From the interdisciplinary field of evolution studies and social systems research comes this article: Gianfranco Minati, "Buying Consensus in 'Free' Markets: The End of Democracy?" ("World Futures: The Journal of General Evolution", 60 [1-2], June 2004: 29-37):
http://prod.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a725289194
Abstract: "Repeatedly, in Western democracies, sophisticated marketing techniques are used to manipulate consensus. In this context, 'free' markets are interesting only because they contain potential buyers and it is possible to buy consensus. In many European countries (e.g., Italy), in Italy, for example [sic], political scientists apply marketing techniques (advertising, psychological effects) to get (i.e., to buy) political consensus. They work on the premise that the decision to buy a product and the decision to vote for a candidate are equivalent. Their interest is not in convincing, but in shaping an expedient cognitive model.
"This may be the end of classic democracy. Real consensus is no longer necessary in this scenario. It reduces freedom to mere selection, where people choose among equivalent choices on a pre-arranged menu. Freedom reduced to selecting is an illusion."
Some excerpts: "In the past, in democratic societies, political competitors tried to convince voters to support them. They used communication techniques, psychology, media, advertising, strategies based on saying only part of the truth, promising, lying, and so on. The financial efforts to support such campaigns were very high, and competitors often found various ways to finance such activities.
"In the new approach, the business seems to be the same, but the game is decided on another level. To participate and to play at this new level is very expensive – very few may play. It seems to me that at this level only the designers of the system may participate. At this level, a new system is established for the purpose of making consensus buyable. Then the goal is to buy consensus for someone in particular. The participants in the game set new rules without declaring them.
"In this new situation, traditional competitors think that they play the usual game although the game is really changed. Competitors who do not know that they are playing the wrong game lose. The new game is to establish new implicit rules: the owner of the game, of the very private, expensive, sophisticated knowledge and technology, is the winner no matter who the competitors are. [...]
"We may metaphorically name this package social software used by default by agents, to process any kind of information and no matter which cognitive model is adopted. How does this process take place? By diffusing standardized situations via different media. Psychological research makes it clear that there is no linear relationship between advertising and the sales of a product. Why do corporations still insist on such a marketing strategy? The possible answer is that they are not linearly interested in advertising a single, specific product, but in supporting standardized life styles, standardized ways of thinking. They are interested in supporting a system of advertising that generates in the audience the illusion of freedom, in which people are reduced to consumers with the possibility to select and to judge only among a closed set of possibilities. [...]
"In the past, democracies fought the problem of ignorance because they understood that an educated public was essential to democratic stability. Accordingly, they strove to educate people to a more sophisticated and appropriate use of language. Now the situation is reversed. The new approach for controlling social systems is based on ignorance, on a simplified, limited usage of natural language. The source of this situation is a distorted usage of mass media, especially television. The mass media purpose is not to educate, but to reach the maximum number of people with advertising messages that standardize social life. Their purpose is not democratic (to reach everybody with impartial information), but business oriented. Their prime targets are potential buyers and the market. That is the result of a market-oriented education. The language of young people is more and more the language of advertisements; that is, language in the broader sense: words, interests, ways of dressing, ways of behaving, and so on. [...]
"With this impoverization of language, interactions among people are reduced to being events driven. Properties discussed in the daily language are related to materialistic factors, to consumerism (like prices, quality, availability, reliability, effectiveness, etc. of goods) making our societies at a mass level unable to discuss ideals and designs, leaving this dimension to perhaps only religion. [...]
"In our days, democracies are managed by leaders elected by decreasing percentages of voting population (the majority of the voters). It would be an interesting project to research the likely connection between the relative futility of the voting process and the lack of citizen participation in elections. In this framework, some people maintain the illusion of freedom because they can select among pre-established possibilities even if they cannot participate in the controlling design."
"World Futures" is the journal of the General Evolution Research Group (GERG). Grounded in the perspective of humanistic systems science, it is devoted to the exploration of all aspects of evolution.
