Academic freedom and educational farce

Academic freedom is by no means that a professor can “teach” the Earth is flat, although he would ever believe so

License Creative Commons

Xavier Massó

Faced to the iniquitous attacks that are being perpetrated against “academic freedom” -garanteed by article 20c of the Spanish Constitution -, we must unfortunately admit that many of the advocates who come to her aid they usually do it with quite rude arguments that instead of backing it up, they even worsen it. And since the very idea of ​​teaching is involved in, it may be worth to inquire a bit on it.

Thus, the vindication of academic freedom usually consists, faced to its detractors, on considering it as an attack against free speech; and it certaninly is, no doubt about, but in different terms than those usually claimed. Because since we identify academic freedom with free speech and hence focusing the debate in these terms, we are leaving aside the reasons and functions why this figure was thought of and instituted. Because academic freedom does not mean that a teacher can explain “whatever he wants” using his freedom of expression while doing his job, nor does it mean that he should do so. Then, if there are no further nuances, we are disregarding the real subject we were supposed to be claiming for.

The educational political authorities, namely its bureaucrats and «pedagocrats», are aware of this and they are taking advantage, like in a chess game already started and with one’s own pieces arranged in the board in a clearly winning position. Because it is evident that a teacher cannot, nor should he, explain what he wants: a teacher owes himself to his status as such and to the subject he is in charge to teach with rigor and solvency; and this is the framework within the boundaries of its own domain are settled: academic freedom. Something that governments and educational authorities should never forget either, even though they do so too frequently, perhaps driven by ideological fervor and rather opaque interests.

The problem involved in what’s concernig academic freedom is not that of free speech but just in a very subtle and cryptic way. Because since we are in a current context where the devaluation of the content of knowledge to the inanity is being openly promoted, the authorities know very well that there is no need to explicitly suppress it; It is enough to neutralize it by imposing the method prior to the curricular contents of knowledge to be taught, which are the real goal, the treasure they covet, in order to administer them, certainly inspired by a very different criteria from those of the enlightened heritage, for which compulsory schooling meant universal and egalitarian teaching. Now, instead, the target rather seems to be the devaluation of the missregarded academic knowledge. And to reach this goal, there is no need to suppress the academic freedom, just avoiding it could ever raise it’s enough to deactivate it since it becomes completely useless. In other words, methodological prescription instead of political proscription. It works better: same results and no complains.

On the other hand, it is obvious that free speech is also seriously and tragically affected, but the point is that today we are no longer dealing with any old fashion style totalitarian project that points directly towards its prohibition, but rather maintains it formally meanwhile it’s supporting a garbage-teaching model that ensures the inability to exercise it in a near futur, as long as we consider it properly requires a certain conceptualy wide range. Without knowledge background there is no valid critical thinking, nor solvent criteria to exercise it. So, free speech becomes then alike the “right” to believe the Earth is flat, in the same way someone born as human is “free” to feel like a platypus.

So if academic freedom worries the pedagogical neo-totalitarianism it is not because a teacher could explain what he wants –once this figure has been de facto annulled due to lack of substance, they don’t care at all about- but to prevent him from explaining what he’s supposed to, namely, the academic content of the subject to be thaught in accordance with some worthy structured curricula. And the imposition of an hyper-ideologized methodology is the best way to get rid of the transmission of knowledge by subjugating it to the inquisitorial ferule of the bureaucratic control.

Academic freedom is therefore not arbitrariness, but quite the opposite: Adjusting to knowledge, reason and science in the exercise of teaching. It is freedom, yes, as well as a moral imperative, pure professional teaching deontology. Academic freedom is by no means that a professor can “teach” the Earth is flat, although he would ever believe so (?). The same way a judge can also “intuit” that an man is guilty, but if he lacks of incrimninating evidence, he must declare him innocent because intuition is not a proof to be found guilty.

What happens then if bureaucracy forces us to explain that the Earth is flat or to consider its teaching and “arguments” as a more or less widespread respectable belief or opinion? Well, neither more nor less than what is happening currently: the requirements of scientific rationality are declining or diluted, and any silly trifle is usefull to contribute to the project of converting compulsory schooling into a mere formal procedure: a farce.

So, If academic freedom is still a nuisance, it is because it incorporates not just a legal precept, the function of teaching, but a moral one: The duty to teach, an imperative whose boundaries and domain are those of rational and scientific knowledge. And the option is to turn it into almost nothing by promoting the denaturalization of the teacher’s feature, turning him into a coach, a social entertainer or, in short, a fake. There will still be academic freedom, of course, because once it has been emptied of any content, it will be innocuous; Just as there will also be freedom of expression, but no one will effectively exercise it.

This is what our educational system is turning into, a monstrous and a crude lie. And that’s  why we must insist and reiterate that, eventhough it is apparently held, it is being actually suppressed, because what academic freedom means is that no one can force you to explain that the Earth is flat and, at the same time, that you should not do it because you already have to know in advance that it is not. It is not much, apparently, but it is.

Source: educational EVIDENCE

Rights: Creative Commons