Apathetic Learning

“For the secret of man's being is not only to live but to have something to live for.”

                                                            -Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

            All is curriculum. Curriculum is not merely what is taught in schools and certainly not exclusive to what’s listed on your syllabi. Knowledge and Being themselves are presented and packaged, framed, and categorized. From the onset of subjectivity, the world we find ourselves thrown into is structured by sign and signifier, pain and pleasure, and so on. With each experience, we seek knowledge, and when we seek knowledge, we organize it and form curricula either consciously or unconsciously. Therefore, the study of curriculum is ever-wide and expansive. One could strictly research what is taught in the American K-12 public school system and do curriculum studies, just as another could be researching the effects of consumerism on indigenous populations or how to learn and practice meditation to improve mental health. The concern of this research is the perceived rise in apathy in its many forms (i.e., boredom and indifference, etc.) as it relates to learning.

Curriculum studies is highly suitable for the academic exploration of apathy in its many forms precisely because of its willingness to understand all experiences as having a curriculum. Indeed, through its seemingly innate hermeneutic of suspicion, curriculum studies inquires: What is learning? What is the learning experience like? What is worth learning and why? Says who? Moreover, the interdisciplinary nature of curriculum studies sets the stage for not only allowing but encouraging a multiplicity of theoretical tools for academic analysis. To be sure, the philosophical and psychological analysis of apathy as it relates to learning is a formidable task; however, the field of curriculum studies, since its reconceptualization, has already done much work pulling from the fields of existential-phenomenology, psychoanalysis, poststructuralism, critical theory, and media studies. Therefore, the intention of these pages is threefold: 1. To utilize the work of curriculum studies scholars to situate my future research regarding learning and apathy. 2. To create curriculum studies frameworks in philosophy, psychology, sociology, and media studies and to build bridges for each field’s respective scholars. 3. To begin some of the work of analyzing how apathy and learning relate to and are influenced by meaning-making, subjectivity, language, sentiment and desire, self-actualization, power and hegemony, discourse and media influence, and finally to politics and technology.

Philosophical Considerations

           Let us begin by returning to this idea of curriculum studies containing an innate hermeneutic of suspicion—particularly as a hermeneutic of meaning-making, which can be used to analyze apathy. This endeavor is a question of practical knowledge seeking and a philosophical endeavor. Indeed, one cannot simply go to Wal-Mart and purchase one order of meaning-making to fix their indifference towards learning; on the contrary, as we will see later, indifference is precisely what is being advertised for sale. Instead, we ask what is going on with our meaning-making hermeneutic such that so many are apathetic to learning. To do this, we need to start with the experience itself. Max van Manen states the following, “…phenomenology does not ask, “How do these children learn this particular material?” but it asks, “What is the nature of the experience of learning (so that I can now better understand what this particular learning experience is like for these children)?” (van Manen, 1984, p. 38). Phenomenology sticks with experience. This is precisely the kind of question we must ask if we are to understand apathy to learning. If one states that they are indifferent to or do not care about learning, it is pertinent to inquire about their learning experience and their meaning-making experience. Curriculum studies is no stranger to existentialism or phenomenology, and theorists have been pulling from these fields since at least the onset of the reconceptualization period of its history. Therefore, the couching or situating of our analysis of apathy and learning in curriculum studies via phenomenology and existentialism is warmly welcomed. Unsurprisingly, these schools of thought have found allies in one another due to their similar concerns, goals, and interests. If we take our operational definition of apathy as a lack of interest or concern, these schools of thought appear directly related to and thus useful for our purposes. If one lacks interest, this begs the question concerning meaning-making and how one experiences the world since meaning-making is fundamental to forming interest and concern. Moreover, existential phenomenology emphasizes that not only is this fundamental for subjectivity, but this process of meaning-making is done so in a world—specifically in a world with others. Existential philosopher Martin Buber argues that this is so fundamental that it is central to our anthropology. In his famous text, I and Thou, Buber argues for a kind of dialogical meaning-making for the formation of authentic and engaged being-in-the-world:

When I confront a human being as my Thou and speak the basic word I-Thou to him, then he is no thing among things nor does he consist of things. He is no longer He or She, a dot in the world grid of space and time, nor a condition to be experienced and described, a loose bundle of named qualities. Neighborless and seamless, he is Thou and fills the firmament. Not as if there were nothing but he; but everything else lives in his light. (Buber, 1971, p. 8)

What Buber describes here is a fundamentally different way of experiencing other people in the world such that they are not used for instrumental value—what he calls an I-It relationship, but rather the Other is all that is rather than a thing amongst other things. This is the I-Thou relationship, the antithesis or destroyer of apathy. It is an orientation in the world that expands meaning and purpose. Catholic saint, Jewish holocaust martyr, and phenomenologist Edith Stein comments on this expansion: “At some point we must plunge in to discover a greater expanse; yet when this broader horizon does appear, a new depth will open up at our point of entry” (Stein, 2009, p. 5). This quote ties in beautifully in discussing meaning-making and being-in-the-world more generally about apathy, but also in making the connection for us to learn. The experience of learning is much like what Stein describes here—a kind of opening-up oneself to a greater expanse and depth. Additionally, it is much like what Buber describes as well in that the experience of learning is transformative. Therefore, while this does provide some insight into what meaningful learning would be like, it leaves the question of why apathy regarding learning would happen, and for now, we stay with the experience without any attempt to explain or reduce it.

