What makes school so resistant to change.

1. WHAT MAKES SCHOOL SO
RESISTANT TO CHANGE?
The Wittgensteinian Approach.

2. Learning and school are two completely separate and
unrelated concepts.

3. Learning is a state of mind. School is a societal and political
entity.

4. School is intended to provide circumstances which are
appropriate to determine marks, scores, grades and degrees
rather than to learn.

5. These are needed to regulate the students´ progression to
their higher education, adulthood professions, social
relationships and economical status.

6. The curve of Gauss illuminates effectively how school gives
protection against alienation and social segregation.

7. Schoolwork is subordinated to this.

8. Modern societies are completely dependent and in many ways
thoroughly built on the segregational services given by the
school.

9. Need for these services gives rise to a collection of self-
sustaining and self-reinforcing feedback loops which make it
very difficult to develop school in any meaningful sense.

10. We have been made to believe that what is happening at
school is learning.

11. But what is happening at school is school.

12. It is not possible to discuss learning and school in the same
context in a sensible manner at all.

13. This only ends up to confusion reducing itself to articulation of
nonsense.

14. What makes school so resistant to change does not need
other explanations.

15. What in school is resistant to change does not need
explanations neither.
Pasi Vilpas
Teacher in Biology and Geography
Sotunki Upper Secondary School
City of Vantaa
Finland