Deneurologizing Education? From Psychologisationto Neurologisation and Back

Jan De Vos

� Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Abstract The long standing reign of psychology as the privileged partner of education

has, arguably, now been superseded by the neurosciences. Given that this helped to drive

the emergent field of neuroeducation, it is crucial to ask what changes in education, if

anything does in fact change, when the hitherto hegemonic psychologising discourse is

substituted for a neurological one. The primary contention of this paper is that with the

neuro-turn a process of ‘‘neurologisation’’ has also been initiated, which can be analysed

by taking into account its genealogical predecessor, psychologisation. In doing so, I argue,

one ultimately discerns a primordial incompatibility between education and neuroscience,

one that can be traced back to the fundamental and problematic reflexivity of modern

subjectivity itself, which the discipline of psychology was never able to wholly resolve.

From here, I proceed with the argument that while the eagerness of the psy-sciences to

embrace neuroscience testifies to how much psychology needs neurology (weak psy-

chology, strong neurology), the neurosciences are structurally incapable of disconnecting

from the paradigms of the psy-sciences (weak neurology, strong psychology). Following

on from this proposition, other strong/weak factors are brought into the equation: strong/

weak nature, strong/weak culture, strong/weak subjectivity and, most pertinently, strong/

weak education. Finally, the critical question becomes: if education in itself needs to take

recourse to both the psy-sciences and the neurosciences, then how can we begin to account

for the fact that these sciences invariably end up becoming captured within educational

discourses themselves; that is, the fact that teachers, parents, and pupils themselves are

taught the key insights of neuropsychology.

Keywords Neuroeducation � Psychologization � Neurologization � Critical theory

J. De Vos (&)Department of Philosophy and Moral Science, Centre for Critical Philosophy, Ghent University,Blandijnberg 2, 9000 Ghent, Belgiume-mail: JanR.DeVos@UGent.beURL: http://www.criticalphilosophy.ugent.be; http://users.telenet.be/jan.de.vos/

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Stud Philos EducDOI 10.1007/s11217-014-9440-5

Introduction

The long standing reign of psychology as the privileged partner of education1 has, argu-

ably, now been superseded by the neurosciences. In the space of only a couple of decades

the brain has become a crucial component of attempts within education to seek rein-

forcement from the sciences of the mind and behaviour. For many, education as an applied

science can no longer circumvent the physicality of the brain, that to which any psycho-

logical dimension, at least so it would appear, must be referred back to. In so-called

neuroeducation, neuroscientific knowledge is integral to the ways in which we have come

to think of, and give form to, education and parenting.2

The fundamental question, then, is what changes in education, if anything does in fact

change, when a prevailing psychologising discourse is traded for a neurological one. The

wager of this paper is that any truly comprehensive understanding of—and, for that matter,

any critical engagement with—the current neuro-turn in education must take into account

its genealogical predecessor, that is, the psychologisation of our life-world and, more

specifically still, within education. Psychologisation in this sense is used to describe a

process whereby psychological discourses and theories have become the backbone of our

attempts to understand ourselves, others and the world at large, resulting in a fundamental

shift in the nature of modern subjectivity.3 It is my contention that with the neuro-turn an

analogous process has been initiated, which one can refer to as ‘‘neurologisation’’ (De Vos

2014a, b). In this paper I examine the potential continuities and discontinuities between

these two phenomena, and in this respect a closer analysis of neuroeducation will prove to

be most insightful, specifically in terms of structure, for reasons that should become clearer

later in the paper (see also: De Vos forthcoming).

However, to be clear from the outset, a critical assessment of the neuro-turn in edu-

cation should not endeavour to deneurologise education, in an attempt to engineer a return

to some form of pre-neurological and ostensibly more genuine being in the world. The

answer to ‘‘you are your brain’’ in other words is definitively not ‘‘I am just me’’. Or

phrased otherwise, it is not that the neurologising of our self and world-view severs us from

a supposedly more genuine, direct pre-theoretical experience, but, rather, that it threatens

to obfuscate our fundamental alienation as modern subjects.4 You are your brain, this

