Check Your Language! Political Correctness, Censorship, and Performativity in Education
Notice bibliographique
Résumé
During the 2003 Annual Meeting of the Philosophy of Education Society, the role and position of philosophical inquiry in the field of education were much discussed.In many North American faculties or schools of education, philosophy departments are shrinking or disappearing, and philosophers are asked to justify conceptual work in a time when "data-driven policy" requires applicable empirical research.Yet it is precisely because of the enormous trust placed in "scientific" research in education that philosophical inquiry, for instance into the conceptual bases or ethical implications of the research, is important today.The view that philosophy serves a function in the analysis and clarification of the concepts underpinning "scientific" research is not new, of course, and in past decades has been defended especially by analytic philosophers.In this essay, I take not an analytic but a poststructuralist philosophical perspective to argue that philosophical inquiry is valuable for a critical reading of and response to educational theorists' and researchers' claims said to be supported by research.In particular, I examine claims by the Canadian Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship (SAFS) and American educational historian Diane Ravitch, that restricting the language that can be used by educators and in educational materials constitutes unacceptable censorship. 1 Both the SAFS and Ravitch argue for freedom of language use in education, but neither grounds the research in an analysis of the central concept: language.A closer look reveals that both the SAFS's and Ravitch's claims are based on a representational conception of language.This view of language as neutral mirror and messenger does not do justice to the complex effects of language use and restrictions thereof.I propose that a discursive view of language offers a stronger framework for analyzing the problems of censorship of speech and writing in education.In particular the concept of performativity, as elaborated by J.L. Austin, Jacques Derrida, and Judith Butler, offers a nuanced way of understanding the force of linguistic acts, and the problems surrounding censorship.If speaking and writing are considered as acts, that is, if it is acknowledged that words do not just mean something, but also do something, the evidence solicited and presented by the SAFS and Ravitch does not unequivocally support their conclusions that attempts to prohibit or change certain language in education are misplaced. ACADEMIC FREEDOM: FREEDOM OF WHAT?In July 2003, the graduate students in my faculty received a disturbing email from the SAFS.The message read as follows:A major Canadian newspaper is considering an article or a sequence of articles on cases of indoctrination on Canadian university campuses.What they have in mind is to describe incidents where students have felt intimidated to adopt a particular ideological viewpoint
Récupéré en direct depuis OpenAlex et désinversé. Les résumés ne sont pas conservés dans cette base de données : les index inversés représentent 8,6 Go des 9,3 Go de texte de la base, et le serveur dispose de 13 Go libres.
Comment cette classification a été obtenuedéplier
Prédiction machine sur la base complète
Imitation des enseignantsNi prévalence calibrée, ni vérité terrain. Validation humaine à venir. Le volet Gemma est une étiquette directe du modèle pour chaque travail de la base, lue sur la notice réduite au titre. Le volet Codex est un classifieur appris des 10 348 étiquettes directes de Codex et calibré sur les taux pondérés de l'échantillon; les champs sans appui suffisant ne portent aucun appel Codex. Le mode candidate est l'union des deux volets; le consensus est leur intersection. Ces sorties portent le statut machine_predicted_unvalidated et ne sont pas des étiquettes humaines.
Scores du classifieur distillé par catégorie (deux têtes)
| Catégorie | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Métarecherche | 0,003 | 0,020 |
| Méta-épidémiologie (sens strict) | 0,000 | 0,000 |
| Méta-épidémiologie (sens large) | 0,000 | 0,000 |
| Bibliométrie | 0,001 | 0,001 |
| Études des sciences et des technologies | 0,009 | 0,025 |
| Communication savante | 0,009 | 0,009 |
| Science ouverte | 0,001 | 0,003 |
| Intégrité de la recherche | 0,003 | 0,004 |
| Charge utile insuffisante (le modèle a refusé de juger) | 0,010 | 0,002 |
Scores machine (provisoires)
Les deux têtes enseignantes du modèle étudiant, lues sur ce travail. Un score ordonne la base pour la relecture; il n'affirme jamais une catégorie, et le statut de validation accompagne chaque rangée tel quel.
Scores de référence d'un modèle non mature (critères de maturité non atteints, 7 itérations). Un score ordonne; il n'affirme jamais une catégorie.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · tel quel depuis la passe de notation : score_only signifie que le nombre peut ordonner les travaux, et qu'aucune étiquette de catégorie n'en découleClassification
machine, non validéePrédiction automatique; un appel candidat d’une seule source (Gemma direct ou Codex distillé), pas un consensus.
Le détail, modèle par modèle et score par score, se trouve en fin de page sous « Comment cette classification a été obtenue ».