Abstract
Taking the example of the current educational reforms, that is, the harmonization of the Swiss education systems, this chapter engages with the paradoxical character of modern education policy that believes it enhances its agency by referring to the unshakeable basis of their policy, the “crystal-clear” facts or “data,” incorruptibly portraying – in a comparative way – the state of the art of schooling in the respective education systems. It is argued that this enhancement of agency represents more an “illusion of control” rather than real agency, for it assigns de facto decision-taking to the normative theories that are embedded (and hidden) in the instruments designed to provide the “crystal-clear” facts. It also points out that this policy model represents thorough mistrust toward the major bearers of the education systems, the teachers, on two levels: mistrust in teachers’ policy expertise as professionals and mistrust in their teaching. And it argues that the Swiss attempt to harmonize the education systems of the individual cantons is, in fact, an attempt to adjust Swiss education to globally dominant models.
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Notes
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Refers to the 21 German-speaking cantons (or parts of bilingual cantons) participating in HarmoS.
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For instance: http://pro-101674.novatrend.ws/argumentarium
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This popular phrase is of contested origin, too. It is often attributed to the statistician W. Edwards Deming. https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/310261.W_Edwards_Deming
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There is indeed international expertise, in Switzerland; see http://www.lehrplanforschung.ch
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The initiators have taken this decision to the Swiss Supreme Court, fighting for the right to have a public vote.
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In spring 2016 the education minister of Bern, Bernhard Pulver, and the psychologist Kurt Reusser, a collaborator in Curriculum 21, reassured readers in an official bulletin that Curriculum 21 only “seemed” to be new but that in its “underlying structure,” it in fact represented a continuation of the older curricula and their educational aims (Pulver and Reusser 2016, p. 5). Given the insulting characterization of traditional education by the minster in 2014 (see above), it is not surprising that this public reassurance of continuity has caused irritation and mistrust.
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Tröhler, D. (2018). Killing Two Birds with One Stone: Globalizing Switzerland by Harmonizing the Cantonal Systems of Education in the Aftermath of PISA. In: Hultqvist, E., Lindblad, S., Popkewitz, T. (eds) Critical Analyses of Educational Reforms in an Era of Transnational Governance. Educational Governance Research, vol 7. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61971-2_7
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