THE “MISÈRE DE L’ÉDUCATION” IN THE AGE OF CRISIS

Over twenty years after the publication of La misère du monde(Bourdieu 1993), Pierre Bourdieu’s work is still highly relevant. The social order that has led to a proliferation of the “small miseries” of the world seems to have prevailed: Pierre Bourdieu’s micro-sociological essay highlighted the symptoms of a disease that has gotten worse in the past few years, and prophetically predicted many of its current consequences. This article aims at analysing the consequences on the educational field where practices of “service-sector Taylorism” are emerging alongside the usual mechanisms of social reproduction. These practices are allegedly inspired by meritocracy, but actually aimed at the utilitarian exploitation of human resources. The students’ potential is thus trivialised, dumbed down to a few measurable variables onwhich teaching and selecting are based, according to a view that treats humans as merely means to an end. Thus, by concealing the social fabric in which individuals are rooted, any failure can be surreptitiously blamed on individual responsibilities. Sociological research has the crucial task of revealing the peculiar logic of this kind of mechanisms, more and more common in several fields, and their ideological implications, typical of neoliberalism: because, as Bourdieu says, “what the social world has done, it can, armed with this knowledge, undo” (Bourdieu 1993d, 629)

皮埃尔·布尔迪厄（Pierre Bourdieu）的《世界的苦难》(La misère du monde，布尔迪厄1993)出版二十余年后，其学术研究依然具有极高的现实意义。催生了世间诸多‘微小苦难’蔓延的社会秩序似乎仍占据主导地位：布尔迪厄的微观社会学随笔曾精准点明一种社会病症的诸多表征，而该病症在近年非但未得到遏制，反而愈演愈烈；他更前瞻性地预判了诸多如今已然应验的后果。本文旨在剖析此种态势对教育场域的影响：当下教育领域中，伴随传统社会再生产机制的运行，服务业泰勒制（service-sector Taylorism）式的实践模式正逐渐浮现。这类实践表面上以英才遴选制（meritocracy）为宗旨，实则旨在对人力资源进行功利性剥削。在此逻辑下，学生的个体潜能被矮化消解，仅被简化为若干可量化的变量——教学与遴选活动均围绕这些变量展开，背后秉持的是将人异化为达成目标之工具的功利主义观念。如此一来，这套逻辑通过遮蔽个体所嵌入的社会结构脉络，得以将个体遭遇的任何失败，悄然归咎于其自身的责任缺失。社会学研究的核心使命，正是揭示这类在诸多领域愈发普遍的运作机制背后的独特逻辑，以及其背后典型的新自由主义（neoliberalism）意识形态意涵——正如布尔迪厄所言："社会世界所造就的一切，依托此种认知便可以被消解"（布尔迪厄1993d，629）