Gianfranco Minati, Founder and President of the Italian Systems Society (AIRS), lectures in the Department of Built Environment Science and Technology at the Polytechnic University of Milan. A mathematician by training, he is the author, co-author, and editor of numerous academic publications, including eighteen books.
Showing posts with label standardization. Show all posts
Showing posts with label standardization. Show all posts
20 January 2010
Article: The Anti-Democratic Curriculum of High-Stakes Testing
A new journal, "Critical Education", launches with an article on "The Idiocy of Policy: The Anti-Democratic Curriculum of High-Stakes Testing" by Wayne Au (1 [1], January 2010).
The article can be read free of charge at this link:
http://m1.cust.educ.ubc.ca/journal/index.php/criticaled/article/viewFile/60/121
Abstract: "Making use of the body of literature outlining the various controlling aspects of high-stakes testing on classroom practice, the analysis presented here finds that vertical hierarchies are both established and maintained through the top-down structure of education policies in the United States, as exemplified by the No Child Left Behind Act. By looking at the effects of such policies through Parker's (2005) discussion of key aspects of democratic education, this article finds that educational policies based upon systems of high-stakes, standardized testing represent a curriculum that teaches anti-democracy."
Some excerpts: "[P]olicies centered upon systems of high-stakes standardized testing [...] have been advanced upon a consistent rhetoric of democracy, couched in terms of individual choice, individual equality, equal opportunity for achievement [...].
"Indeed, high-stakes tests hold so much power because their results are tied, by policy, to rewards or sanctions that can deeply affect the lives of students, teachers, principals, and communities. [...]. The power in this model, then, is located in the upper echelons of institutional bureaucracies that maintain the authority to determine the assessment, determine the criteria for what counts as passing or failing, and determine the sanctions and punishments for those that do not meet their criteria for passing. [...]
"[E]ducators and students alike are essentially being 'taught' a curriculum that is anti-democratic. This can be seen in the various ways teaching and learning have been restructured [...] to control teachers, to restrict diversity, and to ignore local contexts and voices. [...] The current hegemony of high-stakes testing [...] also undermines democratic thinking more generally by narrowing the conversations that students, teachers, and communities can engage in as potentially active participants in the content and direction of schooling relative to broader social relations." (italics removed)
"Critical Education" is an international peer-reviewed journal, published by the Institute for Critical Education Studies and based at the University of British Columbia.
Wayne Au is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Secondary Education at California State University, Fullerton.
The article can be read free of charge at this link:
http://m1.cust.educ.ubc.ca/journal/index.php/criticaled/article/viewFile/60/121
Abstract: "Making use of the body of literature outlining the various controlling aspects of high-stakes testing on classroom practice, the analysis presented here finds that vertical hierarchies are both established and maintained through the top-down structure of education policies in the United States, as exemplified by the No Child Left Behind Act. By looking at the effects of such policies through Parker's (2005) discussion of key aspects of democratic education, this article finds that educational policies based upon systems of high-stakes, standardized testing represent a curriculum that teaches anti-democracy."
Some excerpts: "[P]olicies centered upon systems of high-stakes standardized testing [...] have been advanced upon a consistent rhetoric of democracy, couched in terms of individual choice, individual equality, equal opportunity for achievement [...].
"Indeed, high-stakes tests hold so much power because their results are tied, by policy, to rewards or sanctions that can deeply affect the lives of students, teachers, principals, and communities. [...]. The power in this model, then, is located in the upper echelons of institutional bureaucracies that maintain the authority to determine the assessment, determine the criteria for what counts as passing or failing, and determine the sanctions and punishments for those that do not meet their criteria for passing. [...]
"[E]ducators and students alike are essentially being 'taught' a curriculum that is anti-democratic. This can be seen in the various ways teaching and learning have been restructured [...] to control teachers, to restrict diversity, and to ignore local contexts and voices. [...] The current hegemony of high-stakes testing [...] also undermines democratic thinking more generally by narrowing the conversations that students, teachers, and communities can engage in as potentially active participants in the content and direction of schooling relative to broader social relations." (italics removed)
"Critical Education" is an international peer-reviewed journal, published by the Institute for Critical Education Studies and based at the University of British Columbia.
