Prof. Dr. Gesine Schwan Educating Elites as a Problem of Democratic Politics BIGSSS, Bremen, October 2008
I.
Introduction
What's your puzzle? What do you really want to find out? This question is asked at the preliminary discussion of virtually every scientific work: from proseminars to doctoral theses. The subject of today's lecture, too, demands clarification of where the problem mentioned actually lies. I see three ways of defining it. One aspect could lie in the tense relationship between the elite and democracy. Does educating elites run contrary to democratic equality? A second could be formulated in the following double question: What is the objective of education and training in democracy? And what role can educating elites play here? And finally: What can and should democratic politics contribute to this? I will do my best to deal with all three questions, one after another. One of the topical starting points of the current debate about educating elites was probably the announcement by the federal government about four years ago of its intention to advance innovation in Germany by specifically promoting certain elite universities capable of competing on the global stage. This triggered a fierce theoretical and political controversy over whether such a goal is compatible with social democratic politics, and especially with the structure of German universities and the way in which responsibility for education is distributed between the federal government on the one hand and the Länder (federal states) on the other. At the end of 2004, the programme initially fell victim to a dispute in the Federalism Commission − but has been resurrected and is working now. It is quite evident that a whole series of political tradeoffs unrelated to the issue in hand played an important role in this dispute. I do not intend to go into this aspect any further here, but will rather focus on the questions relating to our subject that I mentioned at the beginning.
II.
Does educating elites run contrary to democratic equality?
The elite is the antithesis of democracy. This how Oskar Negt pointedly phrased it in an article for the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper at the beginning of last year. He also advanced important arguments against educating elites. Indeed, it is important to heed the dangers that are associated with elites: the tendency towards privileges and social segregation which undermines the equal dignity of all citizens, their equal right to political emancipation (i.e. majority), to security and to a selfdetermined life; furthermore, the danger of promoting mental or social ossification and favouring a political culture of "the leader and the led", i.e. standing in the way of a general culture of democratic accountability and political participation. Not to mention the temptations even mentioned by a
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supporter of elite universities such as Paul Nolte: the vanity of wanting to belong to the elite; or the risk of falling into mental inertia because you belong to the better ones per se, wield de facto prestige and societal power, and consequently no longer really need to learn. For − to quote Karl Deutsch − power means no longer having to learn. It is a good idea to clearly express these contradictions to liberal democracy – and to keep them in mind if our intention is to think about educating elites while simultaneously holding on to the normative framework of democracy.
Apart from which, German elites did not exactly cover themselves with glory in the 20th century − to put it mildly. Incidentally, neither did the other nations all the time. Neither a sophisticated intellectual education nor great artistic or athletic talents, nor the habit of traditionally belonging to those who bear responsibility, necessarily generate what Aristotle called "wisdom": a virtue combining moderation, discernment, intellectual courage and a sense of moral responsibility. We should, therefore, be cautious.
On the other hand, historical experience shows that functional elites have developed in every society and under every political system up to now. Furthermore, observations of the political and social transformation to democracy show that former elites develop astonishing staying power after a change of system, and that it is moreover difficult, if not impossible, to get by entirely without elites who have been "tainted" by the prior regime, if what is morally good or convincing about democracy is not to be lost because of the lack of skill and inexperience of the new players. Transformation studies also suggest that political change is better in the long run if it develops in a "bottom-up" fashion, or rather that it must be supported by all if it is to be successful. But when you are starting up and need a coherent strategy, you are de facto dependent on elites, or perhaps should I say on leadership. In other words, you simply cannot ignore their education.
After all, we have all made the experience that people have different talents and aptitudes. Of course, "different" does not mean that elites inevitably have to develop with a spontaneous association of superiority or inferiority. De facto, however, up to now hardly any major society has managed to preserve this diversity without it developing and consolidating socially into a hierarchy of power, wealth and, above all, esteem. Even so, theoretically at least, the diversity of talent and differences in performance do not preclude democratic equality − if they do not ossify into privileges.
This brings us to a point where we can state our original question more precisely: how can differences, how can the democratically legitimate, potentially successful and enriching diversity of talents and abilities be optimally encouraged in such a way that both individuals and societies as a whole derive benefit from them, without counteracting the above-mentioned democratic equalities, without reinforcing social ranks? How can we use education to promote diverse forms of excellence or "top
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achievements" and bearers of responsibility as a democratically legitimate and valuable equivalent to the education of elites with its tendency to favour privileges?
