1

Invited paper for Humboldt-Kolleg Education and Science and their Role in Social and Industrial Progress of Society Kyiv, 13. Juni 2014

THE CLICKING AND TWITTING SOCIETY: BEYOND ENTERTAINMENT TO EDUCATION

Jaan Valsiner

Niels Bohr Professor of Cultural Psychology Aalborg Universitet, Denmark

jvalsiner@hum.aau.dk

ABSTRACT. Educational systems in any country and historical time are parts of their constantly changing societal contexts—feeding into changing of these contexts.. Ours is that of move from production to consumer society--with an additional feature of equating mass media messages about selected aspects of social reality with that very same social reality itself (ontologization of the message). Information acquires the role of entertainment (“infotainment”), and the ritualistic acts of generating media messages (“one liners” by politicians or celebrities, creation of public scandals on political, financial, or sexual topics, “public apologies” from social or private breakings of social or moral rules) have become relevant (and sometimes dominating) parts of our everyday lives. Traditional borders have been eliminated by information technologies (while new borders are erected within these technologies—we live in “passwords and patents” society). All these societal changes provide a new challenge to education at all levels—from kindergartens to universities. Solutions are possible, but not obvious.

While taking an U-Bahn in Berlin, I noticed the display promising the passengers news in the form of INFOTAINMENT. This very creative unification of “INFOrmation” with “enterTAINMENT” suddenly gave me an insight where to look for the problems—and solutions—of the problems that we detect, complain about, and fail to solve, in our dedication to the tasks of higher education. Our problem detection is usually focused on the narrow issues of our educational efforts, while the roots of these go far beyond the borders of universities or secondary schools. Education may be built on the assumption that it is information that needs to be re-constructed as knowledge becomes transferred from generation to generation. For innovations that go beyond the knowledge of the previous generation that is necessary—the learners not only accept the existing knowledge but co-construct future knowledge. Yet the societal orientation to knowledge can change— promoted by the avalanche of consumer orientation—that

2

makes entertainment increasingly central in human lives. Thus—the hybrid infotainment—is not an occasional clever word, but an indicator of a total cultural complex (Brinkmann, 2008) that re-organizes our lives as well as social sciences to focus on the ways in which human beings can satisfy their newly developed needs for entertainment. The large and looming question for the social sciences is—given the escalating imperative for entertainment in our societies, what role can education play under these circumstances. Or—what does “the society” need “the education” for? I am here presenting an analysis from the perspective of cultural psychology of semiotic dynamics (Valsiner, 1999, 2014a). In this perspective, the focus is on the specific features of the educational processes that take place within a wider societal framework that directs these processes towards valuable social outcomes. The latter are often presented as the “needs” of “the society”. “The society”—a beautiful fiction Some words seem so obvious in their meaning that we never stop to ask if what they denote really exist. “Society” is one of those words-- it subsists (as an abstract object of high relevance) yet – it cannot be precisely pointed to as an existing object1. Yet it is precisely through such abstracted subsistence function that “the society” becomes more powerful than any of its existing counterparts ever could be. Nobody is ready to give one’s life for the sake of a real society—e,g, The Royal Society (established in 1652), --but would habitually do that for “their” nations’ sake (for “the society” as a subsisting abstraction). The “industry” of guidance of human beings towards doubts-free acceptance of the basic premises of societal beliefs succeeds through generalization from the notion of a particular society or collective entity to “the society” as a whole. Any move of such generalization from “a” (social group) to “the” (valued) “ingroup” and further to the hyper-generalized notion of “the society” is built on the construction of internalized trust within the psyche of each (and—importantly to social institutions—every) person in the given social field. The process of mutual inclusion starts from “I” and ends with “we—the society”:

1 Here I use the contrast introduced by Alexius Meinong in the end of the 19

th century distinguishing

objects (Gegenstände) that exist and subsist (Meinong, 1904). The history of the notion society indicates its move from a real existing group of united persons (e.g. NAMA—North American Mycological Society)—that does exist, consisting of N members and their organizational framework—to a generalization about indeterminate large collectives of persons who—as “the society”—subsist (while personally, and through their kinship groups, they do exist). Using subsisting notions allows for social discourses that go beyond the reality in its here-and-now contexts: utopias, heterotopias, etc. It is interesting that social control over human mind can be accomplished either at the minimal distance (intra-personal self control, interpersonal control via close relations) or at the maximum abstracted distance (personal concrete contributions to “the society”, “the noble cause” etc). It is at the intermediate range of closeness where such control becomes an object of economic relations—exemplified by the paid services provided by mercenaries, lawyers, psychologists, and many other service professions. Yet there are borders beyond which economic relations cannot easily go—the purchasing of indulgencies in the Catholic Church led to the Protestant Reformation in the 16

th Century, and the idea of paying your mother

for the services of providing a breakfast would be rejected.

