Learning Ability

And learning possibility means precisely that new, not yet determined coupling possibilities are generated. Thus the Child learns to walk upright in order to gain in this way still undetermined learning possibilities. The same through language learning and through learning to read. The same by all kinds of professional competence, which do not determine how one will behave in situations (the old error of searching for applicable knowledge), but pre-structure situational observations in such a way that one can learn quickly and therefore easily do without preconceived opinions (strict couplings).

One will not speak therefore necessarily up to the high age of "children". The medium remains bound to the distinction of children and adults, but it can supplement the terminology "Child" by others (pupils, students or finally: learners). This is ultimately only a problem of naming. What is decisive is that with learning ability as a goal, the restoration of the medium through its use is postulated at the same time. And if it is true that one can observe a change in the contingency formulas of the educational system from natural perfection via a (only transitory meaningful) educational formula to learning ability, then this is a clear indicator that the educational system achieves its own differentiation not only on a structural level (relative autonomy limited by structural couplings), but also on an operative level (autonomy as self-referential closure).

The medium of the child is not binary-codable. It is true that children differ from adults and thus also from what they themselves will be as adults. However, being a child itself is not a strictly two-valued matter that excludes third values. When two-valued assessment occurs (good/bad children, pass/fail exams, good/bad grades), it is for reasons of Selection, not education; and educators respond with pedagogical concerns to this perceived necessity imposed on them.

The reason for this coding deficit does not lie in the organic-psychic complexity of the system designated by "child", because such inadequacies are found in all binary coded systems as well. The reason lies in the semantics with which the loose coupling of this medium is presented. In the assumption of learning ability/willingness to learn, the organic-psychic complexity is assumed to be open, still undetermined (or underdetermined) complexity, but the possibilities released with it cannot be schematized one-dimensionally. This is honored with terms like freedom, self-activity, etc. and traded as a pedagogically indispensable value. And rightly so. On the other hand, however, the system lacks the usual form in which functional systems guarantee their autopoiesis - i.e. bivalence.

This has far-reaching consequences. The Binary Coding of media and functional systems ensures that it continues in any case. Unlike teleological systems, the own end (telos) is not programmed in, but left open. One can do something with the positive value (for example truth), but also with the negative value (for example untruth). Indeed, only the positive value is connectable in the system, but the negative value can specify under which conditions (here: theories) this is the case. Binary coded systems are therefore always self-dynamic, autopoietic systems, which can never bring about their own end with their own operations. Since this condition is not given for educators, they tend to think teleologically – be it that they reach their goals, be it that they have to weaken them or even give them up as unattainable in individual cases. In any case, educational efforts eventually come to an end.

However, the media semantics of "child" sufficiently guarantees that the system of education is not at an end. There are always new children growing up. In addition, organization ensures that they will be enrolled in school and show up on time for classes. There is no doubt that a new class for school beginners can be set up next year, and organization can also be used to adjust to demographic fluctuations. The fact that children are born at all is assumed to be so certain that the educational system does not have to adjust to the loss of complete birth cohorts and thus does not have to describe itself as environmentally determined.

The autopoiesis of the system is sufficiently guaranteed by organization. It is true that this dependence on organization under the name of "bureaucracy" is an ongoing annoyance for educators interested in children (and not only in their "places"); but these are then, as it were, the costs of the structurally enforced renunciation of binary coding. While other functional systems differentiate themselves via binary coding and have to introduce organization (for instance in the form of production companies, state administrations, sports clubs, courts, museums, etc.) only at a systematically later point, only as a condition for sufficient complexity (and then admittedly also become dependent on it), in the case of the educational system the differentiation itself is dependent on organization.

With all this, only the first steps have been taken toward clarifying the question of whether and in what sense one can speak of a Medium of the Educational System. In the general context of a theory of symbolically generalized communication media, certain similarities now stand out, but also striking differences.

The most striking difference might be the absence of a binary coding, which can be deployed in the educational system for purposes of Selection, but not for education in the proper sense. On the one hand, this explains the influence of the selection code on the educational process, which is always regretted and rejected by pedagogues. Bivalence has an undeniable fascination, to which also school teaching more or less succumbs.

Nevertheless, the problem, that is, the improbability of educational communication, cannot be addressed by the selection mechanism alone. The problem lies in the communicative inaccessibility of mental systems. These operate factually as structurally determinate systems, as systems coupled structurally through language but through non-specifiable systems, as self-referential systems, as operationally closed systems; and it is not merely a theoretical question to consider how education is then nevertheless possible, that is: where it takes the courage to believe itself possible and to begin communicating.

One answer to this question lies in the construct of the child, that visibly not yet adult being who, one may think, needs education. The evident obviousness of this observation obscures all that is opposed to it. And when education, and especially when teaching starts, an autopoietic system of its own kind gets going, which owes the elements, namely the communicative operations of which it consists, to itself.

The fact that the medium of education is technically not nearly as powerful as money, for example, is easily explained by the absence of Binary Coding. Also missing is any parallel to those highly developed forms of economic rationality which result from the reduction to the decision about payments or their omission at given prices. The rationality defect, which is conspicuous in comparison with the money medium, is then all too quickly compensated for by emphasis, exuberance and disappointment. Above all, this difference explains the high interaction intensity of education, compared to the extremely reduced forms of interaction that the money economy needs at best. Seen in this comparison, the media defects of education must be compensated by interaction among those present; and by interaction because this is the only appropriate form of dealing with "children".

These spectacular differences of economy and education (and one could also use science, also politics, also law for comparison) should not hide the fact that in all these cases it is about the differentiation of autonomous, operationally closed functional systems. It seems that for such an evolution the development of specific communication media is an indispensable condition, because how else could system-specific form differences arise and be assigned to the respective functions? In all these cases, the differentiation typology of modern society is realized; and only the way in which this is made possible varies from functional system to functional system.

Luhmann, Niklas (1991). Das Kind als Medium der Erziehung. doi