First we have to define the term "diverse top achievements". "Top" here means the highest possible performance measured, on the one hand, relative to the potential of individuals and institutions and, on the other, relative to the normative and political-economic-social needs of democratic societies. As a minimum these requirements include a sense of responsibility and justice, trustworthiness based on technical expertise and truthfulness, and an openness to issues outside of one's own specific field. In other words, the thought here is not the naive idea of an objectively valid criterion by means of which "top achievement" could easily be determined.
The above-mentioned requirements are so easy to say, and theoretically they sound self-evident. But it is much more difficult to implement them in reality. Because not only in Germany we observe that the so-called performance elites frequently investigated by empirical social research quickly dispense of these properties once they have reached a secure position. Then there is a great temptation to think that one's own position already guarantees the truth of one's own opinion and one's own political or societal view, and that one therefore no longer needs to expose oneself to further challenges. As a professor, how often are you declared an expert by the media, and interviewed as such, so that you end up also regarding yourself as an expert. Above all, how often do I experience high-ranking decision-makers in all kinds of fields − culture, politics, economics − who regard their professional perspective as the sole authoritative view and are not at all curious to hear deviating ideas. Precisely this self-isolation, which often combines ignorance with distrust, is a grave problem for a democratic society's openness and its ability to reform. Herfried Münkler pointed this out recently (Tagesspiegel, 20 January 2004).
And, in an extensive analysis, Michael Hartmann has found out that there have been absolutely no signs of a social opening of societal elites, particularly the economic elites, over the past 20-30 years in Germany. On the contrary, the spectrum of origins has tended to become narrower since the social opening of education in the nineteen-seventies. What counts in corporate personnel decisions is not so much a person's performance, but their social habitus, which is learned in the bourgeois family and gives a person a considerable amount of self-assurance in social intercourse. If you become accustomed as a child to sharing the lunch table at home with "big shots", you will deal with them differently in later life than if you have only ever seen them from afar or on television. The French sociologist Bourdieu has submitted vivid empirical studies on this subject.
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So what kind of education will shape key decision-makers in such a way that they do not forget their responsibility and their broad obligation, are open to issues outside their own specific field, and keep on making the effort to be open to deviating experiences and goals, despite having a good position?
III.
1. What is the objective of education and training in democracy?
Generally speaking, education and training must be certain of both the long-term, normative democratic framework and the empirical challenges we are going to face in the foreseeable future. I would like to draw conclusions from this for education and training at university, on which I feel more competent to speak than on the school sector. What educational goal should the university devote itself to under democratic conditions?
Apart from the fact that these days this question is often regarded as superfluous in relation to democracy, because the economic relevance of science and the university − particularly to the labour market − is usually the almost exclusive focus of attention, education is traditionally presented as the non-economic goal of the university and often played off against professional training. Then it is a matter of pure personality development versus training for the labour market. As a rule this is usually coupled with the warning that today the university can no longer educate people just for science or scholarship − as if it had ever done so in such a restricted sense. Admittedly, the profound uncertainty surrounding the future nature of the labour market has increasingly blurred the goal of training for a profession in recent years. We no longer know what the labour market will look like in the future or which professions training should be gearing itself to. Furthermore, the labour market does not come upon us like immutable destiny; it can also be influenced. Let me give you an example. Global competitive pressure can trigger a range of different responses from business enterprises. They can relocate plants manufacturing labour-intensive products abroad where wages are cheaper; or, instead, they can intensify work here in a Taylorist manner, replace workers by automation, or, finally, turn to work- and innovation-centred production concepts
and processes, e.g. production islands, box and star assembly and group work. According to the expert
literature I have read, the latter seems to be the most promising of these methods. However, it demands a high degree of qualification from the employees. The Italian company Fiat planned to introduce such an innovation at its new plant in Melfi in the nineteen-nineties but had to scale the project down considerably because there were not enough qualified workers locally available. Fiat therefore geared its operations at the plant to a significantly lower percentage of qualified staff, with the result that highly qualified people will now be less in demand in the future, too, the work is monotonous for a large proportion of the staff, and a social division is developing between less-skilled
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and highly skilled employees (von Lüde 1998:162 ff). If we want to avoid such developments, then a highly qualified form of training based essentially on autonomy, creativity and a sense of responsibility can still be meaningful, even in situations when no concrete application is yet visible on the labour market, because it offers innovative entrepreneurs an opportunity to try out new ideas in the first place.
