Post-Truth and Pedagogism

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Andreu Navarra

For academic purposes, I’ve had to delve into some philosophical literature on Post-Truth, that ethical-political phenomenon (or, more accurately, anti-ethical and anti-political phenomenon) that seems to trouble everyone—except, of course, those who have mastered its manipulation. One of the most insightful books for understanding what Post-Truth is, where it originates (for its roots are unmistakably clear), and how to fight it, is Post-Truth by Lee McIntyre (Cátedra, 2023, translated by Lucas Álvarez). McIntyre, among other roles, is a professor of Ethics at Harvard University.

I believe his analysis of the tactics used by the tobacco industry since the 1950s—later echoed by fraudulent scientific committees spreading climate change denial, as well as the flat-earth movement—can shed light on how Pedagogism took hold in Spain and why unmasking and eradicating it has become such a Herculean task.

The first point to note is that the prominent figures of Spanish Post-Truth Pedagogism began to assert themselves just as two major political phenomena emerged, both of which have culminated in the current explosion of authoritarianism that is sweeping across the West. While a segment of the American left was abandoning liberalism and employing Derridean deconstructionism to advocate for deconstructive validation processes between 1990 and 2010, Spain saw the rise of postmodern progressivism, which launched a crusade against anything that remotely resembled the Enlightenment, encyclopaedism, specialised education, or rational structures. The second major wave of Post-Truth arrived with the replacement of liberal frameworks by the counter-narratives of the far right.

McIntyre explains that deconstructive validation, which resembles an endless cycle of suspicion, directly targets the very concept of truth, eroding any semblance of scientific authority. While he does not explicitly accuse the deconstructivist left of giving birth to the Post-Truth phenomenon, he does acknowledge that without the prior deconstruction of Democracy itself (recalling Foucault’s critique of the Enlightenment), the far right would never have so swiftly recognised the potential of viral disinformation to spread its toxic ideologies.

In other words: when the left turned anti-democratic, no one anticipated that the right would eagerly follow in its footsteps. And here we are now, on the brink of reactionary Foucauldianism. That is, the left, so obsessed with narratives rather than material reality, unwittingly opened the door for the authoritarian plague—not necessarily embracing dictatorship themselves, but certainly making the path for it a great deal easier.

Now, let us apply this framework to what transpired in Spain from 1990 onwards: how was it that Marchesist cynicism and the false promises of the LOGSE (repeatedly debunked by all available data) were so easily imposed? How is it that our Organic Laws continue to perceive themselves as progressive when, in reality, they have produced precisely the opposite effect from what their preambles and guiding principles promised? Why is it impossible to rationally correct Spanish education policy?

The most likely explanation is that the error is so monumental that all those involved would rather keep their heads buried in the sand, avoiding any form of public accountability. Vocational training has not been dignified, inequality levels have not been reduced, students are no happier in class, and culture has not become more accessible to the average citizen. Instead, a plethora of foundations, associations, and multinational corporations—lavishly funded with public money—have promoted the most irrational, incomprehensible, scandalous, anti-academic, and anti-Enlightenment policies imaginable. The deconstructivist left has capitulated to the deregulating promises of the right—because looking in the mirror would be far too embarrassing.

How did this come to pass? The tobacco industry once inundated newspapers and television with advertisements denying any link between cigarette tar and lung cancer. Later, an army of pseudo-scientists, operating through bribed foundations, waged relentless campaigns to discredit researchers who adhered to scientific verification methods across a variety of fields—healthcare, vaccines, climate science, education, geopolitics…

I need not point fingers at the corporations and gurus responsible for spreading and cementing pedagogist post-truths. In Catalonia, there are those who claim—without irony—that children should not be taught to read, that red pens are oppressive, that multiplication tables are outdated, that a vague concept of learning from life and for life can somehow produce functional citizens and workers, that teaching official languages is a form of colonialism, that historical chronology distorts the ethical significance of past events, and so on.

We have all witnessed the excesses of cyber-populism, which generated lucrative profits for certain corporate giants. We have all seen bizarre new miracles unfold because, as McIntyre demonstrates, groupthink is fundamental in professional witch-hunts and in enforcing ideological submission through the normalisation of falsehood—just as it was in the rigorist Protestant movements, the European Inquisitions, and the tribalist logics that historically rejected rational dissent.

