Postmodernism and the Implosion of Education

It would be rash to judge the statements of one of the founders of the avant-garde movement in art as aggressively destructive. The artist, art theorist, educator, and philosopher, by declaring the destruction of objects of reality, was likely trying, as a medium or a tool in the hands of the Lord, to figuratively convey the pulse of a new spirit of civilization—a pulse that is still felt today. Wasn’t the founder of Suprematism talking about the destruction of old cities and villages, the same destruction Joseph Brodsky later referenced when comparing the creative energy of modern artists and architects—who “disfigured the world no less than any Luftwaffe”—to the destructive power of enemy air raids? [Brodsky 1985, 76]. The poet-thinker seemed to imply the result of an ideological explosion within the cultural shell of humanity, clarifying: “What the Cyclops forget in their rage, pencils will calmly finish” [Brodsky 2017, 24]. Did the artist not foresee in his words the soulless modern culture represented by multimedia projects, the banishment of nature from art, and the destruction of love and sincerity in art?

Artists were the first to sense the signals of a spiritual revolution emerging on a planetary scale. One of the most significant figures of the new cultural and spiritual era, Salvador Dalí, understood that “the greatest revolutions happened without barricades or battles and affected only the realm of the spirit: the spirit violently changed both time and space—through excavations that are, in essence, the antithesis of barricades… As for painting, my only goal is to capture as precisely as possible the concrete images of the Irrational… I am a tool in the hands of the Lord, who knows the craft in all its depth and detail” [Getashvili 2006, 315].

The early 20th-century avant-gardists’ rejection of mimesis in art and their protest against templates and matrices was an attempt to explode the established tradition in art and to save the world from the anticipated total copying of everything, as foreseen by the representatives of Fauvism, Dadaism, Avant-gardism, and Surrealism. As a result of this implosion, by a chain reaction, the structured system of culture that had existed for millennia broke down into simpler components—first into the “molecules” of Cubism, and later into the uncontrollable “atoms” of abstractionism and surrealism.

However, at that time, the creative explosion of new art was not strong enough to prevent our reality from turning into a world of simulacra. Some artists made attempts—perhaps unconsciously—to reduce the force of the explosion. For example, Pavel Filonov’s unique approach, based on his analytical art technique, aimed to reassemble the scattered parts of the world shattered by the ideological explosion, but failed to gain enough traction in the art world to counteract atomization.

Pop art, as a social order of the post-industrial era, temporarily managed to halt the further spread of this explosive wave. Popular art became a kind of brief “four-minute and thirty-three-second” pause [Kuhn 2016, 129], necessary for humanity, after two world wars, to reflect on what had happened to its spirit and to search for notes of humanism in the “sounds” of the industrial era. Yet, pop art also initiated the widespread proliferation of copies. The further “atomization” of culture through the mass reproduction of art blurred the boundaries between reality and virtuality. As always, creative intuition outpaced rationality. Yesterday’s utopian ideas, expressed through art, can become reality today, since “art always goes ahead of all other areas of spiritual life” [Kandinsky 1920, 2].

Philosophers and thinkers of the last century—such as Walter Benjamin, Georges Bataille, Roland Barthes, Jean Baudrillard, Gilles Deleuze, and Félix Guattari—became alarmed by the universe being filled with simulacra lacking the aura of things necessary for a sense of connection with nature, and by soulless works of art created by authors who saw themselves as machines [Michelson 2001, 62]. Symptomatically, it was during this period that the concept of “transgression” appeared in the vocabulary of non-classical philosophy, describing the phenomenon of overcoming impassable boundaries between the possible and the impossible, and the high degree of interpenetration of things and phenomena that defy qualitative classification.

Alongside painting, even jazz—seemingly the most inherently free form of musical art—began to move away from tradition, albeit much later, starting in the 1940s. While styles like Bebop, Hard Bop, Progressive Jazz, and even Post-Bop adhered to a conceptual-structural approach, the Creative style was characterized by compositional disorder and chaos, where the boundaries between planned elements and improvisation were blurred.

Virtually all forms of art and human activity have been transformed to some degree by paradigm shifts in the human psyche—not only in its conscious part, but, arguably, primarily in the unconscious, the most extensive and powerful component.

The Implosion of Education

The ideological explosion of the early 20th century, which destroyed the principles of structural-matrix thinking and stereotypical behavior, undoubtedly reached the education system as well. However, the author believes that the transformation in education was not caused solely by external influences. While external factors contributed to the corrosion of the educational system’s shell, the breakthrough of the “mantle of education” was made possible by the centrifugal forces of accumulated internal energy. The boundaries of the closed educational space could no longer contain the critical mass of accumulated problems. The implosion of education—one of the most inert social systems—became inevitable.

