From de-schooling to re-instruction: a couple of scenes of technopolitical transformation in learning environments

In many ways, by many agents, on many scales and at many different rythms, we have been witnessing in the past months a general rearrangement of technosocietal structures and logi(sti)cs , accelerated by the effects of and reactions to the coronavirus pandemic. Such rearrangements have actually started long before the pandemic, and in a longer-term view they can be ascribed to the de- and re-centralisation processes of what has been refered to as " platform capitalism ". This term, originally proposed by Nick Srnicek, designates a form of capitalism shaped by a revamped set of internal contradictions, best expressed in the workings of the online corporate giants commited to data-extraction and value-capture . A fully globalized economy stuck in-between the "cybernetic hypothesis" (=? ref Tiqqun ) , the financial hyper-speculation of venture capitalism, and the same old material violence inherent to all forms of capitalism. Different inter e pretations of the term focus on different facets of this manifold tension , but they will all agree that it is best expressed in the workings of the companies listed by the infamous acronym "GAFAM". +GIBMAFIA  

For who writes, the most direct encounter with these shifts has been in the field of education. As a precise system for the production of subjectivity and the shaping of collective processes, we consider this change not just another example of the reorientations that are investing the galaxy of "the public" and its infrastructures, but a particularly well suited case for making situations of inter-agency visible, tangible and explorable.

This text is informed by our experiences in higher education, but the matters touched on are similarly urgent in all strata of formal and non-formal education. The recent events have shown precisely how technological modes of organization, developed for a certain setting, can easily float over to other settings under the right circumstances (e.g. a pandemic, with its subsequent opportunistic screen new deal). The so-called e-learning setups that have been developed hesitantly over the past decades -- for adult education courses and university diplomas at distance -- have merged and mixed with tools produced with explicitly business-oriented values, becoming the default mode of delivery for primary, secondary, tertiary education and research environments. This further permeated education departments at art and cultural institutions, and even self-managed learning processes in grassroot community spaces. resonating a lot ^^

The de-schooling movement -- initiated by Ivan Illich and others in the 1970s -- argued for reducing the hegemony of formal instruction in education, aiming for an empowerment of diffused and emancipated forms of education throughout society that could depart from the normative and oppressive forms of top-to-bottom pedagogy of schooling institutions. Part of the analysis described how normative social arrangements and institutional pedagogy form a close loop informing and reinforcing each other, which works by keeping formal schooling as the fundamental site for learning. The constructive part of the proposal, which included computer-aided 'learning webs' as possible informal arrangements for self-directed [the myth of self-directed studies] education, ironically clashes with the harsh reality of the large and centralized computationalist (David Golumbia, Syed Mustafa Ali) empires that relegate informal and self-directed exchanges to the periphery of the Internet (What is this periphery?) . Moreover, the social arrangements and extractive behaviors that these giants enact are entering the reproductive loop posited above via their privative infrastructures and commercial apparatuses, with their pedagogy-disguised-as-a-service (!) . This outright 're-instruction' of education is ongoing, business as usual, but it is not inevitable nor unopposed.

As this re-instruction of learning environments carries dangers and damages, as well as openings and possibilities in multiple forms, we felt the need to reflect on, and tackle this complexity in the form of different " scenes ", attending closely to their different aspects and agents . Describing is one step. Problematizing is another. Indicating simultaneous potentialities is hopefully a third one. Because when things get mixed, when vibration takes place and unhingings occur, there is always a potential to try otherwise and actively engage in a re-arrangement in other terms and by differentiated means, with more just, politicized and solidary forces . The following scenes emerge from what has been happening lately in the context of so-called education infrastructures, in conversation with our (known and to-be-known) institutional companions with whom we share the duty to explore cultural and material diversions from the computationalist extractivist establishment. Each scene contains a quite frequent and probable story, plus a response that affirms the possibility for infrastructuring otherwise.

As a tentative incursion, we chose to start by spending time with two specific tectonic shifts: one, the emergent subjectivity of the student as the inhabitant of multiple user-spaces and two, the mutating role of the ICT departments, from its former managerial and janitorial aspects to the new pedagogical ones . They describe two modes in which agency is being re-distributed in learning environments and what relationalities result from these new tangles of whos and hows.



Scene one: The bundle theory of the student-user

The student card, the username and password, the name.surname@institutionemail .edu , the LDAP credentials, the eduroam account, the Adobe license, the Zoom login, the card to pay at the canteen, the library card, the badge to enter the premises — or the recorded fingerprint directly, "so you can't leave it at home".