Meaning-Making and Subjectivity

Subjectivity is not a simple thing; it could even be argued that it is the least simple thing since all experience finds its place in it. Importantly and to the relevant point, the meaning-making process of our subjectivity is fundamental when considering apathy and learning. For sure, one must ask, "what is the cause of my apathetic experience?” “Why do I not care?” However, alas, even to ask the question is paradoxically to care. So then, why does the apathetic learner not even begin to ask the question? We will always return to this question and work to gain insight into it as we create our intended research frameworks. An oft-quoted curriculum theorist, John Dewey, states the following in considering our phenomenological experience: “We always live at the time we live and not at some other time, and only by extracting at each present time the full meaning of each present experience are we prepared for doing the same thing in the future” (Dewey, 1938, p. 51). At first glance, one could read this as a reminder that we should try to live in the moment—a kind of one-liner found in a thrift store self-help book. However, what is important here is the “extracting.” This extracting is a kind of procedural reflection or thoughtfulness—not an unreflective being in the now. Might it be said that a kind of thoughtless presentism could produce an experience of apathy? Does the lack of meaning-making lead to indifference? This may seem obvious but consider the effects of an unreflective presentism. What would happen if learning was just memorizing information and regurgitating it for an examination? Sound familiar? So, what would be an alternative? Doll, in A Post-Modern Perspective on Curriculum writes, “Curriculum in a postmodern frame is not a package; it is a process—dialogic and transformative, based on the inter- or transactions peculiar to local situations” (Doll, 1993, p. 140). A dialogic and transformative experience sounds like Dewey’s reflective “extracting,” but perhaps even better. At the very least, this kind of learning experience would create a meaning-making process of reflection and interaction with others. Perhaps, then, apathy, boredom, and indifference are warranted and natural consequences for a society that does not seem to value dialogic and transformative experiences.

Existentialism

           What else does existentialism as a framework have to offer for this research? Inherent in learning is a notion of change. When one learns something new, one is not the same person as before. Something changes. While many people are afraid of change, change can be healthy. Change allows us to become something more, to grow, to move, not to be stale, to not fall into apathy and ultimately despair. The existentialist philosopher Søren Kierkegaard states the following: “However, a self, every instant it exists, is in process of becoming, for the self [potentially] does not actually exist, it is only that which it is to become. In so far as the self does not become itself, it is not its own self; but not to be one’s own self is despair” (Kierkegaard, 1989, p. 60). The self, for Kierkegaard, is always in the process of becoming. This makes sense; if we are in a constantly changing world, we are in a dialectic of change with it. However, then Kierkegaard says something of a warning: if we do not allow ourselves to become what we have the potential to be, we will find ourselves in despair. This is reminiscent of the student who is indifferent to learning but also reports feeling depressed and stuck. The relationship between apathy of learning and despair certainly warrants further investigation in its own right when considering the rise of mental health issues that we see today. However, for now, we again leave open this question of why one would oppose this process of becoming or, at the very least, be apathetic to the learning experiences that could transform them into a deepened authentic state of being.

Phenomenology

           While existentialism is expressly concerned with human existence and values and concepts like meaning and purpose, phenomenology begins as an investigative scientific methodology that studies how experience appears to a subject. The separation between phenomenology and existentialism becomes more muddied as time passes since phenomenological inquiry seeks to bracket everything off but the experience. This, starting with the experience in the world, is very similar to existentialism’s preference of discussing existence rather than essences as primary. The famous existential phenomenologist Martin Heidegger does well in describing this when he states, “To Being-in-the world, however, belongs the fact that it has been delivered over to itself that it has in each case already been thrown into a world” (Heidegger, 2008, p. 236). In other words, one finds oneself already in a world. One does not choose to be; rather, from their first-person perspective, they always have been. This will become particularly important when we further analyze and discuss the world's influence upon us and how that impacts one’s relationship to learning and can produce apathy. Continuing in this school of thought, the existential phenomenologist Emmanuel Levinas connects these ideas to learning when he states, “To approach the Other in conversation is to welcome his expression, in which at each instant he overflows the idea a thought would carry away from it. It is therefore to receive from the Other beyond the capacity of the I, which means exactly: to have the idea of infinity. But it also means: to be taught” (Levinas, 1969, p. 51). Levinas, following Buber, emphasizes the kind of relationship that one ought to have with the Other. For Levinas, like Buber, our relationship to the world is primary. Like Buber’s filling of the “firmament,” Levinas speaks of the Other as infinity that cannot be reduced but can teach. Interestingly, the learning described here is not conducted or instructed to them by the teacher; instead, it is a disposition for receiving. In other words, learning has more to do with one’s relationship to learning—their sentiments, attitude, and desire for it—than mastering information storage and having an efficient delivery system. To end with a question, what happens when learning becomes about the latter rather than the former?