Wayne Au is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Secondary Education at California State University, Fullerton.
19 January 2010
Greek riots: "Democracy Shall Not Win"
In the so-called motherland of democracy, Greece, democracy has, once again, come under severe attack.
Youth riots and anarchist violence and bombings have been shaking the capital, Athens, for over a year. On 9 January 2010, a bomb exploded outside the building of the Greek Parliament. The attackers had warned the media of the imminent threat, so the area was cordoned off by police at the time. No injuries were reported.
The "Guerilla Group of Terrorists – Conspiracy of the Cells of Fire" took responsibility for the bombing in a communiqué titled "Democracy Shall Not Win" of which a translation in (bad) English has now become available at this link:
www.occupiedlondon.org/blog/2010/01/18/172
Excerpt: "If it sounds unthinkable in our days for anyone to speak against democracy without being labeled a conservative or a fascist, it is because propaganda resides in the houses and in the minds of [democracy's own] subjects. Democracy's totalitarianism has otherwise nothing to envy from previous totalitarian regimes. Nepotism, aristocracy, men of the court, favoured men, businessmen, mediators, contractors and publishers still rule social life, while down 'below' remain unjustly treated and at the same time, always willing to be 'fooled'.
"Society continues to passively tolerate them and wants to take their place at the same time. The ambitions of becoming easily rich, of spectacularly advancing to a higher social class, of having a career, accumulating property, securing material objects and double-locked doors is what democratic prosperity comes to promise. And so, the willful subjects surrender to the totalitarianism of capitalist sovereignty placed against a democratic background. The exploitation of our labour and our lives intensifies, social disparities grow, the world's police become militarised, spectacle rules – material, and at times intellectual and emotional decadence becomes the choice of the many.
"Most of this is not new. This has been, more or less, the state of social life under any authority. Yet today, democracy sugars the pill. Democracy is the coup d'etat that doesn't bring tanks out on the streets but TV cameras and reporter microphones instead. Democracy rules with the power of its propaganda. Labour is protected in the constitution as a supreme right, social disparities are the achievement of the free market and of competition, the police protect and serve the social demand for security, the spectacle protects the freedom of expression and your next-door neighbour might come to a plight, but it's not you, so why bother ...
"Democracy's new social contract is ratified across western capitals: in-between confiscated cars, endless queues forming outside social security services, the torturing take place inside police stations, new cell phone special offers, flat-screen TVs, unemployment benefits, psychological problems and loneliness, upsurges of nationalist pride and unpaid loan installments. And most importantly, non of this was forced upon anyone, nor was it carried by the order of some junta generals. These are 'the people's grand achievements'.
"This is why we claim that democracy is technique and the ability of power not to be understood as oppression. Capitalism is the boss and democracy is its spokesperson. We are not naive to believe that 'the chosen few' the people have elected are really in charge. They obviously comprise bearers of state orders, 'men and ladies of honor'. Most of them are not to be taken seriously anyway. Democracy's main role is to function as the smokescreen for the monstrous capitalist machine. It is the systemic shop-front, modeled upon the mafia economy. It 'launders dirty money', it keeps the 'profile clean', sees that everybody gets 'paid' (from those working in parking lots up to singers) it has an army of bouncers (from formal police force to para-state agents) and the clients (i.e. the proud people) always pay on time.
"It would be a mistake on our side if we did not at this point mention the upgraded role of journalists in these dealings. Nowadays, in the democracy of our time, the media have taken on the role of mediators traditionally reserved for political parties. [...] This is part of democracy's advanced communication strategy. It now becomes clear how politicians and journalists work side by side. Their rhetoric might seem differentiated on TV news and on talk shows, depending on who might be speaking and whose interests are served – however, they have one common direction: to justify and to defend democracy.