3

I (as I am) I and you (WE two) WE (I, you, and others here) WE all (all who can be listed) WE as “the society” (all of WE who can be listed and others who cannot but who must exist since all of us listable do exist= SOCIETY is INFINITE as a hyper-generalized concept)

The reverse move gives us imperatives, like

“You {=YOU AS YOU ARE} must do X for the good of The Society!” The notion of trust—and its corresponding TRUST <>non-TRUST dynamics-- (Valsiner, 2005) is a strictly subjective phenomenon (Figure 1). Figure 1. The TRUST<>non-TRUST dynamics cycle

The key issue of Figure 1 is n the indeterminacy of the Non-A (non-TRUST, non-DISTRUST) fields in these dialogic oppositions. Alternatively to {non-TRUST DISTRUST} trajectory there are other growth alternatives—{non-TRUST HATE} or {non-TRUST POLITENESS}.

The roots of the internalized TRUST<> non-TRUST cycles are social—the person constructs one’s own personal meaning of trust on the basis of various social suggestions like “trust me!” and “don’t trust that other person!”. Or—in hypergeneralized

4

versions—phrases like “one cannot trust anybody any more” and “we must trust X!” we can observe fixed monologization of the dialogical process. Persons establish one’s own figures for trusting—and are ready to surrender their personal agency and control over their fate to such invented external authority figures (Valsiner, 1999). The personal construction of generalized (and hyper-generalized) trust has its counterpart in the collective construction of the “no-doubt” status for the agents-to-be-trusted. Parents must be trusted by their children, schools must be trusted by parents, a ministry of education must be trusted by the school principal, and so on. Yet trust is never guaranteed—it is a process of constant negotiation (TRUST<> non-TRUST, see Valsiner, 2005, and Figure 1 here). The socio-moral imperative “X must be trusted!” works only and only if the underlying TRUST<>non-TRUST process excludes the possibility of “non-TURST” moments growing into DISTRUST. Once this happens, the potential of any coordination through dialogue with the other side is no longer possible. A life-course example: loss of trust. The emergence of distrust can happen out of very small events in personal lives. A young 10-year old boy is brought up by his father so as to respect the Nature and not damage it. One day, in the garden with his father and aunt, the boy observes the aunt cutting flowers from the flowerbed. She then gives the cut flowers to the boy asking him to go and take them to his mother as a present. The boy is horrified by the act of the aunt’s “killing of the living flowers” and hits the aunt. The father—who had been promoting the Nature-loving ideology all of the boy’s life—gets angry at the boy and leashes out towards him. The aunt proceeds to punish the boy for his aggressive act. The act to correct the little ten-year-old “terrorist’s” behavior is successfully over. Decades later, the boy—by now a well-known German philosopher Günter Anders—recollects that story as the specific key moment when he lost his trust in his father—the famous German psychologist William Stern. The son and the father grew psychologically apart, both understanding that the little parental punishment episode meant the collapse of the trust of the boy in the father’s credo of loving Nature. It was not the boy, but the aunt, who should have been punished—for “killing” the living flowers. At least by the father’s personal credo—of course we of in the wider society at large never punish the sellers of cut flowers, who must have performed the same flower decapitation operation as the boy’s aunt did. We do punish people who take flowers away from the cemetery. The son of the famous but inconsistent father changed his name from Stern to The Other (Anders—see Lamiell, 2003, pp.,25-26 for full description of this episode). Trust in social upheavals. In the dynamics of TRUST<>non-TRUST processes seemingly little everyday events can escalate to major psychological (and social) turmoils. An opera performance of Daniel Auber’s La Muette de Portici (The Mute Girl of Portici) in Brussels on August 25, 1830 was meant to celebrate the birthday of the Dutch king William I, but triggered a patriotic fervent that activated the Belgian revolution and secession from the Netherlands. It is not surprising that art can be socially subversive and sometimes trigger escalating changes. The seriousness of construction of censorship systems indicates it social dangers for the current stakeholders of “the society”.