Meaning-Making and Language

Meaning-making is always expressed through the language of the body, speech, or the written word. The problem with this is that language is slippery. Pinar states, “Meaning is discursive. It can represent only approximations of original experience. Language occupies the space between the experience and the word, or logos” (Pinar et al., 1992, p. 5). What can be done if we can only approximate the kind of dialogic and transformative learning experience via language to combat unreflective apathy and indifference? How can a prescription for creating such an experience be written? Moreover, is that desire to create a curriculum prescription precisely the problem causing the apathy? Giving up on language is impossible, but perhaps we need a new language or accept our approximations as good enough. However, Davis complicates this further by saying, “…the modern Cartesian desire to know the world as it is is thoroughly frustrated. The universe is constantly evolving, forever eluding any attempt to fix and know it” (Davis, 1996, p. 13). As we know, language does not give a 1:1 mapping of reality; perhaps this has created a multi-generational societal apathy. There are multiple directions that one can take from here. One could reject modernity and lean more fully into postmodernity, accept the playfulness of language, reject transcendent signifiers, and hope for some method of meaning-making to engage fully in the world. One could reject postmodernity, lean more fully into pre-modernity or modernity, and re-establish means and hopes for objective knowledge and meanings. Both seem to have their own problems that either side does not want to admit, and many people end up apathetic via consumerist hedonism regardless, but we will address this possibility later.

Psychological Considerations

           To continue this valuable heuristic of curriculum studies as a helpful hermeneutic of suspicion, let us look at some psychological considerations for analyzing apathy in learning. From its own foundations, psychology, especially in its psychoanalytic form, is inherently suspicious of human thought and behavior. Akin to psychology’s questions about desire, reasons for behavior, and explanations for why we feel certain feelings in certain situations, curriculum studies asks similar questions when it comes to its object of study. One individual who has paved the way in bridging these two fields is Deborah Britzman. There are several topics from psychology that are helpful for an analysis of apathy in learning. Some specific topics include sentiment, desire, potential, and self-actualization. Returning to apathy in learning, akin to the complication of language previously discussed, psychoanalysis also complicated the discussion of apathy. In their text The Very Thought of Education: Psychoanalysis and the Impossible Professions, Britzman states, “It is an intersubjective world we cannot know in advance of its event since its qualities are unstable, unrepeatable, and capable of movement, transformation, fixation, and regression” (Britzman, 2009). Let’s just say it now, it is practically impossible to ask the question of what causes apathy and to expect a simple answer and solution. Psychosocial issues are complex, multifaceted, and overdetermined concepts and phenomena. However, despite a lack of rational certainty, we press forward with out inquiry, we do not throw up our hands and quit the endeavor.

Sentiment and Desire

           Apathy is directly related to two concepts in psychology: sentiment and desire. As a sentiment, it is a feeling, or perhaps correctly understood, a lack of feeling when the word is considered etymologically. The notion of desire, too, can be taken up, as it often has, as a kind of lack or emptiness of something. However, this notion of lack is not as simple as one might think or prefer. In their discussion of teaching and learning, Felman points out that, pulling from psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, learning is not simply the desire for knowledge. They write, “Teaching has to deal not so much with lack of knowledge as with resistances to knowledge. Ignorance, suggests Jacques Lacan, is a ‘passion.’ Inasmuch as traditional pedagogy postulated a desire for knowledge, an analytically informed pedagogy has to reckon with the passion for ignorance” (Felman, 1987, p. 79). This idea of resistance to knowledge is a curious one. The curious idea provides insight into something most people simply take as obvious or for granted. Indeed, curriculum studies has done much work here in discussing why knowledge might be resisted, and these can easily be found in the core questions of “What and whose knowledge?” Indeed, the passion for ignorance could be because of many different reasons, such as a black student sitting in history class ignoring the lesson about slavery from his racist teacher. Therefore, apathy in learning cannot simply be understood in terms of the individual learner only but of the broader psychosocial context. Britzman makes this all the clearer when they state, “The psychoanalytic assumption is that there can be no learning without transference, but since the transference is also a needed obstacle to learning, it is subject to analysis, the work of deconstruction” (Britzman, 2009). The work of learning is always transferential and complicated, which therefore underlines the importance of learning being a dialogical process of meeting and being met by the Other. However, this does not mean that desire cannot or should not be discussed, but simply that the matter is complicated. For instance, one might think they know what they desire, but it is a fantasy for something more primal that they are lacking. The entirety of desire is much like a web of interconnected relations like lines of a spiderweb or stars in a constellation. The constellation is a helpful metaphor due to the connections of stars forming a meaningful image. It is much the same as how we create meaning from our experiences. With apathy regarding learning, the stars have not formed a constellation, or something has replaced that desire—perhaps sublimating it to achieve a similar end or goal. This, too, can be the subject of analysis and the work of deconstruction within the framework of curriculum studies.

