Learning to Unlearn by Pablo Rivas

Author:Pablo Rivas
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: LID Publishing Limited
Published: 2020-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

UNIVERSITY IN THE MIRROR

Since the industrial age, work has become an increasingly predictable and routine transaction.36 Things are very similar in the public and private sectors: increasing numbers of people, specialization in particular and standardized tasks, creation and distribution of products and services that are increasingly predictable for customers, and so on.

A good example of this work culture, which tends towards the standardization of processes, products and services, is described in sociologist George Ritzer’s book The McDonaldization of Society,37 an analysis of rationalization in everyday life. In particular, and although Ritzer’s thesis is much broader and richer than the summary here, I want to highlight what the author considers the third aspect of ‘McDonaldization’: predictability – “that is, the effort that allows people to know what will happen any time, anywhere. The goal is to create a world in which there are no surprises.” This is exemplified, for example, in the Holiday Inn chain of motels and in various fast food establishments that offer a predictable world in terms of ingredients, flavours, smells, textures, facilities and behaviour, and even the physical and uniform similarity of their employees.

However, Ritzer goes further and identifies a tendency towards predictability in mass entertainment – for example, in sequels to box-office hits – while in the organization of work that uniformity and eradication of surprise is found in “bureaucratic structures, standardization produced by Taylorism and identical cars that come out of the assembly line.”

All the examples cited by Ritzer also serve to evaluate the evolution of our universities, their specialities and their curricula. Undoubtedly, in all of them we find a tendency towards standardization that has grown with the development of what Ritzer calls the McDonaldization of society. This has resulted in new specialities, in the uniformity of curricula, in the total equivalence of subjects among different degrees and in the almost exact reproduction of the same methodologies, both in teaching and in evaluation, aimed at providing the labour market with a product – the worker – that is as predictable as possible and can easily be integrated into the company.

Everything, as of the end of the 20th century, had been developed according to these parameters of large-scale industrial production, governed also by the powerful forces of internationalization: let us remember that one of the features that defines fast food chains is that – with certain intentional exceptions – you should be able to visit any of their restaurants in Madrid or in New York and not spot a difference in their menus, the ingredients, the ordering process, and the preparation and flavours of the food. To put it more graphically, all forces seem to be pulling in the same direction of standardization and stabilization, in order to benefit the companies internally, through business and cost savings, as well as externally, by capturing the trust and loyalty of customers, who usually do not like surprises in their day-to-day routines.

Wisely, universities and modern education systems have thus far merely followed these directions, succumbing to the prevailing forces as faithfully as possible.

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