5

Internalization of trust and avoidance of doubt. Before any external social censor comes into action, it is important to the social stakeholders to promote the development of internalized trust—disallowing the move to non-trust. This requires the eradication of doubt. Doubt is a psychological operator that may enable the emergence of DISTRUST from non-TRUST. Blocking it from emergence is a crucial task of social control over the minds of human beings. If successful, the absence of doubting makes the non-TRUST socially usable in the political organization of “the society”—creating the social roles of haters-of-anything-foreign (non-TRUST HATE) or volunteer spies to report all the suspect acts of selected “others”. Inhibiting doubt happens through canalization of the Gegenstand—in the form of Double Gegenstand (Figure 2) Figure 2. How the DOUBT is blocked from emerging (Double Gegenstand)

The most usual form of blocking any doubt is to have an opinion. An opinion—deeply and strongly believed in—blocks any further thinking. Social institutions today—ever since the focus on the importance of crowds become politically evident as a result of the French Revolution—are involved in a mindboggling array of opinion polls and customer satisfaction surveys in any imaginable and unimaginable (see Figure 3) place in our everyday practice.

Of course the “customer” is appropriately appeased when s/he is told that “your opinion is important to us!”—never mind in what kind of awkward places the sentimernt is expressed. But behind the other-friendly façade what is at stake is a power game—the administration presents its image as if it were customer-inclusive. Furthermore,

6

behind this gesture of symbolic power transfer from those really and truly in control (i.e. the whole institution taking care of the given public facility) is the act of promotion of the formation of discrete opinions. The forced choice format of such opinion polls guides people to “making up one’s mind” in a way that excludes the consideration of any other way of relating to the object of evaluation. So options like “it is GOOD but could have BEEN EVEN BETTER” or “it is BAD but I understand your personnel is grossly underpaid” cannot appear in such opinion polls. What we – imprecisely, since it is an infinite term—call “the society” is by now become a training ground for creating, fixing, escalating, and preserving fragmented yet affectively value-laden opinions. Even the waiter who approaches you in the middle of your meal asking “is everything all right?” is suggesting that you—a polite person-- would say “yes”, thus creating a discrete positive opinion about a so-so eating experience. Opinions become an additional currency—secondary to money2—in the life of “the society” Figure 3. A customer satisfaction survey in the WC of Frankfurt Airport

2 Of course there are cases where the opinions become directly translated into monetary terms—fees

paid to former politicians for speaking engagements (where they say nothing new, just repeat their “opinions”) or expert advice fees or expert salaries.

7

Elaborated abstraction: from production- to consumption-oriented “society” The subsisting abstraction “the society” is easily given further predicates3. In the 21st century, the well-disputed cogito, ergo sum slogan is left far behind. Instead, we are guided to live with “I consume—therefore I exist” notion. How could such transition of the human mind happen? The impact for our ecological habitat of such transition is immense—the abandoned ideas of the philosophers of the past do not require municipal garbage dump sites with all their characteristic smells, while similarly abandoned consumed products seem to overload the Planet Earth with such unappealing areas within city planning. The real challenge of becoming “consumer society” it its outcome—the impending future of “garbage society” (unless the “recycling society” manages to save the planet). In any case, the idealistic notion of “the society” becomes increasingly materialistic—yet ideologically overdetermined as before.

Hybridizing “the society”. The fashion for post-modernist ideologies that swept across Europe since 1960s have left an interesting and in some ways paradoxical heritage. On the one hand, deconstruction of any structure—social, theoretical, aesthetic- has done away with traditional structural powers in their hierarchical stability. The post-modern world view deconstructs structure of institutions—and replaces it with the fluidity of ever-changing social networks. The “network society” is the result of change from industrial to consumer society—which can also be seen to gain the label “experience society”—the focus is on personal participation through experience, shared via the fluid networks (Brinkmann, 2008, p. 92).

The rapidly increasing focus on networking becomes something different in the consumption-oriented society than merely the beautiful image of “being in touch” with other human beings. Social participation becomes a form of economic exchange. The rapid and overwhelming success of inventions of the kind of the Facebook constitute the empirical proof of such transformation. We personally experience consumption—be it food, tourist trip to a far away country, or purchase of a new fancy object—and “share” it by announcing it to our 2250 (or more) Facebook “friends” via internet. The personal worlds become hybridized with the social networks, in the mind-boggling myriad of exchanges of the thumbs-up “I like it” messages, attached to the most trivial publicly announced experiences. It is not only the objects we consume but also the public announcements about the acts of their consuming that become new “social capital” in interpersonal relations and in the institutional value construction of the consuming subjects.