           Furthermore, if existentialism and phenomenology help to create a philosophical framework from which to hear and investigate the lived experience of the apathetic subject, psychology, particularly in its psychoanalytic and humanistic varieties, helps to elucidate the processes by which the subject transcribes, deciphers, and interprets their experiences whether consciously or unconsciously. Furthermore, when these theoretical analysis tools are applied to the subject’s relationship to learning, these processes can provide hints as to why they may be experiencing apathy—these are commonly referred to as psychodynamics and are an essential part of psychoanalysis. Writing over 100 years ago, the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, provided some groundwork regarding apathy as a feature of what he called melancholia. He describes melancholia as: “a profoundly painful dejection, cessation of interest in the outside world, loss of the capacity to love, inhibition of all activity, and a lowering of the self-regarding feelings to a degree that finds utterance in self-reproaches and self-revilings, and culminates in a delusional expectation of punishment” (Freud, 1917, p. 243). While this condition does have some of the qualities of apathy—namely, the cessation of interest and increased inhibition, this is more than what we are interested in and more general than our specific interest in the relationship between apathy and learning. 

Closer still is the existential psychiatrist Irving Yalom’s description of “existential frustration.” Yalom describes this as “a common phenomenon and is characterized by the subjective state of boredom, apathy, and emptiness. One feels cynical, lacks direction and questions the point of most of life's activities” (Yalom, 1980, p. 454). The description of this phenomenon sounds nearly identical to our subject matter. Moreover, it provides a named psychological construct by which any life activity can be analyzed. Therefore, when pulling from this construct provided by humanistic psychology (the family to which existential psychology belongs) and utilizing the insights of psychodynamics from psychoanalysis, we become well-equipped to probe the previously mentioned transcribing, deciphering, and interpreting processes of the apathetic learner.

Psychoanalysis

           The primary interest or aim of psychoanalysis is to make what is unconscious become conscious. Psychoanalysis has for itself a constituting commitment to the idea of the unconscious—a part of the human psyche or mind that one is not consciously aware of, which impacts how we behave and is constituted of drives and memories. The interplay between our conscious mind and our unconscious mind and the processes of interactions therein is a rough definition of what can be called psychodynamics. Of course, psychoanalytic thinkers since Freud have filled many pages in the development of this theory. When considering subjectivity, these processes are relevant in the research of apathy and learning. Psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan conceives of the subject in the following manner: “The subject is nothing other than what slides in a chain of signifiers, whether he knows which signifier he is the effect of or not. That effect- the subject – is the intermediary effect between what characterises a signifier and another signifier, namely, the fact that each of them, each of them is an element” (Lacan, 1999, p. 50). Influenced by the structuralist semiotics of Ferdinand de Saussure, Lacan makes sense of the subject through a discussion of signifiers and that which is signified to produce a sign. For Lacan, the subject is that which moves between signifiers. This chain of signifiers is not static and unchanging. So, psychoanalysis affords us an examination of these signifiers and how these chains or networks of signifiers constitute our relations to phenomena. This is important because that means the apathetic subject can examine the psychodynamics of their relation to learning and alter this. Apathy is, therefore, not a permanent and fixed state. Contrary to the idea that psychoanalytic thought must be deterministic, we see that change can occur, and therefore, new relations to learning can be made and developed.

