The Maastricht Young Academy started a book club in April to discuss Ginie Servant-Miklos’ Pedagogies of Collapse: A Hopeful Education for the End of the World as We Know It. The first meeting, with staff members from across UM, was alarming. The book describes the various types of collapse we are experiencing (e.g. climate and socio-economic collapse). Servant-Miklos argues that the Anthropocene, exploitation of fossil fuels, capitalism and neoliberal policies have all contributed to the doomsday scenario we are collectively marching towards.
Even more devastating is her allegation that our education system is part of the problem. Given how we try to manufacture employable graduates that fit into the existing market, Servant-Miklos claims that educators are complicit in the collapse of the world as we know it. The allegation continues that we are doing our students a great disservice: at best, we are preparing them for a future that won’t exist (with the era of abundance soon coming to an end). At worst, we are nudging them to help accelerate this collapse. By educating our students to serve in the system that created this predicament, we are complicit.
Laundry list of promises
During the book club, we discussed some of the challenges that come with inspiring change, especially within UM. For example, our mission statement makes a laundry list of promises, but are we living up to them? Do we really “empower students to become active, globally oriented citizens and critical thinkers”? Does PBL still matter? Do we really value diversity? Are we continuously “enhancing and innovating” our education and research?
Many of us felt ambivalent about our performance, but no manager really wants to hear that PBL is not really that innovative. We are encouraged to be inspirational educators, but many of our colleagues experience their teaching load as exploitative. This prevents us from establishing meaningful connections with students, thus reducing our quality of education. And what does “contributing to society” even mean when the society we have created is having a catastrophic impact on our ecosystem?
Worried about retribution
Grappling with these questions brought about a sense of helplessness. Those who attempt to nudge the system are often confronted by bureaucracy and middle managers that prefer a more “steady” path. Some younger colleagues even worried about potential retribution for raising concerns like getting passed over for promotion. Those in middle management in attendance spoke about the importance of meeting the demands of the accreditors and keeping our university’s doors open. Some honestly admitted that rattling the status quo would create an undesirable amount of work. So even when we realize that what we are offering out students may not be what they (will) need, we continue on.
We need to drastically rethink the current framework and how we are going about educating our students. We cannot succumb to the temptations of blissful ignorance or indifference. We owe it to the students to have an honest dialogue with them about the world that they will be living in and how we are (not) preparing them for it. Only then can we start figuring out together what needs to change and how.
Creating conformists
It is my impression that this dialogue is currently not really taking place. Educational institutions (not just UM) speak aspirationally about educating students to foster societal change, but everyone is pretty much doing the same thing. Here, I am reminded of Audre Lorde’s sentiments that we cannot dismantle the master’s house with the master’s tools: we grade students in accordance with formulaic rubrics and ILOs that feel divorced from reality. We don’t give them enough personalized feedback or take the time to get to know and develop them as human beings. We rely on educational software that everyone else is using and call it innovation. In short, we are not living up to our mission statement. Instead, we are creating conformists that will continue to serve (in) the existing system.
The great Frank Zappa once said that without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible. We need more deviations. We need more trial and error, and we really need to stop overvaluing what accreditors tell us to do, and start considering what we really ought to be doing instead. What we need now, is a bit of courage and some civil disobedience to bring about meaningful change to an otherwise flawed education system.
Mark Kawakami is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Law. The Maastricht Young Academy book club hosts two more session on Ginie Servant-Miklos’ book (19 May and 8 June). The last of which will feature the author as a guest speaker.