1 See here, for example, Pestalozzi’s plea to psychologize education (Bowers and Gehring 2004), WilliamJames’ ‘‘Talks to the teachers on psychology’’ (James 1925) or Edward Thorndike’s valuation of ‘‘Thecontribution of psychology to education’’ (Thorndike 1910).2 For an overview of this burgeoning field see Elena Pasquinelli’s plea for a ‘‘good marriage’’ betweeneducation and the science of the mind-brain-behaviour, as well as her warning about some of the treacherousterrain facing research and practitioners in this endeavour (Pasquinelli 2013). In this paper, however, I willcontend that these aforementioned slippery slopes are not merely avoidable pitfalls or simple misunder-standings; rather, they are structurally unavoidable deadlocks that undermine the entire field ofneuroeducation.3 For a general assessment of psychologisation see, for example, De Vos (2012b, 2013b) and Parker (Parker2007) and for how psychologisation operates specifically within education, see Burman (2012) and Ec-clestone and Hayes (2009).4 This can be understood as meaning that, in modernity, the very epoch in which we are called upon toemancipate ourselves from tradition and pre-conceived knowledge, the modern subject is, to put it inKantian terms, the one who has to assume the fundamental alienation that derives from having to dare tothink for oneself.

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powerful interpellative mantra of neuroscience,5 comes close to enacting a full ontological

closure: your Self, or, concomitantly, the illusion of having a Self, is, at least potentially,

fully objectifiable. That is, allegedly science can understand, by way of naturalization, how

and/or why we (mis)understand ourselves, others and the world. In this way, the neuro-

sciences, rather than deconstructing the chimera of the Self implanted through the wave of

psychologisation of the nineteenth and twentieth century, threaten to numb our nagging

sense that this psychological Self was always already flawed on its own account.

Of course, the neurosciences are far from a unified field. Nevertheless, it is my con-

tention that even the most sophisticated and nuanced of approaches will, unwittingly or

not, take the ‘‘you are you brain’’ argument on board; and, as such, risk being caught in the

exact same problems and paradoxes of popularized neuroscience. If, then, as more critical

authors such as Stephen Rose observe, ‘‘we neuroscientists need to recognize our limita-

tions’’ (Rose 2011, p. 57), then my argument is that the ascendant discipline of neuroed-

ucation is an expedient example through which to illuminate the more general conditions

of (im)possibility of neuroscience. There already exists a significant corpus of critique.

There is, for example, the likes of John Bruer, he who famously referred to neuroeducation

as ‘‘a bridge too far’’ (Bruer 1997), and the work of others yet still who have criticized the

use of brain enhancement strategies on the basis that they erode the metaphysical dis-

tinction between things and persons (Farah 2005). From here many authors call for a more

cautious and deliberate approach. Busso and Pollack, for example, argue that the

‘‘imprecise use of brain language may undermine legitimate efforts to meaningfully

incorporate neuroscience into educational practice’’ (Busso and Pollack 2014, p. 5).

However, and this is the central question of my paper, what if this ambition were to be

thwarted by a more fundamental aporia? That is, what if there is a basic incompatibility

between education and neuroscience? The genealogy of this aporia, as I argue in this paper,

can be traced back to psychology and its perpetual shadow of psychologisation. I claim that

both education and the neurosciences are by no means unified, self-sufficient fields (neither

in theory, nor practice): in order to unify their fields, both educationalists and neurosci-

entists must rely on things out with their respective theoretical frameworks, disciplinary

boundaries and practices, and it is at this precise point that psychology comes in. But, as I

will demonstrate, psychology is by no means an unproblematic suturing kit.

The crux of my argument centres around the fact that ‘you are your brain’—which, as

aforementioned, is central to both popular and academic neuroscience—enjoins us to shift

perspective: ultimately, ‘look, this is what you are’ implores us to identify with a particular

scientific gaze. Here, it is immediately apparent that the neurosciences are inevitably riven

through by processes of neurologisation, and that these processes must be understood in

tandem with those of psychologisation. For it is through psychologisation that the sub-

jective position becomes the proto-scientific position: that is, we identify with the psy-

chologist so as we can observe and manage ourselves through the theoretical perspective of

psy-science. Today, however, we first and foremost adapt the gaze of the neuroscientist, as

it is from this position that we view the colourful brain scans that ostensibly reveal the

nature of our being and that which it is predicated on. However, through these dual-

processes of psychologisation and neurologisation, we are, on the one hand, isolated from

the world around us as well as ourselves, whilst, on the other hand, this very rupture itself

5 What might at first glance appear to be an overly simplified phrase from popular neuroscience can inactual fact be attributed back to two Nobel prize winners: Eric Kandel said ‘‘you are your brain‘‘ and FrancisCrick wrote: ’’You are nothing but a bunch of neurons’’ (cited in: Rose 2011, p. 57).

