Omnia Omnium Sunt – Everything Belongs to Everybody : Knowledge as a Nonpositional Good in an Education System Governed by Human Capital Theory

Abstract: Starting from the experience of watching the role of the teacher turn into a bureaucrat, this work examines the factors dominating current education systems. It identies Human Capital Theory as a main inuence on policy and prioritization decisions in education. A central tension that results from this inuence is the fact that economic theory assumes consumer sovereignty, which dismisses many ideological and political aspects of education as paternalism. This inherent conict between economic theory and educational theory leads to an overemphasis on positional goods, goods that are limited by scarcity, over nonpositional goods, such as knowledge. Educating for positional goods is contrasted to the Spinozistic ideal of education for freedom and for increased conatus. It is then discussed how current assessment practices play a central role in cementing the current hegemony in education as governed by economic concerns. Assessment practices are found to both contribute to current trends in education as well as stabilizing the system overall making transformative change less likely. This is more specically illustrated by two particular assessment practices, namely standardized testing and assessment for learning. It concludes with a search for possible paths to meaningful change in education.