This example is an indication of the gradually growing understanding that good, or shall we say "sustainable" training by no means runs contrary to education. For because the future is open, it is increasingly the case that it is not technical skills, or even acquiring information, that matters, but rather the ability of individuals to work out categories of their own for the overwhelming amounts of information that are available, for the overall "world experience", in order to get beyond the information and arrive at reflected knowledge, develop new ideas, take initiatives and implement them in cooperation with others.
All these steps require a high degree of reflection. On the one hand this relates to the methodological and theoretical foundation of information and knowledge. This alone demands a lot of staying power and above all patience in view of the uncertainty that is involved in every method and every theory. For this reason there is simply no such thing as secure, easily manageable knowledge: the respective prerequisites on which it is based always have to be taken into account. This applies even to the smallest observation. As the philosopher and knowledge theorist Günter Abel so aptly puts it: "There is more to observation than what you observe" (Abel 1999:133). In my view, innumerable pleas for the knowledge society, even from highly official sources, show a shameful degree of naivety in terms of epistemology and science theory, certainly when measured by university standards, to say nothing of state-of-the-art science theory. The naivety is often implicitly hidden in the decree-like choice of words. As though knowledge were something you can wield like a poker.
On the other hand, reflection relates to coming to an understanding with the people with whom I am seeking knowledge, with whom I exchange thoughts and cooperate. People who are not accustomed to reflecting on the determinants of their own thoughts and actions find it difficult to communicate with others on the issue concerned or to cooperate with them in complex contexts.
Reflection, as briefly described here, is a prerequisite of a form of training that is both open to the future and able to survive in the future. At the same time it is also an essential element of education, which since the Enlightenment has been conceived as a process and objective of personality development. It is of key importance in this context that educated people are active themselves, e.g. via self-reflection, through which they develop into a moral entity. Education is not a handy or prestige-assuring good – used by educated Philistines, as Nietzsche sarcastically called the educated
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classes; rather, it is continuous exertion through which people recognize the world, acquire a moral orientation, and act responsibly according to it. In reflection they compare every experience with it, i.e. looking back at themselves and at previous experiences, aware of the fact that there is no such thing as complete knowledge on which they can simply rely and about which they would no longer need to communicate with others. The everyday understanding is that progressing from an individual piece of information to knowledge seems to achieve an increase in certainty about what is said or assumed. Yet the contrary is the case: certainty is characterized by the paradoxical underscoring of the fundamental uncertainty of knowledge and the limits of its validity. A knowing person is more aware of the limits and fundamental obstacle vis-à-vis any presumption of certainty better than someone who is only informed. In other words, being aware of uncertainty marks the progress of knowledge. Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason", the "Copernican turning point" in epistemology, which is so far ahead of so many orators on the knowledge society, provide the foundation on which this understanding of education is based. This means that it is more modern and above all more enlightened than many pseudo-progressive positions which, without reflection, proclaim the information society as research findings or even as a goal (cf. Wolff Metternich 1998:207 ff).
When the need for lifelong learning is currently justified by references to the short "half life" of knowledge, then this reflects a degree of thoughtlessness which it is important to uncover if we want to consider and determine the future objectives of the university under conditions of computer credulity and floods of information. Because truly reflected knowledge does not become invalid after three months in the same way that information about a bus timetable becomes invalid once the schedule has changed. The goal must therefore be to develop the kind of knowledge that is enduring because it has been reflected on by the knowing person, knowledge for which the knowing persons themselves are responsible, knowledge that cannot be packed as ratios into boxes linked by arrows faking causality, but which is turned into reality in the course of reflection based on experience and is dependent on permanent communication with itself and with other people, communication that is also always open to revision. Plato's dialogues and Aristotle's metaphysics have remained topical for more than two thousand years because profound thinking, combined with debates with counterarguments, cuts out a lot of detours and retains its validity, even though it admittedly cannot be brought to a final conclusion on principle, i.e. this validity is always relative, or rather relational, but tenable for this reason.