Internal pressure became noticeable as early as the 1960s and 1970s, when proponents of deschooling and anti-pedagogy proposed replacing the classroom system with practical student activities and abandoning the idea of education as a targeted process of personality formation. They argued that schools, with their lessons, grades, and programs, maintained social hierarchy and fostered uniform thinking. It’s worth noting that the early 20th-century movements of new and free pedagogy—Ellen Key, Hermann Lietz, Rudolf Steiner, Maria Montessori, and other reformers—did not yet have the energy to oppose the traditional system, despite their revolutionary character. Even today, the status of kindergartens and schools following Steiner’s (1,092 schools and 1,857 kindergartens) [Waldorf World List 2017, 9–10] and Montessori’s (about 20,000 schools) [Alexopulos 2015] methods, despite their popularity and research confirming that Montessori-educated children “have advantages not only academically, but also in social and emotional development” [National Center for Montessori in the Public Sector], remains unchanged. For example, Montessori education “is still considered a marginal movement with minimal significance for those interested in modern school reform” [Whitescarver, Cossentino 2008, 2572].

Nevertheless, the “chain reaction” in education had begun, just as the Peredvizhniki (Wanderers) once set art free from classical bureaucracy and tradition. However, these events were more like tectonic shifts in the spiritual layers of society. The large-scale spiritual explosion was yet to come. Notably, artists were ahead of educators by nearly four decades.

The increasing number of recent academic works with titles like “The End of College: Creating the Future of Learning and the University of Everywhere” [Carey 2015], “College Disrupted: The Great Unbundling of Higher Education” [Craig 2015], and “Breakpoint: The Changing Marketplace for Higher Education” [McGee 2015] do not reflect eschatological moods, but rather the transformation of traditional educational institutions into boundless educational spaces—“universities everywhere.”

For example, a more fitting title for Kevin Carey’s book might be “The End of the Traditional College.” The author’s message is that the traditional college, with its outdated accreditation system based on credit hours, no longer meets the needs of modern students and is transforming into a borderless educational institution. As Carey writes:

“The idea of college admission will become an anachronism, because the ‘university of everywhere’ will be open to everyone. In fact, it won’t be in one place or any particular institution. The next generation of students won’t waste their teenage years, nor will they spend their youth fighting for spots in a tiny number of elite schools. Their educational experience will come from dozens of organizations, each specializing in different aspects of learning. The ‘university of everywhere’ will span the globe. Students—from various cultures, societies, and the growing global middle class—will come from villages, cities, and countries, transforming the experience of higher education.” [Carey 2015, 5]

One manifestation of this expanded educational space is Khan Academy, a nonprofit organization providing free, high-quality education online to everyone, everywhere. The growing demand for Khan Academy’s courses is evident: according to Google Trends, its popularity increased nearly fivefold from January to November 2017 [Google Trends].

Of course, there are no illusions that massive open online courses (MOOCs) will soon replace the higher education system and its network of universities, nor that simply introducing modern technology will solve all higher education problems. However, we are already witnessing a shift in the higher education model, which, thanks to new information and communication technologies, will soon lead to radical changes—especially in accessibility, admissions, quality control, accreditation, and cost.

Postmodernism and Education

Can the processes occurring in education be linked to the characteristics of postmodernism? The connection is obvious. Bill Readings, author of “The University in Ruins,” offers an interesting perspective:

“I would prefer to call the modern University post-historical rather than ‘postmodern’ to emphasize that this institution has outlived itself, that it is now a relic of an era during which it defined itself in terms of a historical project of developing, strengthening, and spreading national culture.” [Readings 2010, 16–17]

He further explains:

“…when I speak of the University of the modern era, I mean the widely borrowed German model implemented by Humboldt at the University of Berlin, which continued to serve as a model during the postwar expansion of higher education in the West. Today, we are witnessing the decline of this model as the University becomes post-historical.” [Readings 2010, 17–18]

Comparing the features of the modern-era University and today’s University, Readings concludes:

“The defining feature of the modern-era University is the presence of an idea that serves as its referent, ultimate goal, and meaning… In general, such a University had three ideas. Like many modern stories, this one begins with Kant, who wanted the University to be guided by reason. Humboldt’s idea of culture replaced Kant’s, and today we have the techno-bureaucratic concept of excellence. The distinguishing feature of the latter is that it has no real referent. That is, the idea functioning as the University’s referent—excellence—has no referent itself. The University of Excellence is a simulacrum of the idea of the University.” [Readings 2010, 90]

It’s important to note that while transformations in European societies led to a new type of university with new content but the same old form, current changes in both higher and school education point to the gradual destruction of the form itself, as if educational institutions are opening up from within. Evidence of this includes cloud schools, flipped classrooms, flipped learning, MOOCs with their resources and teaching methods: podcasts, vodcasts, and pre-vodcasting. Despite criticism from traditionalists, these modern learning models continue to grow in popularity.

