EDUCATION AS HUMAN PRODUCTION: TOWARDS THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF SERVICE SERVITUDE
Abstract
The article is devoted to a complex philosophical and sociological analysis of the essential transformation of education as an institution under the dominance of neoliberal rationality. The authors analyze the deep ontological and axiological shifts that lead to a fundamental change in the purpose of the educational process - from the “production of the human” to the production of simulacra. The article proves the thesis that modern education, subordinated to the logic of the market, undergoes a radical reduction: from the process of forming a free, autonomous and critically thinking subjectivity (Bildung) it is transformed into a mechanism for producing “human capital”, and later – into a factory for the production of signs and imitations of knowledge. It describes how the university, which historically was an agora for the search for truth, is transformed into an integral part of the “society of the spectacle”, where the real content of education is supplanted by its denunciatory representation. The authors analyze the specific mechanisms of this transformation. The article argues that these mechanisms lead to the formation of a new anthropological figure – the “consumer student”, whose subjectivity is captured and redefined by the powerful “apparatus” of neoliberal power. The authors pay special attention to the deconstruction of the hegemonic discourse of educational reforms, which operates with the categories of “efficiency”, “competitiveness” and “quality”. The authors contrast it with the strategy of “weak thought” (pensiero debole) of G. Vattimo. In conclusion, the authors argue that the attempt to subordinate education to the logic of service servitude is ontologically impossible and leads to anthropological catastrophe. This impossibility is based on four fundamental principles highlighted by the authors. The article is a call for the revival of the ontological mission of education as a practice of freedom, openness and shared existence, aimed at the production of the human in its existential fullness.
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