Rumbling on performativity_Frits Simon

3 councils for teachers / lecturers should be founded with right of say about educational
matters
4 the government needs to control quality of the education, the internal organization
and the quality of the staff;
5 craftsmanship and professional expertise must become leading in the way education
in organized in sectors;
6 vocational/professional education is in need of radical changes in relation with the
demands of the labour market;
7 the local or regional business community should become involved in education;
8 education should be able to realize education specified tot age and talents of
infants, schoolboys and schoolgirls;
9 to do an appeal on already retired experienced teachers to invite them to reconsider
their early retirement because quality is needed.
It is obvious that - with a slight adaptation on the first criterion - the Delta plan fulfils
the criteria of performativity (Scott, 1998). The first criterion is that reality is administered
in a simplified way in numbers. In the case of the plan I would say: reduced to
simplified processes of control and change. The second is the conviction that rational
design will prompt improvement. If one thing then the plan is a rational one and full of
ideas about improvement. The third one is an authoritarian relation between the
rulers and the ruled. It may be clear that in the plan government will be back in the
educational saddle, with more power to control than ever before. The fourth is that
there is a lack of possibilities to resist the plans. If regulated by national law, who is to
resist?
In my view a paradox of the Delta plan is that it tries to repair by means of what the
imputed damage has caused. It is not a way of breaking away of imposed criteria
within the practices of NPM or performativity, it is just the introduction of another -
maybe even more comprehensive - set of criteria. The plan can be seen an expression
of a modernistic belief in the changeability of social reality, an expression of a managerial
change temper which is criticized (Trappenburg, 2008). The plan reinforces the
myth of the manageability of educational institutions (Hooge, 2013). Cruel disappointment
may lay ahead again, given the poor results of reforms of the public sector if
based on NPM (Lapsley, 2009). The lasting dissatisfaction with education should be
seen as an omen for the recurring disappointments, because - as my research indicates
- a social reality is construed on the spot by those involved and not on a blueprint
by those far away.
Again about ‘them’
From a complex responsive process-perspective my first question regarding the Delta
plan would be why the association first wants to formalize a council for teachers /
lecturers before discussing educational matters with and among them? Why to invest
in a huge amount of policy before starting to discuss with and among professionals?
Why do present day professionals have to wait for the realization of the plan before
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