The student-user is the emergent subjectivity in learning institutions, methodically proposed both as a form of self-perception for the learner and as a way to relate to the studying population from the point of view of management and teaching staff. The student-user currently enacts a double bind, merging two overlapping modes of organization of society. On one hand this bind confirms and reinforces the neoliberal model for educational institutions ( clients instead of persons, " services " instead of pedagogical exchanges , competitors instead of peers , etc) and on the other it welcomes in public institutions the wider landscape of capitalist platformization of life , of which school is just one of the sectors to be optimized for " value " extraction.
platformization - infrastructuralization?

The student-user is a merger of the citizen-user (in a system for which evidently not all persons are citizens, but for which all citizens should be users ) and of the student-client (a purchaser of knowledge services that are provided with the accompanying legitimizing titles). This student-client-citizen-user subjectivity-blob is the result of techniques imported from ICT and its economy, combined with the pre-existing residue of the meritocratically (as in the idea that school systems are organized by merits, of students, of teachers, of instituions) disciplined subject produced by schooling. The same set of structural and infrastructural transformations can be said to have correspondingly influenced institutions, too. As the disciplinary schema of the "good student" has been overtaken by the neoliberal notion of "excellence", that notion has expanded its force on institutions just as much as on students. From the point of view of platforms, both learner and learning institution are bound to mirrored sets of quantifying markers, indicators, prediction models.

The student-user now appears in an institution first of all as an aggregation of accounts, database rows, logs and other forms of digital traces whose management and related interests are increasingly shared between the institution and its service suppliers.
[Figure 1: illustration of what schools pay for access to their own data analyitics share]. 
The institution's staff participates in this type of aggregation by having their services and providers centralized through it, too, and the institution is increasingly incentivized via sophisticated quantifying marketing techniques to start considering itself through its own form of data-analysis. If the market-school paradigm is in place for quite some time already, it is now starting to show itself in its full potential and effects, refurbished by a quantify-all regime.

In the 18th century David Hume broke with the metaphysical tradition that attached properties to substances , arguing that only properties exist, and that all objects and forms of life we encounter, including ourselves, are just properties bundled together . Similarly, from the point of view of platforms, users appear as a bundle of browsers gestures, successful interactions, saved cookies, counted clicks, performed views. There is no interest in identities, feelings, personal histories -- or only to the extent in which they can be defined as transactions, as data points . Once massively collected, these can be arranged to improve the efficiency of services, can be used to predict behaviors , can be sold to advertisers. In massive data collections the individual is only interesting insofar as it is observed as a bundle within the total bundle-population .

The detrimental effects of importing such database-based approach to the management of educational institutions became apparent in this period of acceleration, when (flawed) algorithms showed their discriminating and precarising effects on both student and worker user-spaces in British schools and universities. In August, high school students all over the country saw their possible admission to University threatened by the grades automatically assigned by a biased algorithm , in place of the usual in-person exams that were cancelled due to Covid-related measures. A month later, workers from the University of Reading saw their jobs threatened by a mis-calculation of the prediction algorithm that determines the University's deficit based on the yearly student admissions. Unsurprisingly these two cases happened in the UK, where the neoliberal agenda for education has been pushed to its bitter consequences to a degree unseen elsewhere in Europe. The important protests and strikes that ensued and that partly obtained the retraction of the unfair decisions confirm that students and workers are determined to not let themselves be reduced to data points and sets of transactions, and give us hope that even in the most hostile institutional user-spaces collective action can undo damages and open up encouraging political scenarios.



Scene1-response > Protean userships: light and low read-writing at etherpad

Different software comes with different interpretations of user-ship . An interesting detour from the monolithic extractive user-space comes from a non-commercial piece of software that has provided for many meaningful online situations of collaboration and sharing in the past months and years: etherpad. An open-source collaborative online read-writing tool, one of its most distinctive characteristics is its malleable and subtle form of usership . When you join an etherpad sheet for writing, you are assigned a colour for your text, which is the main characterization of your 'user' on that read-writing environment . Each user a colour, sharing the same continuous text flow, without accounts and without compulsory usernames .

The user characterization is easily shifted, too: one can remove colors from the read-write flow (making it everybody's and nobody's ), can change colours to one very similar to its peers, can re-enter the same sheet with a different user and colour. The formation of a distinct individual subjectivity in the text is a choice for the user. This lightness on the author description is reflected in the database structure of etherpad: the only data which is saved are the changes to the text, and the colors of the authors. 