For Post-Truth to triumph, McIntyre explains, it is necessary for the cynics—those indifferent to any truth, the apostles of Narrative—to convince their followers that attempting to uncover and articulate rational facts is detrimental to the interests of the People. This was precisely Marchesi’s justification for his pedagogist proposals 25 years ago. He wrote that the LOGSE would bring culture to the People. But who, then, would bring the students to culture? Culture itself was deemed suspicious, the conspiratorial invention of accursed elitists. Today, those with any cultural capital are condemned as sinister defenders of some foul concept known as meritocracy.

McIntyre also reminds us that the reactionary revolution is, in essence, a backlash against meddlesome experts. Hence, we can finally understand the pedagogists’ fanatical obsession with eradicating transmissive teachers, their pathological drive to ensure that both students and teachers abandon independent thought and critical memory. Instead, we are to embrace the rigid certainties of Being, the identity politics of Capitalist Realism, the tightly measured and predetermined futures of cyber-consumerism, in which mathematics, philosophy, structured knowledge, the Humanities, reflective skills, moderation, patience, and intellectual curiosity—all elements that cannot be reduced to monetisable data—are deemed utterly superfluous.

We have all witnessed these witch-hunts. Spanish teachers have been branded—by university faculties, ministries, and major newspapers—as obsolete, fascist, Francoist, enemies of human rights, adversaries of student happiness, grotesque far-right relics, Nazis, fossils, red-brownists… And calls have been made for their re-education and reshaping to fit competency-based models.

Marchesi was more moderate. Around the year 2000, he referred to teachers as merely conservative. Back then, pedagogist post-truth was still in its infancy and retaining some semblance of respect. But how have we allowed this barbarity to unfold?

When Technocracy sets out to broadcast Post-Truths to the four corners of the earth, the natural consequence is the swift erosion of deliberative discourse—the very foundation of democracy. McIntyre lays out, with absolute clarity, the process by which we have shifted from placing our trust in experts (i.e. teachers) to granting unearned credibility to charlatans—first televangelists, then influencers, the architects of parallel realities and alternative theories. There is no escaping the fact: we have been cowards. McIntyre helps us understand the professional who becomes compromised by accepting the authoritarian post-truths dictated by those who fund their salary—the professional who submits without question. The myth of the Hyperclassroom, the myth of Individualised Attention with 250 students, student-centrism, education from the heart, and countless other post-truths repeated ad nauseam.

If it must be said that children do not transmit a virus, and then the opposite, it is stated without hesitation. If external evaluations are to be declared a total fraud, so be it. If it must be claimed that an AI application should replace textbooks and teachers, it is proclaimed, and the guru remains perfectly satisfied. Not to mention the threat of removing “non-compliant” teachers and other political absurdities, such as the salvific farce surrounding the omnipresent Competencies, which have no basis whatsoever in pedagogical literature. It seems that the acceptance of sheer imbecility has become the new Feudal Pact in the era of late capitalism. Pedagogism has resorted to every conceivable psychological and commercial manipulation to subjugate the so-called “wicked” teachers, forcing them to believe in a parallel pedagogical truth—a grand redemptive Post-Truth that disintegrates at the slightest confrontation with the country’s social reality.

Any hint of doubt regarding the process of privatisation and intellectual decimation was swiftly labelled as apocalyptic reactionism. Pedagogical Post-Truth has triumphed simply because no scientific resistance has emerged to challenge it. How much longer will this situation persist? Must we reach the extreme of President Trump, who outright dismantled the Library Agency and the Department of Education? What is preferable: a ministry and regional departments wallowing in pathological media contamination, or the outright dictatorial closure of the Ministry of Truth? Do we allow Trump to shut it down, or do we finally begin to cleanse it of this charlatan flat-earth theory? Will the so-called competency reforms not precede the ultra-populist closure? What we do know is that our institutions are so woefully ignorant that their elimination would hardly be unpopular. We know that the deliberate degradation of a public service is the first step toward its gentrification or privatisation.

When will we have a strong Civil Service, free from media lynchings, brave enough to rebuild a rational and emancipatory public education system, one free of populist prescriptions? The much-touted Secondary Teaching Master’s degree will be little more than another privatisation of access to the teaching profession. It will fill the coffers of certain “universities,” while Pedagogism secures its most coveted victory—the final jewel in its crown: the ultimate platform for subjecting the most suspect teachers to the tyranny of Pedagogical Post-Truth. When will we restore Academic Reason in the face of economically driven and ultra-utilitarian Post-Truth?

Source: educational EVIDENCE

Rights: Creative Commons