The indispensably political dimension of university education and training
If, with a view to the future and especially in view of the rapid pace of technological change, education and training no longer represent fundamental opposites, then the question still arises as to
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whether the broader political dimension of the understanding of education briefly outlined here, which couples education with moral and civil responsibility, will remain a significant factor for the future of the university. Is science not notoriously "neutral"? At least we often say this, claiming to refer to Max Weber. This is a misunderstanding, of course, because Max Weber's concern was only to identify the value judgments that inevitably find their way into every scientific study, not to claim their universal validity. This does not only apply to the humanities and social sciences, by the way. The methods of natural science and medicine (if we want to include the latter as a separate science) are also always based on preconceptions about reality or people which include value judgments, if only by excluding further-reaching issues and segments of reality or possible causal links from the investigation in order to protect the reliability of a proven methodological process.
So must we also define the aims of university politically? Is this even possible? Does not the logic of economic globalization force us to forego political agreement, democracy, freedom or justice for the sake of economic efficiency, self-assertion and survival? Or to put it more drastically: the enlightened understanding of education contains an idea of civil politics, of citizens acting politically, i.e. in a way that shows responsibility for the community, which was born within the framework of the nation-state. Have these ideas not become obsolete, indeed impossible, as a result of globalization?
These questions are by no means academic, divorced from reality, but very real, especially when it comes to training top-performing decision-makers and people who are to hold responsibility. Yet there is no purely declaratory, let alone binding reply to these questions. From his perspective of system theory, the astute sociologist Niklas Luhmann gives politics no chance of a future. The political scientist Fritz Scharpf has contradicted this view − but not simply with theoretical or empirical arguments based on what is existing, but above all out of the normatively, perhaps even morally justified drive not to simply allow the problems that weigh upon us, or are in store for us, to run their course, but to shape conditions despite all the difficulties. However, he attached a condition to the validity of his reply − that it remains possible to engage in politics in general and democratic politics (which is the issue here) in particular, i.e. that it remains possible to shape developments that affect us all by discussion and agreement. This condition is the ability of multilingualism, or to put it in a more scientifically precise way, "multilinguality". What is meant here is the ability to simultaneously know a lot about several areas of reality and society and to speak their different "languages" (Luhmann would refer to "codes"), because otherwise we cannot communicate, cannot understand the situations and experiences of others, but talk at cross purposes.
Moreover, multilingualism alone makes it possible to prevent the inevitable specialization of our knowledge and our fields of activity from leading to such a narrowing of the respective reality horizon that it results in distortions of the truth and a veritably structural irresponsibility, because we can no
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longer grasp the foreseeable consequences of our thoughts and deeds. To use the subtle irony of Thomas Mann, we then become "grenzenlos borniert", and that can cost us dear. So if we do not want to distort reality, but do want to continue exerting influence on the world in which we live, then we must become increasingly "multilingual".
So could the civil-political dimension of the understanding of education which is derived from the Enlightenment today still be not only a possible, but actually a necessary component of university education and thus an objective of the university? Yes, if it is important to us to ward off the dangers of partial blindness and structural irresponsibility; if we accept the idea that survival on this Earth is tied to moral and political conditions such as freedom and justice, if we are to curb rampant violence − freedom and justice for all, because we can no longer cut ourselves off; yes, if we recall that the further development of the kind of liberal democracy that demands a minimum of justice represents the prerequisite for the survival of all of us in a common world. This would thus be a fundamental and comprehensive objective to which the economic efficiency of the university and its technologization would have to be subordinate.
Does this apply despite the fact that the nation-state is increasingly limited in what it can politically decide and achieve? Yes, particularly for this reason! For, although liberal democracy as a political form is tied to a place and time, because otherwise politics cannot be legitimized, the location of decision-making authority does not necessarily have to be identical with the nation-state. There is much to suggest that decision-making areas will "unravel" or become distributed between the suprastate level on the one hand and on the regional level on the other, and become intertwined as a form of governance whose players, apart from the traditionally politically legitimized organizations, will be the major international organizations, multinational corporations and civil society (NGOs). In this complex web of governance, the success of democratic politics will depend on the extent to which the problems are addressed and decided in civil responsibility – by people who have learned to look beyond their own interests, their personal environment, their profession, their specialist field or their philosophy of life; to put themselves into other people's position and to empathize; to already come to agreements with them "on the spot" and find viable solutions; the more independently − without waiting for a nod from above − the better.