Such transformation of social relations into “social capital” has direct implications for the role of education at all levels. Together with such transformation come agents—“brokers” or that kind of “social capital” who take over the border control positions in the otherwise (seemingly) uncontrollable dealings in such capital through such fluid networks. The new label I want to suggest in this presentation—that our society is increasingly that of “clicking and twitting” kind illustrates such takeover of external borders of the networks. Bruno Latour’s notion of ANT (Actor Network Theory) overlooks precisely such borders—a more accurate presentation of the fluid networks is

3 Such as “network society” or “experience society” , or “production versus consumer” society

(Brinkmann, 2008, p. 91)

8

CANT—Constrained Actor Network Theory (Valsiner, 2012, pp. 267-268) In our enthusiasm about the immediate freedom of reaching large audiences (via the twitter) we overlook the fact that the technological limit of 140 characters sets a limit upon what kinds of messages are possible to transfer through that channel. Likewise, the rapid escalation possibility to inquire about the world at large through a click can cross the invisible borders of ending up as a suspect of many kinds of socially illegitimate acts, to which your naïve curiosity obviously does not belong. Social homogenization of heterogenized strata of society. Ironically, the focus on flexible social networks creates a new version of control structure— who controls the external limits of the heterogeneity is in power control over the escalated number of “free choices” that can be made within these constraints. One can understand this when considering a phenomenon one cold call “the IKEA Effect”. Every day 50 thousand people go to IKEA stores to find furniture for their homes, and return with it in deep belief that they are creating their personally unique home environments. The simple fact that all the many choices possible in IKEA are fully pre-determined by the outer borders of the (admittedly wide) choices IKEA provides. In other terms—the widened choices are all homogeneously heterogeneous. What the consumer—faced with escalated demands to make choices—does not attend to is the pre-set (mass-produced) extent of all the choices. This combination of heightened heterogeneity of personal choices (with all the personal resources going for this) with complete homogenization of that heterogeneity is the general characteristic of the “networking society”, In terms of classic social psychology, this amounts to full field control by the provider of all of these choices. Whatever choice is being made by an individual, all of them are made within the range of opportunities provided by the producer of these choices. Control over the fluid and rapidly flexible networks is established through monopolizing its borders. The Escalating Homogenizer: Mass media as the maker of “infotainment” The “knowledge society” needs knowledge—but under the conditions of escalating heterogeneity of the focus on consumption the question—what is knowledge as social capital—becomes central for making sense of social processes and answering the questions about future roles of education.

Much has been said about “media effects” in our contemporary lives. It is the control over communication channels at all levels—their ownership, the ways in which messages are generated, and in which forms they arrive in the life-words of their recipients—that guides the social life in any society today. It is in these channels where the emergence of doubt is either ruled out, or enhanced. Ontologizing messages. The increasing role of the mass communication media in the dealings with “social capital” leads to the replacement of an ongoing processes by turning these into labeled “entities” that carry affective value-added loadings. The notion of “breakthrough” is an ontological label—expected from the applicants for European research funding before the process of promised grant-funded research has begun. Researchers are guided to give promises for outcomes that at the given time cannot be

9

pre-granted. If these fail—and are still claimed—the ontologization takes a reverse turn and the “breakthrough” becomes “fraud”.

The process of ontologization creates new symbolic order which begins to operate as social capital. Equating the mass media messages about selected aspects of social reality with that very same social reality itself creates the illusion that the message is real—in the guided direction of value that is added to it through framing it as entertainment. Information acquire the role of entertainment (“infotainment”), and the ritualistic acts of generating media messages --“one liners” by politicians or celebrities, creation of public scandals on political, financial, or sexual topics. The emerging genre of “public apologies” for social or private breakings of social or moral rules have become relevant in the ways how the “infotainment” operates in our everyday lives. Traditional borders have been eliminated by information technologies -- while new borders are erected within these technologies—we live in “passwords and patents” society. Summary: Trusting “the society” while doing education?. The analysis of “the society”—within which education in general subsides— is given through the angle of basic TRUST <> non-TRUST opposition (Valsiner, 2005) as developed to look at the phenomenon of “civil society”. It turns out that there is very little ontologically “civil” in societies labeled to be that. Likewise, the role of “the society” in the social guidance of advancement of ideas that transcend the socially accepted dogmas may in 21st century not be very different from the times when Giordano Bruno challenged the prevailing understandings about the world. The difference may be only in the form of the annihilation of the doubter—instead of burning, the social isolation of the mind may be the more humane method.