"All talks and disagreements end up there. In order to achieve this, they invent an imaginary dialogue between society and politicians, using journalists as mediators. This is why they use the truth of a democratic 'public opinion'. They construct the 'immovable' truth of a majority that nobody dares to question. The truth in opinion polls and numbers. This is how public opinion becomes a client of political parties and vice versa. This is how politicians and journalists shape social relationships, and transform them at will. At the same time, relationships change as opinion polls that supposedly derive from society eventually return and come to shape society through the spectacle. And so the people, just like consumers, are always right.
"In this odd clientelist relationship, democracy, allied with the media comes to shape social behaviours. Especially nowadays, the epidemic of fear is spreading. On the one hand are the American-fed employees of the ministry of police, with their imaginative statements and the 'leaked information' about ruthless terrorists, and on the other hand, the journalists' cutting headlines and stories on an 'upsurge of violence' and 'violence and insecurity'. In this way the squeeze and mix together different cases and contrastive incidents – bank robberies with pick-pocketing, arson attacks with mafia dealings, kidnappings of rich people with trafficking [...]
"In this way, the demand for security is restored and the ideology of terror is produced. We bring up these examples, because with them as a guide we can perceive a percentage of the operation of democracy. All the statements and announcements above are in reality not made in order to face the problem of 'criminality'. 'Criminality' partly serves certain state interests. The objective therefore is not exactly neither safety neither order, but their spectacular reflection. [...] Because in reality democracy is the spectacular reflection and the substitute of freedom. No freedom can exist for as long as democracy exists. [...]
"[W]e would never understand an axiom that invokes the 'objective' right of the many over the few. History has proven we should have no confidence in the opinion of the masses. The persons that willingly adopt for themselves the term of 'the people' and who speak as part of 'we the people, who pay for it all', abandon every creative self-confidence and let themselves drift in the fallacy of their leaders. This is the people. A noisy mass with lowered heads, incessant moaning, misery and crowd mentality that degrades life to repeated operations and sequences of rules. No good reason exists for us to respect its judgement and its choices. We wish for a world in which each one individually will undertake their responsibilities, will communicate their thoughts, exchange arguments, will have the courage of their opinion even if questioned by the majority, without hiding behind representatives and mediators.
"Voters in democracy are never satisfied with their lives and their environment. They always have a complaint about something, they exasperate, they are angry and protest – but every four years they wrap their conscience in a ballot and support, once again, the system. They postpone crucial decisions about their life until the next elections, believing as they do that someone more suitable, more correct and more fair than the previous one will come to power. They stubbornly refuse to admit that no one is more capable than themselves to manage their own life, as otherwise they would be confronted with the void of their life, the years of resignation, an entire life of captivity – and they would have to admit that they have been slaves. That they were victims of fallacy – and no one is ever willing to degrade themselves in this way, by admitting something like this.
"They prefer to always blame others, the incompetent politicians, the foreigners, the terrorists, everyone but themselves. No one offends his ego, even if for the rest time, they will let themselves be trampled by the system. For us however, the issue is the questioning and the rupture with any dominating system, never mind how liberal they may be presented to be. We understand that the power for the management of our lives lies within us – and the decision of how we shall live belongs to us. Which is something that the voter refuses to understand: the power of their self to exceed set barriers, the prohibitions, moral values, ideals and to define their Ego by themselves. [...]
"To begin to fight means to stop seeing yourself through the eyes of the system, to allow no more for yourself to be determined by coercions, to be freed from fear. [...] The conscience and the determination of certain persons to terminate the habit of survival are enough in order to pass from resistance to attack, to place the question of liberation – not in a vague future for the following generations, but in the permanent present; here and now, for their own selves – and this is how a guerrilla group is born. [...]
"[Parliament,] the temple of democracy, surrounded by the most cutting-edge systems of surveillance and a large number of policemen did not stand as an obstacle to our choice. The choice, that is, to offend this symbol, the prestige of democracy without any moral hesitation. Each place has its vulnerable point and the satisfaction of finding it will never cease. [...]
"To democracy we shall show no respect, only rage and attack."
One of the most sensible and clear-sighted indictments of democracy I have read. That is precisely why even bombs will not get it the attention it deserves.