It therefore seems to me that the comprehensive objective of the future university in a democracy is the ability to communicate and cooperate in a diverse sense: on the one hand the cognitive insight into the prerequisites of our knowledge, thoughts and actions, of the reflected knowledge of different areas of reality and science, and of interest in other historical experiences and cultural influences; and on the other hand the ability, the imagination and the willingness to empathize with other people's different ways of thinking and to act together with them in a spirit of freedom and justice. It is no
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coincidence that words like understanding and communication strike both a moral chord and a seemingly purely intellectual-cognitive chord. They are both of vital importance. Because on the one hand communication involves understanding new things − their logic, their inner structure, their consequences, etc. − i.e. research's primal field; and on the other hand it is also becoming increasingly necessary for life, indeed for survival, to come to an agreement with other people, to meet them halfway with perfectly clear ideas, but with a willingness to arrive at equitable solutions in the event of conflicts. In turn, this can only be done by not remaining encapsulated in our own area of knowledge and life, but, reflecting on our own world, also being good at other things. The relationship between the oft-proclaimed "knowledge management" and the ability to communicate and cooperate is similar to that between bowling and chess, although the latter is less artistic, sporty and above all fun than bowling.
2. What role can educating elites play here? The ideas developed up to now are not aimed at educating elites in the sense that the above-mentioned educational objectives should only apply to the pick of the students, leaving the so-called broad masses to be trained by a more repetitive acquisition of knowledge with a narrower perspective. Such an idea would be neither realistic nor in line with the normative model of democracy. Claims that the potential for intelligence and communication is fundamentally confined to a limited percentage of society have presented no empirical evidence up to now − indeed, this would be methodologically difficult. They usually stem from day-to-day experience in mass universities whose specific structure itself prevents them from unlocking the potential skills and abilities in young people's minds − especially given the great diversities in socialization. Conversely, studies like the PISA study show that top achievements of the kind defined above are most likely to be generated by a system of education that is broad and inclusive, i.e. not geared towards sorting.
Hence, my first (only seemingly paradoxical) conclusion is that elite education as a top achievement succeeds best − and is then fully compatible with the ideal of democracy − if the social base of people to be educated in this way is kept as broad as possible. Of course, individual, personal communication – a basic precondition of successful educational processes − must then also be structurally assured, especially financially. I know how difficult this is. However, it would be wrong to become resigned and draw the conclusion from the underfunding of education in Germany that this is only possible for a small proportion of superior students, and then to "sell" this as a satisfactory normative model for democracy. If − despite all proclamations of internationalization − the primary aim of the transition to the bachelor and master system in Germany is get the bulk of students through (and out of) university as quickly as possible, and then to really train the few that remain as an academic elite, then this is certainly more convenient and more pleasant for professors, but from the point of view of educating for democracy it is short-sighted and damaging.
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A second conclusion focuses on the growing current tendency to design the education of elites as a specialization without simultaneously targeting the kind of "multilingualism" and the "ability to communicate and cooperate" I described above. The reasons for this are many and varied and largely part of the global trend towards founding science careers on specialization. It is difficult to make headway against this trend, because the general globalization cudgel is quickly wielded to deal with criticism against it. This argument runs as follows: we must face up to global competition and practically follow it – even against our better judgement – because we have no choice. It seems to me that we often react too short-sightedly and with a lack of courage in this context. After all, the damage being done by intellectually limited specializationism is becoming increasingly manifest, and the need to politically shape global competition increasingly obvious. At the beginning of the Economic Forum of 2005 in Davos, the participants were asked which issue was most important to them. The answer was: 1. Fighting poverty, 2. Shaping fairer globalization, 3. Precautions against climate change. There is little doubt that these lofty goals can quickly recede into the background in the boardrooms of multinational corporations and bureaucracies in the cut-and-thrust of day-to-day business. But the cause is not hopeless. And the more that social responsibility and "multilingualism" are seen as top achievements when it comes to societal recognition, the better the chances of a moving from the current de facto governance to democratic good governance. Unfortunately, those who are most zealous in their call for elite education are not exactly exemplary in their behaviour when it comes to curiosity, openness and the ability to communicate and cooperate.