In terms of "user experience", etherpad's simplicity and subtlety is what sets it most far apart from its well known commercial and extractive read-write counterpart , Google Docs. Google enforces a controlled and unified user-space throughout all its services, which is necessary for the company to secure its source of income from tracking and advertising. As a non-commercial open-source software that can be installed on smaller autonomous server setups, etherpad is lightweight , has a lower entry threshold thanks to the absence of authentication, which results in a more simple and accessible environment. [lightweight + large databases >> heavy lightweight for a small group/server/organization ] What is missing in terms of advanced functionalities is surpassed by a less claustrophobic user experience, which in times of lockdown has been a precious thing for many instances of collective writing, groupal note taking and/or reading groups.



Scene 2: Oh my janitor! The days the helpdesk got on the teaching desk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2FnMk44sAg

Day 0 | From: head@institution.edu | To: internal@institution.edu | Subject: FW: Updates Ministerial Decree

Day Zero was the day the institution unwillingly had to obey the ministry ordinance to close its doors not only to the public, but to its very workforce. From Monday on, noone could come to work. Massive remoteness commenced. It was still not clear how, though. Day Zero is, hence, the day the office, the classroom, the coffeeroom, the after-beers and the hallways died. Or started to die. Or continued dying. [how we consider the animacies of our environment beyond the living]


Day 1 | From: head@institution.edu | To: ict-head@institution.edu | Subject: URGENT: Online learning setup

On Day 1 the ICT department received the anticipated demand for help with setting up on-line learning environments. This meant that their role in the institution suddenly became central. For some it was exciting news, the awaited occasion to display the full capacities of the recently upgraded Microsoft services. In the end, the choice to increase the budget for the school's own infrastructural development had proved to be far-sighted. How that would be used in this very particular year was still unclear.


Day 2 | From: ict-head@institution.edu | To: ictworker@institution.edu | CC: ictworker2@institution.edu, ictworker3@institution.edu | Subject: [ICT-all] does someone know how to do an agile-install of this!!??? Re: Pendant tasks

Bombarded by hundreds of stressed-out questions, the online forums on tools and platforms for e-learning were on fire, with very different opinions and doubts coming from very diverse institutional ecosystems (from the biggest university to the smallest coop community space, everyone was looking for tips for setting up the new telework conditions).  For the ICT crew members , what was clear on Day 2 was that their work would no longer be 'in the background' , as they experienced it until, say, two weeks prior. From then on, the dependence of the institutional ecology on their work -- and the infrastructures they maintained  -- would be under the spotlight for a while... This made them feel simultaneously empowered (especially the ICT managers) and powerless (more the rest of the ICT workers) and overworked? . The latter probably because Day 2 was also tainted by the reception of a very long to-do list, one that would normally take a month at least and was now expected to be settled in a week. Week one, of course. [at least there still was an IT dept]


Day 3 | From: ictworker3@institution.edu | To: ictworker@institution.edu, ictworker2@institution.edu | Subject: Workflows for...

Day Three was the day the institution expected the ICT department to draft a script for all agents involved in their educational processes. Teachers, curators, workshoppers and one-night-stand speakers: all needed to be guided through the new set-up of videocalls, chat question posing, distribution of materials and evaluation publishing [grades? evaluations of courses ] . The institution was asking for the design of a pedagogical choreography for the department, that until then had mostly been responding to requests for services by searching online what was the most affordable solution, and what the neighbouring institution was using. [hey ,, u guys know? oh no? oh no one know.s...]
From then on, in many institutions day-to-day learning activities would go through the ICT department, or wouldn't happen at all. Many decisions on their conditions would be taken by ICT alone. Most learning situations were now dependent in one way or another on how they arranged the space, or not. This made a few of them stay up all night.


Day 4 | From:teacher1@institution.edu | To:helpdesk@institution.edu | Re: FW: Helpdesk Ticket T20200409.0080 - M20 04 041

Day 4 was the day nothing worked. Hosting locally on the institution's server did not work, all implied agents wanted their content to be up and rolling asap, the schedule flew backwards in time as if no-one had ever moved a muscle for proper maintentance and every version of every small plugin on every machine on every one's confined room had to be remotely updated. Storage space had been eaten by the first five percent of needed materials, and the department's instant messaging app had collapsed under the weight of error screenshots . And what's worst: after years of instrumental reason, all they had to offer was 'tickets for this' and/or 'tickets for that'.
[having to teach how to use tickets in the first place is a journey in itself...]
ticketing is day *

a S imut system? not working > ticket to the ICT to fix the agenda..

other have 'hotline'

official email address from school.. overview of percentage of days spent of video calls
system sending emails to you as tickets

teachers are ticketed that the use of time is not optimal?
statistics, analysis, overview - like factory workers in the past with punch-cards

also time of speaker on jitsi

Day 5 | From: ict-head@institution.edu | To: financial-dept@institution.edu | CC: head@institution.edu | Subject: ATTN FINANCIAL DEPT - Contract with videoconference provider

Day Five was the day of surrender and of triumph. Despite a few discordant voices that urged the department to take care of situatedness and specifically local conditions and needs, the ICT manager entered the site of the major videoconference provider, selected a bundle, checked the price for the license for one full schoolyear, and sent it along to the finance department for prioritizing it by any means, on the depo budget. Two emotions invaded the transversal body of ICT crew members around the globe on that fifth day: the relief to no longer be asked for local, temporary, DIY creativity under such massive pressure, but also the conscience of having let go of an occasion for keeping and developing response-abilities within their institution. 


