalization, Literacy and Ideology. Keynote address in SAALA & LSSA Conference 8-10 July, University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg: Partnerships in Diversity: Linguistic and Cultural perspectives. Unpublished. Moerdijk, D. 2002. Bantu Education for all? In Getting Ahead, Supplement to Mail & Guardian, August 2-7, p. 30. Neville, B. 1992. Other Myths, Other Gods, Other Ways of teaching, in R. Harris & P. Willis (eds), Striking a Balance: Adult and Community Education Towards 2000,Centre for Human Resource Studies, University of South Australia and the S. A. Branch of Australian Association for Adult and Community Education, Adelaide, pp.1092-1099. 1995. Seeing Through the Postmodern Organisation, Temenos, Spring, pp.49-56. Said, E. 2001. Books crucial to growth of critical insight. The Sunday Independent Feb 25: 8. Sandhu, S. 2002. Lies and Breasts in Sunday Times Lifestyle, The Sunday Times June 23, p. 4.
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