IV.
What can and should democratic politics contribute to this?
Democratic politics can probably contribute less to a successful democratic education than we expect. In Germany, government influence at the national level is limited – by the division of responsibility for education with the federal states (Länder). The dispute in the Federalism Commission made that clear. Only in the field of research does the federal government have political influence, and here, it seems to me, economic and technological criteria carry greater weight than political or democratictheory criteria. This also applies to the federal government's proposal to specifically promote a small number of elite universities so that they are visible and can keep pace in global competition. Some universities have − understandably − placed their hopes in this proposal. But more and more the selected universities discover the problems for the continuity of their profiles and their interdisciplinary cooperation.
I do believe, however, that the federal government should invest – and be able to invest – more sustainably than in the past in university research, rather than concentrating on non-university research
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institutions. In this research funding, democratically meaningful interdisciplinarity – "multilingualism" and the "ability to communicate and cooperate" – could be put among the top criteria. I am less convinced by the idea that a few elite universities could have a kind of "trickle-down" effect or serve as "benchmarks" for the others. The individual universities must define their own way as they feel appropriate in their circumstances. That they can learn from good role models is a self-evident truth.
If raising quality depends on the universities' own ability to act, giving them more true autonomy would be an important political contribution by the Länder to a democratic education. Supervision by Länder ministries should be reduced to a minimum − e.g. to target agreements and legal supervision − and otherwise transferred to university advisory boards representing scientific, cultural and economic (but not only or predominantly economic) authorities. If every initiative and most personnel decisions no longer got bogged down in protracted negotiations and statements to the respective ministry, universities would probably be able to generate much more motivation and willingness to experiment than they do now. And the respective Land could − possibly − lay down the democratic criterion of the "ability to communicate and cooperate" and "multilingualism" in addition to regional interests in the target agreements. Viadrina University has turned into that status thanks to its transformation into a foundation university.
Admittedly, considerations of democratic theory or democratic politics are not playing any recognizable role on either of these two levels at the present time. Indeed, this is also the case in the universities themselves – and in the Association of Universities and Other Higher Education Institution in Germany (Hochschulrektorenkonferenz). In view of the grave financial problems and the dominant thinking in categories of competition and the market, this body focuses exclusively on measures that can yield positional, financial or reputational gains, and quick and visible successes. Most decision-makers in higher education lose little sleep over whether our universities are educating democratic citizens.
On the other hand, I know from many conversations with holders of scholarships from the German National Academic Foundation (whose tutor I was for many years – and theoretically still am) just how important it is, specifically for these "elite" students, to be free to look beyond the realm of their own subjects – and that the Foundation encourages such a broad view. But this is not a defining principle in the universities themselves, despite the promotion of interdisciplinary Research Training
Groups and Collaborative Research Centres by the German Research Foundation (DFG).
My former university, Viadrina, which has been converted into a foundation university in the course of this year, is currently attempting to combine institutional autonomy, internationalization and sounder financing. The Land has agreed to this project. The federal government, together with the
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Polish government (because of our unique role in what is known as Foreign Cultural Policy), has pledged a capital base of approx. €55 million. The annual interest income from this is to a large extend to complement Viadrina's (small!) budget from the Land government. Following the Lower Saxony model (but hopefully providing greater autonomy), supervision by the Land ministry will be transferred to a Board of Trustees. There has been positive feedback from Lower Saxony as regards experience with this idea.
Viadrina University hopes to be able to attract more private donors, also by dint of the greater independence we have attained. I expect this to provide more financial assistance than tuition fees. We should in general place more emphasis on such private donors, also in the public education sector, in view of the huge inheritances likely in the future. Of course, neither better funding nor greater autonomy would promote democratic top achievements, unless the universities themselves − from students to professors – have an interest in this. I currently see a major problem here, because even the universities have almost completely adopted the current market discourse and are making little use of their authority to think independently. But then perhaps even universities can learn new tricks ...
In this spirit, I would like to thank the University of Heidelberg for inviting me and for explicitly raising today's theme. I look forward to a lively and controversial discussion.
I thank you very much for the opportunity to present my ideas on elite education in a democracy and do wish you the best possible results for your endeavour which is to start this year!
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