When analyzed from the perspective of TRUST <> non-TRUST opposition it is obvious that “the society” as an abstraction cannot be either trusted, or distrusted. That would amount to (yet another) act of ontologization. Instead, the structure of the processes that relate advancement of knowledge (Wissenschaft) with the various forms of building (and re-building) of the systems of Bildung. The specific administrative re-organization of universities in Europe (and increasingly Worldwide)—the Bologna Process—is the most recent and the most total of such efforts of change in our futures of knowledge construction.

The Bologna Process: Social guidance of science through higher education The grand international experiment with higher education that we are all observers and co-participants in – and we somewhat tenderly call “the Bologna process”—is of course a radical administrative transformation of a social institution known for its monastic privileges, into a set of comparable cases transparent enough for external social regulation4. It has gained acceptance beyond Europe (e.g. Kazakhstan becoming one of

44 As stated at on March 12, 2010 in an anniversary celebration: “The Bologna Declaration in 1999 set

out a vision for 2010 of an internationally competitive and attractive European Higher Education Area where higher education institutions, supported by strongly committed staff, can fulfil their diverse missions in the knowledge society; and where students benefiting from mobility with smooth and fair recognition of their qualifications, can find the best suited educational pathways” (paragraph 3 of the Budapest-Vienna

10

the participants) and its impact to other continents is an important topic to consider (Brunner, 2009). Controversies around it abound—it is a “top-down” political re-arrangement of the higher education systems with limited voices given to the acrtual practitioners and the students—at least at its inception. Yet—as a system implemented for economic and administrative reasons, it is there to stay.

Looking at it from the angle of social guidance of science (Valsiner, 2012), the “Bologna Process” is an experiment in relocating borders—of students’ visions of where they might study, of administrators’ visions of what the value of a degree from “that other country” might mean, and—last but not least—creation of a flexibly movable army of “knowledge workers” (persons with bachelor or higher degrees) to cross any border of country or language in Europe when economically necessary (Dima, 2009; Mény, 2008). Like many other trans-European projects it can be viewed as an effort to organize administratively sustainable flow of the resources. In this case the “resources” are those of “human potential”—knowledge resources. Students in universities are about to become graduated as workers employed in knowledge-based areas of social life. Such “knowledge worker”—a young person with a degree at any of the three levels (bachelor, master, doctorate) of the interchangeable degree can be prepared to one—or two—of the functions of knowledge. First of all, all people act in parallel in the use of the knowledge. This is the first function—the educated person needs to operate in one’s life tasks with sufficient and fitted kind of knowledge. If the life task is to make choices between pre-given options, evaluate comparatively different given options, and give further symbolic value to the options selected (and one’s choices made), then the kind of new knowledge needed is that of well-prepared consumers. The masses of consumers need to be prepared to make ever new choices between increasing varieties of actively promoted options—quickly and efficiently. They need to be able to develop their intuitive skills in operating in such choice-ful environment with pleasure. This is exemplified in our social contexts by the knowledge consuming society where “clicking” and “twitting” become the primary means of success. Schoolchildren, and increasingly university students are prepared for that life task through the proliferating testing mechanism—that of multiple choice tests. Outside of the educational contexts they are guided towards the same by way of opinion polls. The task is—itemize (fragment the complex of knowledge into elements), then chose (‘the right choice”), and then evaluate the chosen option not only as sufficient but in superlative terms (e.g. thumbs up “I like it” in Facebook). The consumer society leads the knowledge society in the direction of a fascinating yet simple order in the society—“they consume, and enjoy—while we govern.” Who are the ”we” here? The second function of knowledge use is creation of new knowledge. Here the other side of the story—knowledge producing society—emerges. The “knowledge workers” here are no longer involved in “infotainment”, but act as “knowledge artists” who create new knowledge on the basis of the previous one. Since any new knowledge is ambiguous as to its potential uses—chemical weapons and chemotherapy to cure cancer start from the same research source—the work of the “knowledge artists” is carefully watched by “knowledge managers” , “knowledge

Declaration). http://www.ond.vlaanderen.be/hogeronderwijs/bologna/2010_conference/documents/Budapest-Vienna_Declaration.pdf

11

brokers” or “knowledge commanders”. The relationships with knowledge become differentiated and hierarchically integrated.