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is obfuscated: this is because the proto-scientific position affords a certain illusory,

orthopaedic wholeness in relation to ourselves, others and the world at large.

The principal argument of this paper is that in this way the paradoxes and inconsistencies

of the psy-sciences—caught as they are in the hall of mirrors that is the fundamental and

problematic reflexivity of the modern subject (De Vos 2011)—are far from being resolved as

a consequence of the neurological turn. On the contrary, I will argue that while the eagerness

of the psy-sciences to embrace the neurological turn testifies to the ways in which psychology

needs external structural reinforcement (weak psychology, strong neurology), the neuro-

sciences themselves are also structurally incapable of casting-off the stabilizing paradigms of

the psy-sciences (weak neurology, strong psychology). Following on from this proposition,

other strong/weak factors will be brought into the equation: strong/weak nature, strong/weak

culture, strong/weak subjectivity and, most pertinently, strong/weak education.

Subsequently, the crucial question becomes: if education in itself needs to take recourse to

both the psy-sciences and the neurosciences, then how can we begin to understand the fact that

these sciences invariably end up becoming captured within educational discourses themselves:

that is, the fact that teachers, parents, and pupils themselves are taught the key insights of

neuropsychology. This, as I will attempt to demonstrate, is a powerful but often unacknowl-

edged current within the different strands of neuroeducation: they eventually end up becoming

neuro-education, which I have hyphenated for the express purpose of indicating how they

essentially boil down to hailing the subject within the neuroscience class. Of course, the question

then still remains, if we have succeeded in graduating from the psychology class and have now

enrolled in the neuroscience curriculum, then has there been a structural change or not?

The Question of the Surplus

In response to the popular claim that neuroscience has the potential to revolutionize

education and parenting, Bas Levering rightfully asks, as summarized by Ramaekers and

Suissa: what exactly is it that we now claim to know which we did not know before, and

what exactly is it that would follow from this knowledge (Ramaekers and Suissa 2012,

p. 21)? In other words, what or where is this surplus?

Of course, the question of this surplus has always itself been a major issue within

education. Either education is concerned with instilling something in a subject, or it

involves decanting something extra out of you, as per the motto: plus est en vous (there is

more in you)—the personal motto of Lodewijk van Gruuthuse, a fifteenth century noble-

man from Bruges). In the first instance, the subject is either a blank slate, or an entity with

its own (developing) substance onto which something new, something extra is grafted.

Now from here the question is then what kind of surplus is at stake in neuroeducation.

One particular surplus (constituting a major difference in relation to the previous psy-

approaches) is psychotropic medication, used to remediate a shortage of chemical sub-

stances (whether of stimulants or inhibitors) in the case of disorders which directly or

indirectly affect learning processes. At the least, we could say that we are certainly a long

way away from the classical view of education and its envisioned surplus of the universal.6

Modern education, by contrast, at most addresses the general level, and this becomes

particularly evident with the neuro-turn in education. That is, it starts from a general

conception of capabilities, skills and dispositions of the human being as these are

6 Think of Plato’s idealism and his view of education as aiming toward the illumination of universal truth,as well as Socrates’ ‘‘maieutics’’ in which the soul has to be delivered from universal knowledge.

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determined, constrained or at least relayed by the material substrate of the brain, and when

necessary addresses the shortcomings or deficiencies at this material level with medication.

But, of course, psychotropic medication is merely but one aspect of how neuroscience is

utilized within education, and, in fact, many advocates of neuroeducation would argue that

it is not the most important issue. Rather, the surplus, as many argue, pertains to the fact

that now that we know how the brain works, we can adjust our educational methods or

even get rid of methods which we now know to be ineffective. Again, this knowing does

not concern the universal; indeed, on this point, neuroscience is relatively modest: it does

not attempt to show how things are, rather it tries to envision how things work or what they

look like beneath the skull. In this respect, neuroscience is in accordance with modern

science’s lack of concern with the truth as such. Just consider the example of evidence

based methods: the central issue there is not to know why something works, but only that it

works. Scientific knowledge envisions the statistical, mathematical rendering of what is

looked upon as the natural and material substrate of things.

