Between Educationalization and Appropriation: Selected Writings on the History of Modern Educational Systems

22. After the Ten Commandments … the Sermon? Comments on David Labaree’s Research Recommendations

22 After the Ten Commandments … the Sermon? Comments on David Labaree’s Research Recommendations* M. Depaepe It was bound to happen. After some supposed authority boldly announces ten commandments for good research practices in his domain (Depaepe, 2010), another one suddenly pops up – in this case a ‘real’ authority – who cannot resist the urge to give a sermon on almost the same subject (Labaree, 2011). The historical but often repressed relationship between theology and pedagogy, repeatedly trumpeted by people like Fritz Osterwalder (2003), must have stuck in the subconscious of the historians of education. The religious metaphors prompted by the discussion about our opinion article (and which will undoubtedly resurface in comments on Labaree’s research recommendations) pull no punches. Without going any further along the slippery path of what falls outside rational thinking, let me start by examining the most striking similarities and differences between Labaree’s recommendations and myself. As intuition and emotion supposedly exert influence on each other – according to Wundt our subconscious even works like an unknown person who creates and produces for us, and ultimately tosses us the ripe fruit (see, e.g., Dijksterhuis, 2007) – I hasten to point out that David and I have no private battles to fight against each other. Insofar as I have got to know him through his books and articles (see, e.g., Labaree, 2007), and in the meantime I have had an opportunity to see him at several conferences and seminars, he champions scientific ideas with which I find it fairly easy to concur. So it will come as no surprise that I heard his ‘sermon’ with considerable empathy. * Originally published in: Bildungsgeschichte. International Journal for the Historiography of Education, II,1 (2012) 89-92 Part V: The Self-Concept of a Demythologized ‘New Cultural’ History of Education 472 ❙ ❙ Similarities The fundamental message that I read from this reflects what I have repeatedly argued, namely that historical research in education tends to be unruly. It does not immediately yield the results that policymakers and politicians want to hear. Nor does it butter up to rank and file teachers and others involved in education and upbringing. Due to this critical distance it erects a barrier against the hypertrophy of one-sided, utilitariandesigned educational research, which is generally based solely on empiricoanalytical and statistically-quantifying thinking and demonstrates its merits through the highest possible quote indexes and impact factors. Historical contextualisation is and will remain necessary, if for no other reason than to understand the effects triggered by these seemingly innocent mechanisms in putting into operation and measuring the scientific output of persons, institutions and research domains. In other words, the traditional, more interpretational approaches to educational sciences, like the historical although also the philosophical (and perhaps even social) ones, may have become marginalised, but they are and remain indispensable in the forming of ‘critical’ intellectuals. Therefore, I amply endorse Labaree’s advocacy of ‘irrelevant’ research, or at least ‘irrelevant’ at first sight, because the reasoning presented above sufficiently demonstrates just how relevant the irrelevant can be. After all, relevance and irrelevance are categories tied to a certain (societal) criterion, standpoint or perspective (outside the actual research). Yet the paradox is that this kind of ostensibly ‘irrelevant’ research is in danger of losing relevance the more it is consciously deployed to further the extrinsic criterion, standpoint or perspective. Applied to history, I formulated as the ninth commandment for educational history research that from the pedagogic past there are few concrete lessons to be learned for presentday educational practice and theory; when history is used for purposes other than intrinsic ones, I believe it ceases to be history. Consequently, it appears nonsensical to want to embed all forms of educational research in the short-sighted but nevertheless mandatory straitjacket of ‘efficiency’ that the neoliberal utilitarian ideology carries with it, for example through the appraisal and remuneration of research projects. Even though the marketdriven perspective of the ‘knowledge economy’ may over time prove deadly for our disciplines – the historical or philosophical research traditions within educational research – it is not without danger when it comes to the seemingly ‘relevant’ (and thus ‘correct’) research in education. As Labaree shows with considerable persuasiveness, this is a field where not everything 473 After the Ten Commandments … the Sermon? that shines is gold, and a lot, an awful lot, of that kind of research fails to fulfil its purpose, something with which I am compelled...