Knowledge becomes a result of social negotiation, where collective social actors—some within science and education, some outside—negotiate the general directions of development of knowledge5. Inside sciences, the process of knowledge production moves increasingly from being an individual act to a collective one. While Nobel prizes are still given to select individuals for ground-breaking ideas, often the empirical proof of these ideas is published in articles of authorship surpassing the number 500! So—“the society” becomes differentiated into the crowd of knowledge users, and corporation of knowledge producers. Behind the democratic façade—all consumers are equal—lingers the stern reality that some consumers are also producers and managers of the new knowledge—which is fed into the consumer world for further profits. Some consumers are more equal than others. Of course the notion of differentiation of a social organism—“the society”—into parts of unequal resources and power is no news in human history. Such differentiation has been the case in all forms of societies we know. Even the utopias of socialism and communism produced its own—administrative—power structure. So it is no surprise that behind the “clicking and twitting” consumer society exists a guild of “click-makers” and “twit-brokers” who play the guiding role in the future of production of new knowledge, and their canalization means. The question for the future of higher education remains solidly in place—education to whom? By whom? For what goals? By what methods? Creativity in a consumer society: how can higher education succeed? Innovation will prevail No matter what form the social context (“the society”) in which activities of higher education may be embedded, its goal is to produce new knowledge (or creators of such new knowledge) that goes beyond the current knowledge base of the given discipline, and, correspondingly, of the given “society” at the given time. Not starting with such—“elitarian” or “revolutionary” (depending on one’s position)—assumption would lead to the reduction of innovation in science (and technology) to the lowest common denominator of the current fashionable demands of the “consumer market” of infotainment, rather than exploration of the domains we do not yet understand.

This is perhaps the biggest obstacle for the current reforms in higher education. The “market mentality”—thinking in terms of various outcomes of research nd their social presentation value for “the society”—is in deep contradiction with the processes involved in the production of knowledge. Reliancs on the outcomes (and their market-based evaluation) is post-factum act, in relation to the processes that led to that outcome. Scientific innovation cannot be “market determined” (even if administrative

5 The media-escalated discourse of Worldwide “ratings” of universities as to their “excellence”, the

establishment of “excellence centers” of research in different countries, and the uses of journals’ “impact factors” to evaluate scientists’ research productivity can all be analyzed as processes of such negotiation,

12

evaluation systems attempt to turn it to be so6). Michael Polanyi has made that very clear—any scientific discovery

…reveals new knowledge, but the new vision that accompanies it is not knowledge. It is less than knowledge, for it is a guess; but it is more than knowledge, for it is a foreknowledge of things yet unknown and at present perhaps inconceivable. Our vision of the general nature of things is our guide for the interpretation of all future experience. Such guidance is indispensable. Theories of the scientific method which try to explain the establishment of scientific truth by any purely objective formal procedure are doomed to failure. Any process of enquiry unguided by intellectual passions would inevitably spread out into a desert of trivialities (Polanyi, 1962, p. 125)

Knowledge creation is always ambiguous—rather than secure accumulation of “the data” by a socially legitimized procedure. Science moves ahead of “the society”, not behind. It deals with ambiguities that might become new knowledge—but are not that yet. Yet most of higher education is oriented towards preparing the learners precisely for “the basics” of the given science that are non-ambiguous in their established forms. The whole analysis here leads into a complex set of questions. What features should have the modern education? How can we promote continuity of development of new ideas within a societal context where entertainment is moved to the idealized (and commercially profitable) arena of everyday life activities? For what tasks is an university to prepare the young generations? I translate this question into a societal one-- how can the producer role in selected areas of personal expertise be promoted in the context of consumer society? In other terms-- how can the value of constant search for innovation be inserted into the educational systems so that it can become internalized as a basic feature of the personality to move towards the aim of development of new ideas? Some of these ideas could lead to the establishment of “harmonic and intellectually free communities”, which may—but also need not—be fitting “the society” as a whole. It is probably more realistic to replace the beautiful social representation of “harmonic” and “intellectually free” communities with those of MUTUALLY RESPECTFUL and INTELLECTUALLY CURIOUS representations. Merely “respect” would not be sufficient—it can lead to fixed social hierarchies of a laboratory or university department where all members are in established social relations with one another, show due respect on all occasions- yet develop no new knowledge. Only if the