Human Potential and Self-Actualization

           A last psychological consideration to couch in curriculum studies is human potential and self-actualization. As a reaction to the schools of psychoanalysis and behaviorism, a third force took the fold in psychology, which has come to be known as humanistic psychology, which emphasized existentialism, humanism, and transpersonalism over the sometimes overly deterministic prior schools of thought. Unsurprisingly, curriculum studies easily couches these particular considerations of psychology that will aid in exploring apathy in learning. A great example of this can be seen in Professor of Education David Jardine’s article “On the While of Things.” Jardine states, “In asking after worthwhileness, we are asked to find our measure in such things that awaken us and our interest. We are asked to learn and, in learning, to become something more than we had been before such encounters” (Jardine, 2008, p. 3). Here again, we see this emphasis on learning as something transformative. Jardine suggests measuring our learning by its “worthwhileness” which is the kind of thing that grabs hold of us and wakes us up to more significant potential. It is a kind of self-actualization. Ivan Illich speaks directly of what results in this learning experience when he states, “Most learning is not the result of instruction. It is rather the result of unhampered participation in a meaningful setting. Most people learn best by being "with it," yet school makes them identify their personal, cognitive growth with elaborate planning and manipulation” (Illich, 1972, p. 18). Learning happens when meaning-making occurs rather than as a natural consequence of “instruction.” Illich, speaking to educators here, criticizes the notion of planning and manipulation as the key to successful student learning experiences. In opposition to such a view, psychology couched in curriculum studies seems to suggest that this attitude towards learning is precisely the kind that fuels apathy and removes self-actualizing potential for life, adventure, and joy from the lived learning experience of being “with it.” 

Humanistic Psychology

           Akin to how psychoanalysis affords us to analyze signifying chains to change our psychodynamics and relations to experiences and ideas, a strong emphasis on the importance of change and possibility comes from the tradition of humanistic psychology. Humanistic psychology is an additional crucial theoretical framework for this work as it is interested in meaning-making and an emphasis on our lived phenomenological experience. Abraham Maslow is commonly thought to be one of the significant founders of this school of psychology, and the following quote serves to highlight the importance of living authentically to maximize one’s potential and self-actualize: “If you deliberately plan to be less than you are capable of being, then I warn you that you’ll be deeply unhappy for the rest of your life. You will be evading your own capacities, your own possibilities” (Maslow, 1971, p. 36). This notion of living authentically should sound familiar as it pulls from the existentialism mentioned above of thinkers like Kierkegaard and Buber and the existential-phenomenological thinkers like Heidegger and Sartre (though Sartre has not been mentioned here). This relates directly to at least some apathetic learners so long as they, at some point, willingly chose to become indifferent to learning. This further relates to Yalom’s previously mentioned diagnosis of “existential frustration” and the insights provided by the existential psychologist Rollo May when we writes, “Along with the loss of the sense of self has gone a loss of our language for communicating deeply personal meanings to each other. This is one important side of the loneliness now experienced by people in the Western world” (May, 2009, p. 43). May, however, brings something additional to the table that we have only thus far questioned, and now it will serve as a transition point. This additional thing is the question of what external lifeworld factors have caused this loss of the sense of the authentically engaged and empowered subject. May accurately reports that people have lost the ability to communicate meaningfully with one another and are experiencing the kinds of symptoms that Yalom described in his “existential frustration.” Thus far, we have focused on the individual subject (though couched in the intersubjectivity of an existential-phenomenological framework) and the psychodynamics of that subject (though as a chain of signifiers). Next, we move to a discussion of the apathetic learner’s intersubjective lifeworld.

Sociocultural Considerations

           If there is a particular hermeneutic of suspicion that curriculum studies excel in and create a bedrock to explore from, it is that of a critical social and cultural suspicion. As with all phenomena, apathy is fundamentally hermeneutical between subject and experience; however, apathy is often given particular attention for the relation of the experience to intersubjectivity—to one’s lifeworld. For an analysis of apathy, sociocultural considerations are abundantly relevant. Additionally, because of this, concepts like power, hegemony, narrative, and discourse are all critical in any discussion of apathy, especially apathy regarding the experience of learning, since learning is often thought of through the lens of education and its associated institutions. 

Furthermore, these considerations tie together the previously discussed philosophical and psychological considerations as they are now situated in the world with others. Popkewitz does well to marry the notion of desire and sensibility with that of power when he states, “The effects of power are in the production of desire, dispositions, and sensitivities. Power, in this latter sense, is intricately bound to the rules, standards, and styles of reasoning by which individuals speak, think, and act in producing their everyday world” (Popkewitz, 1991, p. 19). What Popkewitz states here is incredibly important not only for the bridge building between different theoretical frameworks that it creates but also for situating concepts that are sometimes quite abstract into the lived world. While much fruit can be gained in abstractly exploring the concept of desire, considering the production of desire and sensitivities moves the conversation to sociocultural influences. The question changes from what apathy is and the experience of apathy to whence comes apathy. This is not an abandonment of our initial psychoanalytic and existential-phenomenological groundwork; instead, it is an inevitable extension of it because subjects are not isolated individual Cartesian cogitos but are instead, like language, an emergence from interconnected points on a spider web of intersubjectivity.

