Ideology of success and the dilemma of education today

Luca Tateo

pp. 157-164

in: Amrei Joerchel, Gerhard Benetka (eds), Memories of Gustav Ichheiser, Berlin, Springer, 2018

Abstract

Contemporary formal educational systems are obsessed with performance. Social devices and practices are built in order to measure students' and teachers' achievements as well as the performance of the system itself, as a result of the commoditization of education: putting money into school and requiring account for investments. This process of naturalization of economic relations is hiding the value-laden nature of all formal educational systems. In any culture, development is guided by systems of values, as Ichheiser adamantly showed 70 years ago. He had three main concerns: how human beings understand (or misunderstand) each other's differences; how human beings interpret (or misinterpret) the relationship between images of the world and expectations about it in the context of culture and ideology; and, finally, how human beings are aware (or ignore) the "inner man" which lies beyond the social roles. These issues are crucial in the tendency of education to evaluate individuals according to success or failure. I will start from Ichheiser analysis of the relationship between ideology and education to draw some ideas about further potential developments in the contemporary cultural psychology of education.