Carnival and dialogue: Opening new conversations

Abstract

This chapter will examine the theory of polyphony and carnival by Bakhtin in its relation to opening new conversations within such social systems as schools. Opening new conversation is a metaphor for educational change that I suggest should replace that of reforming. One can argue about the quality of American educational system in general, but I do not believe anyone would argue that the various efforts of educational reforming during past fifty years or so were successful. In fact, the record of educational reforming in most developed countries is abysmal. The only sort of educational reform that proved to be workable is when educational system is created, and the majority of students become students. After that point any sort of reform has proven to be extremely difficult. Schools change over the years, no doubt about it. The question is whether these changes are result of organized reforming, or are they almost natural gradual changes that no one can predict and shape. Is educational change a subject of history or social science? Yet most of industrial nations engage into one or another form of educational reforming almost incessantly. Before one reform runs its course, another one is usually underway. It would be too easy to attribute the persistence of educational reforming to politicians that use education as a safe ground to demonstrate their usefulness. Of course, such an explanation is partially true, at least in the US. The politicians discovered long ago that one could not damage education too badly by experimenting with its reform. The remarkable inertia of educational institutions prevents them both from radical improving, and from radical deteriorating. However, there exist a theoretical fallacy of equating educational change with educational reform. The assumption here is two-fold: that educational system is reformable, and that the only way to effect changes in education is reform. This assumption is not entirely unique for education, but is much more prevalent in our field as compared to other social sciences. No one, for instance, wants to come up with a new model of financial market reform every two years or so; yet there is an understanding that governments can somehow affect or regulate the financial market. The economy is generally viewed as much less reformable than education. The same could be said about the politics. My intention is to try to develop a new metaphor for educational change. Let us assume, following John Goodlad (1994), that an individual school is an agent of change, not state officials, not school districts, and not individual teachers. For a school to change, it needs to develop new conversation, not only (and not as much) a new model or idea, or a concept. My central assumption is this: educational models do not change schools, but they may or may not serve as reasons (or excuses) for new conversations, which in turn change the reality of school life. This view would require a healthy dose of respect for complexity and the nondeterministic character of school as a culture and as an organization. A simple argument can show that education is a process that is possible only within complex non-deterministic systems. The "product" of education is a person, an agent with his or her freely exercised will. Teaching is a purposeful and organized human activity, yet its results are unpredictable. The results are not unpredictable because we cannot predict, but because we must not. An educational process with fully predictable outcome is not so much impossible as it is immoral, because such a process will destroy the free agency of a student. In other words, whatever are the insides of the black box called "education," we know one sure thing about the box: it may not contain a simple, linear, and deterministic system. This would contradict the desirable output of the box. In much of educational theory, education is still viewed as complicated, but not complex process. In other words, even though it is difficult to explain fully, researchers nevertheless have an ideal of fully explainable and therefore fully predictable system. Another way of avoiding complexity is often associated with use of probability. Even though, the thinking goes, it is impossible to predict behavior of each individual school, one can statistically predict behavior of an average school. Yuri Sachkov describes the role of statistics in physics, which is very similar to that in educational research: In scientific minds, probability and chance became inseparable. Yet the fundamental nature of chance was long ignored in the theoretical constructs. Statistical theories were considcred incomplete, that is temporary and logically inferior. It was assumed that we need statistical theories because, for one reason or another, we cannot get a full description of the analyzed system. One assumed also that scientific progress will obtain more and more full knowledge of such systems, and that chance will be eliminated from the theoretical constructs (Sachkov, p. 131). Similarly, educational researchers often assume that the systems in question are in theory fully predictable, but we need to use statistical approximations for now. This is, of course, a mistake. Education can only be reasonably presented as a complex non-linear system, where unpredictability is so important, it defines the system itself. I will not attempt even a brief literature review on complexity theories, and will only point to one bibliography source (Heylighen, 1995) and offer my rendition of selected basic facts. The complex systems theory, however notoriously unorganized and heterogeneous, has nevertheless developed certain categories to describe a non-linear system. Chaos is the central category that describes the specifics of complex system's path toward organization. Complex systems of very different nature seem to develop through either limited periods of chaos or permanent zones of chaos. Complexity as a form of organization depends on disorganization (chaos) to develop. One faces a fundamental problem when applying the complexity theory to social systems. Social sciences have always meant to inform human practice, but any constructive human practice seems to be antithetical to the notion of chaos. Practice is a force that counteracts, and if successful, overcomes chaos. Yet chaos appears to be a constructive element of complex systems. An idea of creating chaos seems to be counterintuitive and not terribly useful. This paper is an attempt to address this contradiction. Using Bakhtin's theoretical framework, the generic systems theory notions of complexity and chaos can be understood as polyphony, and carnival, respectively. © 2005 Springer Science + Business Media, Inc.