Power and Hegemony

From whence comes apathy? As stated previously, such experiences are complicated, multifaceted, and overdetermined; however, just because we cannot locate all causal relations does not mean that we cannot hypothesize about some of them based on both what we have seen and experienced and what others have seen, experienced, and written about. For example, Freire, when considering how many learners have fallen into apathy in their lives, states the following, “So often do they hear that they are good for nothing, know nothing and are incapable of learning anything—that they are sick, lazy, and unproductive—that in the end they become convinced of their own unfitness” (Freire, 2000, p. 180). Perhaps these pages express no more obvious truth than this quote. It is a truth that most people can readily attest to its veracity just by the merit of their lived experience in the world and witnessing this phenomenon. The truth is so relatable that it could be considered folk wisdom or pop psychology. If someone is told they are no good and incapable of learning, there are two popular responses: 1. They do all they can to prove their accuser wrong, or 2. They believe them and lose hope and confidence in themselves. More often than not, the second response occurs. So, what’s happening here? Power. Power is not a moral force, however. It is not bad or good. Power is always a doing rather than an abstract force. Power and knowledge are inextricably connected, as power is the production of knowledge. In this example from Freire, the knowledge created is that the learner is incapable and unfit for learning—paradoxically, the learner here learns well, but rather than engaging in transformative and deepening learning, they ultimately learn self-doubt and eventually self-hatred or apathy and indifference. Therefore, if we want to know why people are apathetic towards learning, we also need to look at how power is being utilized in their environment to foster or discourage learning for individuals.

Historically, curriculum studies has done this by looking at institutions of power—especially schools. Speaking directly to this matter of schools and power, Huebner, speaking to other curriculum studies theorists in the journal article “The Artistic. Aesthetic and Curriculum” argues, “The crucial thing, it seems to me, is the recognition that young children in all places have the capability of embodying their own meanings, of creating their own forms, and of interpreting other people's forms. But given the way schools are set up, there's indeed a limit of that distribution of meaning making and meaning interpretation” (Huebner, 1977, p. 304). Huebner emphasizes that all children, though not limited by age, can obtain information and truly learn. That is to say, people can engage in transformative, meaning-making learning experiences. So, what is the problem? The problem is that the power of the school has been historically exerted in such a way that it does not value these kinds of experiences. Instead, the educational institution produces knowledge and desire, stating that learning is simply obtaining information. Teachers are taught and believe this. Students are taught and believe this. Nevertheless, where has this brought us? To apathy, boredom, and indifference.

Narrative and Discourse

In the discussion of power, we were already getting to this notion of narrative and discourse. For our purposes, we will use and operationalize the term discourse to mean the limits of a language, conversation, or discussion about a given topic that is typically contained, restrained, and moderated by powerful institutions. For example, psychoanalysis is a discourse on the unconscious. Curriculum studies is, in part, a discourse on education or learning with wide-reaching arms containing multiple theoretical frameworks—which is why it is so useful for the purpose of this work. Discourse, like power, is not a moral abstraction floating somewhere in the ether. Instead, it is a particular immanence of power manifesting and working in the world. Discourse can change, but usually slowly. Education is prolonged to change. Speaking about the discourse of the American education system and its telos, Pinar states, “It is about controlling the curriculum. To achieve this control—which is, finally, control of the mind—the public schools are severed from both the social and the subjective. Teachers are reduced to technicians, “managing” student productivity. The school is no longer a school, but a business” (Pinar, 2004, pp. 26-27). The discourse of education is precisely this: teachers as technicians and students as receptacles of information. As Pinar says, the school is a business and not a school. If Pinar is correct, if one is genuinely interested in learning as we have described it—then one of the last places they would want to be is at a school. Therefore, if most only think of learning as something that occurs in schools, it should not be shocking to us to find so many today who are apathetic, bored with, and indifferent to learning—at least, what they understand learning to be—and therein lies the problem.

Technological Considerations

           As a last area of suspicion, curriculum studies has been bountiful grounds for media studies and technological critique. This does not mean that media studies, philosophy of technology, or curriculum studies scholars have attacked all technology. Many explore the very positive aspects of technology in fields like trans and posthumanism. However, if any tangible influence can easily be pointed to regarding impacting today’s society and its relationship to learning, it has to be technology. Technology is a broad concept with multiple meanings; therefore, it requires some operational definition. While media includes the invention of print, what is of focus here is that of what might be called electric technology or electric media: the radio, the telephone, television, the computer, the smartphone, and the internet. These forms of technology and the media produced by and for them have revolutionized the world and, as a result, called into question much of what we know and how we know. Therefore, the influence of technology and its associated media, from politically catered television programs to internet advertising and personalized social media platforms, has, without a doubt, had some impact on learning and our relationship to learning. The question is, what has the impact been? Steinberg and Kincheloe state the following in their text Kinderculture: The Corporate Construction of Childhood: The information explosion, the media saturation of the late twentieth century with its access to private realms of human consciousness, has created a social vertigo. This social condition, often labeled hyperreality, exaggerates the importance of power wielders in all phases of human experience. Hyperreality’s flood of signifiers in everything from megabytes to TV advertising diminishes our ability to either find meaning or engender passion for commitment. (Steinberg & Kincheloe, 1997, p. 9). This media saturation through electric technology is packed with an overflow of heavily coded information, often contradictory, laissez-faire, and post-truth. It has created a barrage of dopamine-pumping, emotionally charged, provocative propaganda that has blurred reality such that any fears that the modernist philosophers had about ascertaining reality now look like child’s play. As Steinberg and Kincheloe point out, rather than a creation of a playground for meaning-making, interpretation, and learning, much of what has happened has been a paralysis or diminishment of our ability to make meaning or even care to learn, given the overwhelming amount of information provided in seconds and its ability to be refuted in another few seconds. Moreover, as demonstrated, what curriculum studies does here is to provide a home for utilizing these analytical tools in order to investigate phenomena like apathy in learning. For the remainder of this investigation, focus will be given to media and communication, technology, and capitalism as technological considerations regarding apathy in learning.