6 For example, using “popularity criteria”—of citation frequencies and impact factors of journals—for

academic evaluation of scientists’ work. This tendency takes its extreme form in evaluating scientists on the basis of how many items in popular mass media their research has generated. Through that step the guidance for future scientific activities is guided by the “market value” for the news-making enterprise of mass communication media and hence determined by the lay audience (through the implemented rating systems). This problem is particularly acute for the social sciences where the distance between scientific knowledge and popular expectations is historically limited and closely watched by the social power holders. For a successful solution of the problem one can look at the engineering sciences (e.g. the Mars Lander project)

13

mutual respect is paired with intellectual curiosity to look for something new—based on the complementarity of different perspectives (mutually respectful to one another) can the intellectually “free” atmosphere be created. It would not be “harmonious”—since there would be many- yet respectful—disagreements between the researchers as they move into exploring the not yet known worlds. Respect for other persons does not need to mean acceptance of their ideas without doubt. Rather the opposite—on the secure base of mutual PERSONAL respect can the DIFFERENCES IN IDEAS lead to new dialogues of establishing new knowledge. Lack of such differences in ideas—homogeneity of perspectives—leads to orthodoxies that cannot produce new knowledge. A few concrete suggestions for universities follow from this idea. A focus on history of the given science in the university curriculum would not be an anachronism, but a grounds for preparation of the young scientists to respect persons with whose ideas they might (for good reasons) completely disagree. Learning about the history is not for stigmatizing the “wrong ideas” of the past (and their makers) but to get a glimpse into the intellectual search by the predecessors (and the reasons why they failed7) Going ahead-- beyond the “Bologna process” and EHEA. The fundamental changes that the administrative exercise—labeled the “Bologna process”—has introduced in the area of higher education can be endlessly disputed, but that would have no effect on the system that has been fiscally and politically put into place. Its general implications are clear—it widens the base of higher education and makes it possible to compare academic accomplishments in various countries. As such, it turns the higher education systems in all countries into a part of the consumerist society, reducing and eventually eliminating the “monastic privileges” that universities had traditionally enjoyed since the Middle Ages. In one of the recent discussions about the European education systems, the issue of distancing of higher education from governmental control became a discussion topic8. The changes in European higher education since 1999 have been profound. They have re-oriented the work of university staff in the direction of increasing focus on research and move away from traditional lecturing (Jacob and Teichler, 2011, pp. 32-34))—yet the production of comparable education outcomes (degrees) does not guarantee any orientation towards the

7 For example, the fundamental turn in modern genetics since the 1960s into epigenetics (Valsiner,

2014b) is a triumph of the original philosophical ideas of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck whose Philosophy of Zoology (published in 1809) led to the stigmatization of his ideas already during his lifetime. The ridicule of the Lamarckian giraffe whose neck grows due to trying to get food from leaves on treetop has been widespread social representation showing the ridiculous nature of Lamarck’s general ideas. The deeper thinking—beyond the unfortunate example—could be ignored. 8 Tom Boland,( Chief Executive, Higher Education Authority of Ireland) setting up discussion: “The issue of the

ownership of higher education has become particularly important in the context of the current stress on our knowledge based economy and society. The preoccupation of governments with higher education and its central role in economic and social development potentially holds a danger - a danger that in its quest for accountability and reassurance, governments will weaken the walls of separation which in many countries for centuries have protected the higher education system from undue government involvement. In doing so governments will damage irreparably that which it most needs to cherish - an independent, innovative, higher education system.”(Dubrovnik, September 27, 2012)

14

production of new knowledge. The concentration on the accountability of credits9 does not support progress in ideas. The promotion of scientific innovation is not accountable for in the number of ”work hours” a scientist uses to arrive at a Nobel Prize level idea—perhaps to be canonized as such by the Nobel Committee some decades later. In other terms—the accounting of science in terms of “work hours” can be effectively neutralized when we evaluate the actual productivity both in science, and in preparation for it in universities. Assessment of the processes of turning in the direction of innovation (Valsiner, 2011) can effectively replace that. The same suggestion of neutralization of the function (rather than “fight” against) can be applicable to the use of multiple-choice testing procedures—even if these are in place (and administratively efficient—can be evaluated by computer programs) it is the qualitative elicitation of the borders of one’s creative thinking10 that may end being relevant for evaluating the new candidates for scientific novelty. To summarize—a way to innovation in the educational systems towards enhancing intellectual creativity needs to neutralize both opposing tendencies in the academic life- the rigidity of sticking to old models of uni-directional (professor-to-student) teaching, and its opposite rigidity of replacing intellectual innovation by public accounts of socially negotiated outcomes (numbers of publications, ratings, etc,). It goes without saying that in some disciplines, and countries, that can be done more easily than in others. But the general idea—neutralization, rather than opposition—seems to be a way to create the “freedom space” for intellectually curious intellectual communities where mutual critique pertains to ideas, not persons, and where new solutions to complex scientific problems emerge from the heterogeneity (and not homogeneity) of the scientific community. If universities manage to guide students to such social roles of knowledge producers, the progress in science is guaranteed. Even if our lives become ever more embedded in a consumerist society that has its owbn ways of progressing. Acknowledgment. The preparation of this paper was supported by the Danish Ministry of Science and Education Niels Bohr Professorship grant