Day 6 | From: ictworker@institution.edu | To: teacher1@institution.edu,  teacher2@institution.edu, teacher3@institution.edu, teacher4@institution.edu, teacher5@institution.edu, teacher6@institution.edu, teacher7@institution.edu, teacher8@institution.edu, teacher9@institution.edu, teacher10@institution.edu, teacher11@institution.edu, teacher12@institution.edu, teacher13@institution.edu, teacher14@institution.edu, teacher15@institution.edu | Subject: FW: Anti-cheating software instructions

On day Six very few, if any, realized that ICT crew members had now become pedagogical agents of the institution. And even if anyone realized, for sure they saw no official recognition of that role. To be fair, they felt far from proud for being in charge of finding technical solutions for such a wrongly posed pedagogical question: the one of “preventing cheating”. Even the newly discovered term for the “solution” was embarassing – proctoring . [prof says u cant use bathroom during test >:"(] ?? camera on obligation, having to install software that block other fucntions of your pc and/ or constantly monitor the usage

ticketing: the tool to speak to a system, asking for a change
inverted ticketing: microsoft sending you reports with numbers and % about your online activities

Scene2-response > Day6+n

Day 6+n | From: internal@institution.edu | To: ict-head@institution.edu | CC: head@institution.edu | Subject: Urgent team meeting


Day 6+n was the day in which institutions and ICT departments finally realized a redistribution of agency needed to take place, urgently . And not just for a matter of division of labor and reorganization of uneven expertise, but because failing to do so would mean to lose the last occasion to address the ever-growing gap between technical and teaching roles.
It was now time to analyze, together, how it came to pass that in order to deal with an unprecedented situation, 'technical support' became a form of aid responding to the general disorientation of learners, teachers, students and managers alike.

This proved to be the starting point for understanding that infrastructure in education is integral part of what is learned. On day 6+n ICT departments started to involve teaching and learning bodies in the decisions over the infrastructure, now at the center of the teaching environment, and teaching staff started to include technical conditions as part of the context for education.

old teachers being cutely confused
patience!
changing platforms
having no tools/methods to be together online as a group
no classess for teachers and students on how to use these new platforms - calls for "figure it out yourself" and consulting manuals

Outro: Inter-dependent learning on the go
                                   
During weeks we collected lines of thought on a shared etherpad, reflecting and trying to systematize what has been happening lately in the context of so-called education infrastructures, in direct interpellation to and by our (known and to-be-known) institutional companions with whom we share the duty to explore cultural and material diversions from the computationalist extractivist establishment (?) . We wrote and rewrote , rearranged references due to not complete match of circumstances or due to misunderstanding on what tools actually implied, and also sometimes due to very basic experiences as friends who learn from each other and others on the go. 

These scenes should then function as specific takes on a much wider and thicker complexity of a phenomenon that cuts through a diversity of situations within so-called education. In general, we just wish to open a conversation about how learning inter-dependence is materially and semiotically either fabricated or cancelled by picking and establishing some technoecologies and not others, by staying with easiness and not inventiveness or by welcoming the tone of business as usual instead of that of deep solidarity we are in need of . 

The two responses we are sharing to the scenes above are snapshots of very complex transformations in the making: one has to do with the culture of readwrite practices to modify what subjectivities emerge and the other, not unrelated, has to do with an urgency for an opportune distribution of agency that is coherent with the mundane exchanges on the day to day at formal, nonformal and informal learning structures. 
(tbc)

the emails can almost be read as a theatre script
fiction is possible as patterns are clearly present, spreadout over many different educational institution
ICT > IT ... no communication?
also: who are these people that take care of our digital infrastructures?

KASK in a larger framework of school.. HOGENT
separate and compatible services

user-space + subjectivity
what is the effect of all this on the students..?

This text is written in the context of: https://www.internationaleonline.org/ and https://constantvzw.org/wefts/relearningseries.en.html .
Formatted as a series that can travel and that can hold multiple contributions.