Media and Communication

One might imagine that this kind of electric media provides a possible smorgasbord of reflection, meaning-making, and learning; this is certainly a possibility. However, we must remember that the navigation of media and information is a skill that is learned through the development of critical thinking and socioemotional reflection. For the educated, the internet is a Candyland ripe for analysis; however, we are not born with these skills, and institutions of influence and power are very good at developing propaganda to control the ignorant and uneducated. Moreover, the most potent kind of control is the one that is welcomed and glorified. When the alcoholic sees an advertisement for Budweiser during the Superbowl, they are not angry that the ad influences them to purchase the beer, they love it! The same thing appears to occur with learning. People spend hours browsing social media on their phones and believing everything they read. Is this the same as learning? What degree of transformative meaning-making is occurring? Is reflection and critical thinking happening at all? Of course not; it is one dopamine hit after the other in an endless desire for more curated content of their particular narrative fed by powerful institutions of influence and control. Why bother thinking when your Instagram influencer of choice can do it for you? Steinberg and Kincheloe continue by saying, “The media provide symbolic environments in which people live and strongly influence their thought, behavior, and style. When a media sensation like Beavis and Butt-Head appears, it becomes part of that environment and in turn becomes a new resource for pleasures, identities, and contestation” (Steinberg & Kincheloe, 1997, p. 97). While somewhat dated compared to the media influence present today, the point remains the same: media not only seeks to influence but also creates desires and identities. Furthermore, what profit would it be to promote transformative learning experiences where an individual could become a critically reflective agent? Very little, it seems. Also commenting on this loss of critical engagement, curriculum theorist Maxine Greene states, “Depending on their ages, young people--exposed to media as they are--cannot escape dreadful images of other people's suffering. Granted, they have different ways of grasping all this; some cannot tell the news from TV drama, especially in these days of 'reality" television” (Greene, 2007, p. 2). Here is where apathy enters; however, it is a different kind of apathy. It is not melancholic. It is genuine indifference. If one is constantly entertained and has lost a grasp on reality, why even be interested in learning? It is frighteningly reminiscent of how soma works in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. 

The framework provided by media studies is a continuing concern of power structures and their influence on subjectivity. Named the “father of media studies,” Marshall McLuhan provides a better framework to understand these influences. McLuhan is famous for his phrase, “The Medium is the Message,” which means something like the medium of media itself shapes the message it sends. Therefore, while the messages of discourse are important, the medium is similar to the discipline which shapes the subject. McLuhan states his concerns in the following way: “Once we have surrendered our senses and nervous systems to the private manipulation of those who would try to benefit from taking a lease on our eyes and ears and nerves, we don't really have any rights left” (McLuhan, 1994, p. 80). When McLuhan mentions the senses here, he means this literally. Television shapes the eyes, radio the ears, the internet, and our entire nervous system. These mediums take control of our senses, and with each concession, we cede over our control of them and what they receive. The problem is not simply to be vigilant with the information you take in and reflect on; the problem is a change in our hardware and how it functions to receive. Critical sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, when speaking about the concept of habitus or how subjects perceive their social world, makes a similar statement of concern: “The political dangers inherent in the ordinary use of television have to do with the fact that images have the peculiar capacity to produce what literary critics call a reality effect. They show things and make people believe in what they show. This power to show is also a power to mobilize. It can give a life to ideas or images, but also to groups” (Bourdieu, 1999, p. 21). Television produces an effect in and of itself, and in its production, people come to learn what they are shown. Moreover, these reality productions have real-world consequences after that, potentially mobilizing television watchers to act on what they have learned. Granted, all information has the potential to mobilize, and that is often a good thing; however, the cause for concern here is the uncritical reception of the message and its presumed truth-making capacity. As such, if one is not an apathetic learner due to awareness of a multitude of contested information, a worse condition might ensue where subjects are radicalized due to their uncritical “learning.”