9 A credit is a “quantified means of expressing the volume of learning based on the achievement of

learning outcomes and their associated workloads”. This formulation of credit completely bypasses any focus on the psychological issues of teaching/learning that feed into scientific innovation.

10 That can be accomplished by very simple means—testing a person in what kind (and even how

many—if quantification matters) metaphoric extensions can a person generate. The focus here is on “pushing the mind” out of the ordinary trajectories of thought- towards innovation, not towards reproduction of the known.

15

References Brinkmann, S. (2008). Changing psychologies in the transition from industrial society to

consumer society. History of the Human Sciences, 21, 2, 85-110. Brunner, J. J. (2009). The Bologna Process from a Latin American perspective. Journal

of Studies in International Education, 13, 4, 417-438. Dima, A.-M. (2009). The Bologna Process and private providers. Management in

Education, 23, 4, 182-187. Jacob, A.-K, and Teichler, U. (2011). Der Wandel des Hochschullehrerberufs im

internationalen Vergleich. Bonn-Berlin: Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung.

Lamiell, J. (2003). Beyond individual and group differences. Thousand Oaks, Ca.,: Sage.

Meinong, A. (Ed.) (1904). Untersuchungen zur Gegenstandstheorie und Psychologie. Leipzig: J. A. Barth.

Mény, Y. (2008). Higher education in Europe: National systems, European programmes, global issues. Can they be reconciled? European Political Science, 7, 324-334.

Polanyi, M. (1962) Personal knowledge. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Valsiner, J. (1999). I create you to control me: A glimpse into basic processes of

semiotic mediation. Human Development, 42, 26-30. Valsiner, J. (2005) Civility of Basic Distrust: A cultural-psychological view on persons-

in-society Paper that should have been presented at the Symposium Risk, Trust, and Civility Toronto, Victoria Actually dated July, 4, 2005 Available at http://www.semioticon.com/virtuals/risk/distrust.pdf

Valsiner, J. (2011). Assessment and its discontents: A view from cultural psychology. Keynote presentation at the 11th European Conference on Psychological Assessment-- September 2, Riga, Latvia

Valsiner, J. (2012). A guided science: History of psychology in the mirror of its making. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.

Valsiner, J. (2014a). Invitation to cultural psychology. London: Sage. Valsiner, J. (2014b). Epigenetik und Entwicklung: Drei Kontrollmodelle. In Vanessa Lux

and Jörg Thomas Richter (Eds.), Kulturen der Epigenetik: Vererbt, codiert, übertragen (pp. 151-164). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Author Bio. Jaan Valsiner is a cultural psychologist with a consistently developmental axiomatic base that is brought to analyses of any psychological or social phenomena. He is the founding editor (1995) of the Sage journal, Culture & Psychology. He is currently Niels Bohr Professor of Cultural Psychology at Aalborg University, Denmark, as well as professor of psychology at the Department of Psychology, Clark University, USA, He has published many books, the most pertinent of which are The guided mind (Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard University Press, 1998) and Culture in minds and societies (New Delhi: Sage, 2007). He has edited (with Kevin Connolly) the Handbook of Developmental Psychology (London: Sage, 2003) as well as the Cambridge Handbook of Socio-Cultural Psychology (2007, with Alberto Rosa). He is the Editor-in-Chief of Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Sciences (Springer, from 2007) and History and Theory of Psychology (from 2008, with Transaction Publishers). In 1995 he was awarded the Alexander von Humboldt Prize in Germany for his interdisciplinary work on human development, and Senior Fulbright Lecturing Award in Brazil 1995-1997. He has been a visiting professor in Brazil, Japan, Australia, Estonia. Germany, Italy, United Kingdom, and the Netherlands. E-mail: jvalsiner@gmail.com