The original communiqué, in Greek, was published here:
http://athens.indymedia.org/front.php3?lang=el&article_id=1120563
Youth riots and anarchist violence and bombings have been shaking the capital, Athens, for over a year. On 9 January 2010, a bomb exploded outside the building of the Greek Parliament. The attackers had warned the media of the imminent threat, so the area was cordoned off by police at the time. No injuries were reported.
The "Guerilla Group of Terrorists – Conspiracy of the Cells of Fire" took responsibility for the bombing in a communiqué titled "Democracy Shall Not Win" of which a translation in (bad) English has now become available at this link:
www.occupiedlondon.org/blog/2010/01/18/172
Excerpt: "If it sounds unthinkable in our days for anyone to speak against democracy without being labeled a conservative or a fascist, it is because propaganda resides in the houses and in the minds of [democracy's own] subjects. Democracy's totalitarianism has otherwise nothing to envy from previous totalitarian regimes. Nepotism, aristocracy, men of the court, favoured men, businessmen, mediators, contractors and publishers still rule social life, while down 'below' remain unjustly treated and at the same time, always willing to be 'fooled'.
"Society continues to passively tolerate them and wants to take their place at the same time. The ambitions of becoming easily rich, of spectacularly advancing to a higher social class, of having a career, accumulating property, securing material objects and double-locked doors is what democratic prosperity comes to promise. And so, the willful subjects surrender to the totalitarianism of capitalist sovereignty placed against a democratic background. The exploitation of our labour and our lives intensifies, social disparities grow, the world's police become militarised, spectacle rules – material, and at times intellectual and emotional decadence becomes the choice of the many.
"Most of this is not new. This has been, more or less, the state of social life under any authority. Yet today, democracy sugars the pill. Democracy is the coup d'etat that doesn't bring tanks out on the streets but TV cameras and reporter microphones instead. Democracy rules with the power of its propaganda. Labour is protected in the constitution as a supreme right, social disparities are the achievement of the free market and of competition, the police protect and serve the social demand for security, the spectacle protects the freedom of expression and your next-door neighbour might come to a plight, but it's not you, so why bother ...
"Democracy's new social contract is ratified across western capitals: in-between confiscated cars, endless queues forming outside social security services, the torturing take place inside police stations, new cell phone special offers, flat-screen TVs, unemployment benefits, psychological problems and loneliness, upsurges of nationalist pride and unpaid loan installments. And most importantly, non of this was forced upon anyone, nor was it carried by the order of some junta generals. These are 'the people's grand achievements'.
"This is why we claim that democracy is technique and the ability of power not to be understood as oppression. Capitalism is the boss and democracy is its spokesperson. We are not naive to believe that 'the chosen few' the people have elected are really in charge. They obviously comprise bearers of state orders, 'men and ladies of honor'. Most of them are not to be taken seriously anyway. Democracy's main role is to function as the smokescreen for the monstrous capitalist machine. It is the systemic shop-front, modeled upon the mafia economy. It 'launders dirty money', it keeps the 'profile clean', sees that everybody gets 'paid' (from those working in parking lots up to singers) it has an army of bouncers (from formal police force to para-state agents) and the clients (i.e. the proud people) always pay on time.
"It would be a mistake on our side if we did not at this point mention the upgraded role of journalists in these dealings. Nowadays, in the democracy of our time, the media have taken on the role of mediators traditionally reserved for political parties. [...] This is part of democracy's advanced communication strategy. It now becomes clear how politicians and journalists work side by side. Their rhetoric might seem differentiated on TV news and on talk shows, depending on who might be speaking and whose interests are served – however, they have one common direction: to justify and to defend democracy.
"All talks and disagreements end up there. In order to achieve this, they invent an imaginary dialogue between society and politicians, using journalists as mediators. This is why they use the truth of a democratic 'public opinion'. They construct the 'immovable' truth of a majority that nobody dares to question. The truth in opinion polls and numbers. This is how public opinion becomes a client of political parties and vice versa. This is how politicians and journalists shape social relationships, and transform them at will. At the same time, relationships change as opinion polls that supposedly derive from society eventually return and come to shape society through the spectacle. And so the people, just like consumers, are always right.