Technology and Capitalism

           A discussion of the influence of media on learning would be incomplete without giving some attention to the technology it utilizes for its purposes. Furthermore, it is also necessary to look at the socioeconomic system from which it springs—namely, late-stage capitalism. While technological alarmism and protectionism are and always have been a phenomenon, we must not be quick to dismiss real concerns with the uncritical wave of a hand regardless of how vogue doing so maybe. As with the previously discussed concern of media, technology itself needs to be understood as always already laden with a purpose when it comes to us. Ferneding, in “Understanding Curriculum Studies in the Space of Technological Flow” states, “Technology and technological systems indeed exist as tools but such tools are not neutral or without bias. Technological innovations operationalize human intention and are related to the production of knowledge and thus power” (Ferneding, 2009, p. 173). Just as power creates knowledge or discourses via language and institutional footholds, so does technology. Indeed, even when we look at a physical piece of technology that we are now familiar with today, the smartphone, the phone does not come to us tabula rasa. No, it is prepackaged with particular applications and tools that impact and shape our subjectivity. Understanding this is crucial to investigate the apathy so ubiquitous today in relation to learning and other domains of our lived experience. Lastly, we must consider the relationship between media, the subject, technology, and the force producing the technology—capital. Asher states the following in their chapter “Decolonizing Curriculum” found in Curriculum Studies Handbook - The Next Moment: “…these intersections of consumerism, capitalism, and repression are not coincidental, rather they are devices to maintain the status quo, to continue to exploit, isolate, contain the ‘other’” (Asher, 2009, p. 393). It is not coincidental; no, it is not by accident. It is not alarming that we should witness the intersection of these systems. If capitalism has but one goal, to create capital, then the desire for what is produced and sold must be produced and sold. What more perfect scenario could there be for profit than to create a consumer who uncritically takes the desire sold to them to perpetuate further consumption? The enemy of such a project surely would be something akin to critical and reflective learning, which wakes one up from one's dogmatic apathy and moves one to realms of new subjectivity, transformation, empowerment, and meaning-making. Thus, when these pieces of influence are properly considered, things appear to fit together like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

Lastly, since our project focuses on apathy and learning, the technological elephant in the room is the internet, smartphones, and the quickly emerging field of artificial intelligence. Regarding the relationship between learning and the emergence and popularity of the Internet, American journalist Nicholas Carr writes in The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains: “What the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. Whether I’m online or not, my mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski” (Carr, 2011, p. 13). What is interesting here is that Carr writes from his own experience, owning that he, too, is not immune to the effects of the internet on our learning experience. Additionally, he remarks on the impact of constant information on attention and the actual lived experience of learning. While learning used to be like a scuba diver in a sea of words that demanded reflection and patience, now it is a Jet Ski's jarring and surface-riding experience. Moreover, media theorist and cultural critic Neil Postman, writing as far back as the 1980s, predicted the following relationship between technology and learning: “People will come to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think” (Postman, 2005, p. 13). Rather than an adverse reaction to media and technology’s influence on our learning experience, the overall response has been positive—at least on the surface. Whereas underneath the surface, we see apathy and indifference bubbling up existential frustration among learners. Regarding technology, the philosopher Avital Ronell states, “Technology has come to rule Power: there is a politics of technology which then begins to say, among other things, that politics as such, or ethics, can no longer be considered altogether before technology. Politics has become a secondary, derivative form of telecommunications, Power generated by technology” (Ronell, 1989, p. 81). Technology as the predecessor of power—this seems to be a turn in the historic theoretical order. Previously in philosophy, technology has mostly been thought of as a product of power and not a producer of it. Perhaps there is some relation here to Heidegger’s phenomenology of objects. Politics as subordinate to technology is an exciting idea to explore and will allow this research to not only function as a review of the literature and an analysis of the current rise in apathy and its impact on learning but also to develop a new discourse regarding the impact of technology on apathy and learning.

Conclusion

At the end of these pages, the conclusion truly marks the beginning of the following line in the sequence of this research. The intention here, as mentioned in the introduction, was threefold: 1. To draw upon the contributions of scholars in curriculum studies to frame my future research on the interplay between learning and apathy. 2. To establish curriculum studies frameworks in philosophy, psychology, sociology, and media studies and connect with scholars from each discipline. 3. To analyze the connections between apathy and learning, exploring their intersections with meaning-making, subjectivity, language, sentiment and desire, self-actualization, power and hegemony, discourse and media impact, and ultimately politics and technology. Here, a comprehensive framework has been constructed by drawing upon the insights of curriculum studies scholars expanding via the adjacent schools of existentialism, phenomenology, psychoanalysis, humanistic psychology, media studies, and philosophy of technology. Therefore, this works to form an outline for research regarding apathy and its current impact on learning in our society.

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