Regarding the persistence of the university model, which no longer meets modern needs, R.R. Vakhitov writes:

“Universities would probably have disappeared altogether if the modernist Humboldtian research university, which combined the old form with new content, had not been created in Germany in the 17th–19th centuries.” [Vakhitov 2014, 33]

Examining modern educational models, sociological and cultural theories, and philosophical concepts, one finds a commonality: they all present their respective spheres as environments with the potential for nonlinear, unstructured self-organization. In sociology, for example, the ontological “actor-network” model, according to Latour’s relational ontology, is such a rhizomatic model, where “the network is a chain of interactions, connections, and relationships between social actors” [Nechitaylo 2015, 227]. The modern educational space can also be seen as a rhizomatic environment, where the student–teacher and student–lecturer relationships are supplemented by direct peer interactions and expanded through online technologies, allowing for the study of various subjects beyond the classroom.

One of the characteristic metaphors of postmodernism—“rhizome”—is increasingly used to describe nonlinear processes, including in education. The term “rhizomatic learning” is spreading in the vocabulary of contemporary educational researchers—a model of learning without a pre-designed curriculum. However, “rhizomatic learning requires the creation of a context in which the curriculum and knowledge are formed through the contributions of participants in the learning community and can be dynamically reformed and reconstructed according to environmental conditions” [Gibbs 2015, 201]. Goals, objectives, and content are not set in advance but are formed during the learning process, through collaboration and group reflection. Today, teachers and tutors select appropriate programs for each student, determine the form and content of their learning, and coordinate the actions of hundreds of students thanks to modern technology. Tomorrow, these functions will be performed by computer systems like Knewton, which generate courses that constantly adapt to each student’s abilities and knowledge level.

Rhizomatic learning, crowdsourcing in education, MOOCs, “third places,” and cloud schools are all manifestations of the nonlinear expansion of educational space shaped by the New Era—“an era of decay and differentiation, chaos in culture, when a new order is maturing” [Ermilova 2008]. This new order—or new disorder, in the context of poststructuralism—cannot be considered outside the space-time continuum.

In 1920, long before the terms “postmodernism” and “rhizome” appeared, Wassily Kandinsky wrote prophetically in his essay “On the ‘Great Utopia’”:

“Obstacles are swept away by necessity. Sometimes stones are slowly, pedantically removed from its path, sometimes walls are blown away by explosions. The forces serving necessity accumulate gradually, with relentless persistence. The forces opposing necessity fatally serve it. The connection between individual manifestations of the new necessity remains hidden for a long time. On the surface, here and there, regardless of distance, various shoots appear, and it is hard to believe in their common root. This root is a whole system of roots, intertwined seemingly chaotically, but in fact subject to a higher order and natural law.” [Kandinsky 1920, 2–4]

In the same work, the herald of a new era reflects:

“The most unexpected mutual understandings, unexpected conversations in different languages between avant-garde painters and backward theater artists, clarity and confusion, clashing ideas—all this will shake up the familiar forms, divisions, and partitions between and within the arts so much that from the unprecedented pressure, the spheres of the ordinary will burst open, revealing distances that have no name today.” [Kandinsky 1920, 2–4]

The “distances” that had no name in the early 20th century began to acquire names decades later: “Poststructuralism,” “Postmodernism,” “Ontological Turn,” “Linguistic Turn,” “Iconic Turn,” and others. The impact of these “-isms” and “turns” on Western European and American educational thought and systems is obvious. Today, the educational space is Jorge Luis Borges’ “Library of Babel,” Umberto Eco’s “Library-Labyrinth.” To avoid getting lost in this educational “library” and to successfully escape the “labyrinth,” our modern students—like Theseus—need the thread of the teacher-Ariadne, along with the knowledge gained through educational services. After all, “the spiritual labyrinth is also a material labyrinth. Once inside, you may never leave the library” [Eco 2014, 35]. Unfortunately, as the word “teacher” gradually disappears from academic literature, so does the profession itself. Restoring the centuries-old traditions of the School and the University, as some educators urge, is clearly impossible. Bill Readings’ call—“We must understand that the University is an institution in ruins and reflect on what it means to inhabit those ruins without succumbing to romantic nostalgia. The trope of ruins has long been part of intellectual life” [Readings 2010, 266]—should also apply to the School.

For over a century, humanity has participated in a global “carnival,” witnessing the change of many ontological, spiritual, social, and cultural decorations: post-industrialism, avant-garde, communism, imperialism, the socialist bloc, anti-pedagogy, structuralism, poststructuralism, postmodernism, and so on. According to Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of carnivalization, after the “festival” comes the Great Lent. What will it be like? Are modern scholars, with their powerful scientific arsenal, able to determine the direction of civilization or predict even the near future? Even the phrase “in what direction,” used in academic discourse for centuries, is now questionable—events can change at any moment due to unpredictable transgressions, bifurcation points, foldings and unfoldings, and implosions.