"In this odd clientelist relationship, democracy, allied with the media comes to shape social behaviours. Especially nowadays, the epidemic of fear is spreading. On the one hand are the American-fed employees of the ministry of police, with their imaginative statements and the 'leaked information' about ruthless terrorists, and on the other hand, the journalists' cutting headlines and stories on an 'upsurge of violence' and 'violence and insecurity'. In this way the squeeze and mix together different cases and contrastive incidents – bank robberies with pick-pocketing, arson attacks with mafia dealings, kidnappings of rich people with trafficking [...]
"In this way, the demand for security is restored and the ideology of terror is produced. We bring up these examples, because with them as a guide we can perceive a percentage of the operation of democracy. All the statements and announcements above are in reality not made in order to face the problem of 'criminality'. 'Criminality' partly serves certain state interests. The objective therefore is not exactly neither safety neither order, but their spectacular reflection. [...] Because in reality democracy is the spectacular reflection and the substitute of freedom. No freedom can exist for as long as democracy exists. [...]
"[W]e would never understand an axiom that invokes the 'objective' right of the many over the few. History has proven we should have no confidence in the opinion of the masses. The persons that willingly adopt for themselves the term of 'the people' and who speak as part of 'we the people, who pay for it all', abandon every creative self-confidence and let themselves drift in the fallacy of their leaders. This is the people. A noisy mass with lowered heads, incessant moaning, misery and crowd mentality that degrades life to repeated operations and sequences of rules. No good reason exists for us to respect its judgement and its choices. We wish for a world in which each one individually will undertake their responsibilities, will communicate their thoughts, exchange arguments, will have the courage of their opinion even if questioned by the majority, without hiding behind representatives and mediators.
"Voters in democracy are never satisfied with their lives and their environment. They always have a complaint about something, they exasperate, they are angry and protest – but every four years they wrap their conscience in a ballot and support, once again, the system. They postpone crucial decisions about their life until the next elections, believing as they do that someone more suitable, more correct and more fair than the previous one will come to power. They stubbornly refuse to admit that no one is more capable than themselves to manage their own life, as otherwise they would be confronted with the void of their life, the years of resignation, an entire life of captivity – and they would have to admit that they have been slaves. That they were victims of fallacy – and no one is ever willing to degrade themselves in this way, by admitting something like this.
"They prefer to always blame others, the incompetent politicians, the foreigners, the terrorists, everyone but themselves. No one offends his ego, even if for the rest time, they will let themselves be trampled by the system. For us however, the issue is the questioning and the rupture with any dominating system, never mind how liberal they may be presented to be. We understand that the power for the management of our lives lies within us – and the decision of how we shall live belongs to us. Which is something that the voter refuses to understand: the power of their self to exceed set barriers, the prohibitions, moral values, ideals and to define their Ego by themselves. [...]
"To begin to fight means to stop seeing yourself through the eyes of the system, to allow no more for yourself to be determined by coercions, to be freed from fear. [...] The conscience and the determination of certain persons to terminate the habit of survival are enough in order to pass from resistance to attack, to place the question of liberation – not in a vague future for the following generations, but in the permanent present; here and now, for their own selves – and this is how a guerrilla group is born. [...]
"[Parliament,] the temple of democracy, surrounded by the most cutting-edge systems of surveillance and a large number of policemen did not stand as an obstacle to our choice. The choice, that is, to offend this symbol, the prestige of democracy without any moral hesitation. Each place has its vulnerable point and the satisfaction of finding it will never cease. [...]
"To democracy we shall show no respect, only rage and attack."
One of the most sensible and clear-sighted indictments of democracy I have read. That is precisely why even bombs will not get it the attention it deserves.
The original communiqué, in Greek, was published here:
http://athens.indymedia.org/front.php3?lang=el&article_id=1120563
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