The aim of this research is to develop an empirically informed conceptualization of the way in which the world is presented in school classrooms, and to study the ways in which students (learn to) relate to this world. By conducting fieldwork in schools in Belgium, Ecuador, Mexico, and the DR Congo, this research aims to intervene in discussions about the future of school education and it aims to stress continuities that exist between schools in different contexts. Instead of critiquing the school from an external perspective as a place where (social and economic) inequalities are (re)created (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1970), or as an institution that socializes children in a dominant worldview (Freire, 2005), this project approaches the school from an internal perspective, and it aims to develop a pedagogical vocabulary to talk about the school and about the form of learning that takes place in it (Masschelein & Simons, 2013).

Building on the work of Masschelein and Simons, this research assumes that school learning is a specific kind of learning that is characterized by the scholastic conditions of freedom and equality. Scholastic freedom, version Masschelein and Simons (2019), refers to the assumption that learning is radically contingent: schools act on the assumption that human beings have no destiny in life, and that they are able to give themselves direction. Related is the condition of scholastic equality: rather than projecting equality into a future that might not be realized, schools draw equality into the present by acting on the assumption of the equality of intelligences (Rancière, 1991). When they act on these assumptions of freedom and equality, schools provide a time and place where students are able to study and to relate to the world.

The question that needs further theoretical (and empirical) investigation is: what world is brought to school and how is this presentation of the world related to the scholastic conditions of freedom and equality? With Auroux (1994) and Stiegler (2010), this research argues that at school, the world is made available through grammars. A grammar, for Auroux, is a particular technical equipment that objectifies and presents language in a new form (language is exteriorized and materialized) so that meta-linguistic knowledge can be created. Stiegler (2010) extends Auroux' thought beyond linguistics and he understands the process of grammatization as the technical process by which the flows of the lifeworld are broken down into separate, discrete gramme. Through processes of grammatization, the flows of the lifeworld, the temporal world that appears during its disappearing, are materialized, and presented in a new form (Stiegler, 2013). Inspired by this and relating the word “grammar” to its Greek root of graphein, to grind, track, scratch (see Vlieghe 2016), this project understands a grammar as a particular scholastic “writing” of the lifeworld. Scholastic grammars disclose worlds by writing them, and as such, “distinctions are made, naming becomes possible”, and worlds are shared and “can be talked about” (Simons and Masschelein 2021: 91). At school, the lifeworld is presented in a new (“written”) form so that students can study and relate to this world. Grammars cause an (aesthetic) rupture with the lifeworld (see Rancière, 2004) and they present – in the sense of “making something present” – this world in a new form.

The central research question is: how (in what form and in what way) is the world presented in the classroom and how is this presentation of the world related to the scholastic conditions of freedom and equality? By empirically researching this in different schools, this research aims to study from the inside a key characteristic of what makes school learning “schoolish”.

Inspired by Mol (2021), this study is an exercise in the field of empirical philosophy. Empirical philosophy not only contributes to making philosophy more empirical, but also to making empirical observations more philosophical (see also Ingold, 2018: 4). By empirically researching the specificities of scholastic education, and by paying attention to how learning is enacted in the classroom, this research aims to enrich philosophical considerations about education. This project, then, focuses on what happens when the old generations (both teachers and subject matters) present the world to the new generation, thus allowing for the continuity of life through the constant tension of conservation and renewal (Arendt, 1996). This project studies the school as a territory, understood as a gathering of paths, directions, landmarks, passageways, and artifacts that interact with persons and with narratives so that a delineated space is created. The school is approached as a territory wherein the scholastic conditions of freedom and equality are enacted and shaped. Drawing on this, this project addresses the research questions from a cartographically inspired ethnographic perspective that aims to map the school territory. An ethnographic perspective (Rockwell, 2009), enriched with cartographic techniques (Iconoclasistas, 2020), highlights not only the material/immaterial specificities of the school (think of materials, gestures, practices…), but it also highlights the specificities of school learning. This study uses ethnography as a lens which helps to delineate the inquiry of a specific time and place (a group of schools/classrooms), and it also allows for a constant dialogue between the empirical observations and the theoretical and philosophical conceptualizations. The incorporation of cartography enables the observation of the multiple elements/forces (material/immaterial) that create a particular (scholastic) experience. Cartography, then, is a useful representational tool to register/record data, to analyze it and also to describe it. From this approach, the school territory is (re)presented as a multilayered composition of images (moving and static), sounds, texts (written language) and sketches that together build a map that allows for a study of the conditions that makes scholastic learning possible. The theoretical-empirical discussion will be guided by material from eight classroom groups (students from 14-15 years old) in four different countries that are each facing particular challenges (Belgium, DR Congo, Mexico and Ecuador). An hypothesis of this research is that this heterogeneous selection of places allows us to identify some continuities that exist in scholastic learning, regardless of geographical/contextual differences.

As we are approaching school education from an empirical philosophical perspective, the outcomes of the fieldwork are difficult to preestablish. Nevertheless, after the five months of observations in schools in Belgium, DR Congo, Mexico and Ecuador (observations end in May 2022), the analysis of this study will consist of a dialogue between the following (theoretical) assumptions and the empirical observations on the specificities of scholastic learning (presenting the final results in the ECER conference of 2022): -In order to allow for scholastic learning, which relies closely on Arendt’s and Ranciere’s perspective of education, the world should be presented (“made present”) in a particular way and shape. -Particular forms of enunciation (discourses and narratives) and formalization (visualizations and artifacts) are needed in order to shape the world so that students can relate to it. -The conditions of scholastic learning are not only dependent on the discourses and artifacts that shape a particular world, but also on a set of (other kinds of) specific artifacts, practices and interactions. -This presentation of the world in the form of concrete, separate and discrete elements (school subjects, themes, topics and exercises), enables students to establish a (new and emancipatory) relationship with the world. By enriching these theoretical assumptions with ethnographic material, this study articulates (1) an internal, pedagogical perspective on the school (scholè), (2) the materialization of a way of presenting a world in this school, and (3) the interactions of symbolic and material enunciations and artifacts that participate in the shaping of both the world and the possibility of studying this world at school. This articulation shapes a ground floor to address philosophical questions related to the emancipatory potential of school education and focuses on how the specificity of scholastic learning is key for this scholastic emancipation.

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