To sketch out the shift that this modern conception of knowledge effected within the

field now classified as the human sciences, one could argue that the mediaeval motto, plus

est en vous, was recalibrated in the Enlightenment in terms of the modern sciences and its

knowledge. The ‘‘plus-en-vous’’ came to mean: there is something in you that you did not

know about: you have a wrong idea of what is in you, there is something more/something

else in you. Consider how Vesalius made incisions in the skin to lay bare the modern flesh,

which is entirely different to the medieval, biblical ‘‘weak flesh’’. There the plus est en

vous ceased to be a religious, moral or ethical injunction related to some universal truth,

becoming instead a scientific observation concerned with the general knowledge of the

natural, objectified and mathematized, substrate. The modern subject, then, no longer

attributes causality to (evil) spirits or a weakness of will; it is the body and the material that

are now regarded as the source of the unknown forces driving the human being.

Within the domain of the burgeoning human sciences the basic assumption thus became

that the human being suffers from a fundamental and objective misconception regarding

him/herself and by extension society which can be, if not corrected, then at least pointed

out by science. Science, then, is inextricably intertwined with education, aiming to make

you aware of your naıve, mistaken forms of dealing with yourself, the other(s) and the

world. Today, for example, we are taught to reconsider our thoughts on love, altruism or

morality, as neuroscience can reveal to us how these are influenced, shaped or, for some,

entirely reducible to material and evolutionary determinants.

The neurosciences clearly inherited this educational drive from the psy-sciences.

Remember, here, the primary educational intentions of Stanley Milgram’s shock generator

experiment (1974). In the experiment participants are led to believe they are giving electric

shocks to another person. At the end of the experiment, Milgram enters the room. As the

ultimate representative of science, and in a truly Candid Camera moment, he lifts the veils:

not only about the deception of the experiment—the fact that the electric shocks are fake—

but, further, the veils of our culturally induced ideas, all for the purposes of teaching us the

real social psychological mechanisms of obedience (see De Vos 2009).

The crucial point, here, is that it is widely held that this psycho-education will benefit

us: Milgram believed in the emancipatory potential of this study. The plus est en vous can

thus be turned into a surplus: once you know how it works, you can manipulate and profit

from it. Just consider how the concept of ‘‘positive thinking’’ essentially rests on the idea

that you can lead or even mislead your psyche. It is this logic that returns in full force with

the neurological turn: you can fool your brain, so we are told in the numerous popular

‘‘train your brain’’ websites, and the more sophisticated academic discourses on neuro-

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feedback (for an overview see Weiskopf 2012).7 Perhaps this goes some way to explaining

the eagerness inherent to the neurological turn: the contingency and volatility of psy-

chology never managed to flesh out the plus en vous; in neuroscience this is allegedly a

given: is it not simply the brain?

But not let us not get ahead of ourselves: the logic of the neurological turn in education

is tributary to the phenomenon of psychologisation, and as the latter is closely tied to

psycho-education, it is expedient to look closer into the relation between education and the

psy-sciences itself.

The Weak and the Strong

Although psychology since its inception, that is, since its emancipation from philosophy and

its aspiration to be a real science (Parker 2007), has profoundly influenced theories and praxes

within education and schooling, it is only in the post-World-War II period (especially from

the Cold War leading up to the fall of the Berlin Wall) that one can speak of a genuine

psychologisation of the school (De Vos 2012b; McLaughlin 2010). One could refer here to

evolutions within psychology (e.g. the cognitive revolution in psychology in the 50 and 60 s

and its evident orientation to education), but perhaps it is more expedient to look at some of

the key changes in the field of education itself, which can be seen as antecedents to psy-

chology entering the school system. Again, in the interest of clarity, my intention here is

neither to applaud nor simply condemn this psychologisation tout court; rather, I am inter-

ested in exploring the conditions of (im)possibility of the psychological discourse.

Let us hereto, to cite one example, consider how in Flanders a particular kind of

psychologisation of education emerged firstly in religious teaching. Up until the 1960’s

catechesis fairly unproblematically centred around Christian doctrine and its ontological

claims (Pollefeyt 2004). However, due to an increasing secularization driven by a rapidly

changing socio-economic and cultural climate in post-war Europe, this form of religious

education became untenable. This led to what Pollefeyt refers to as the anthropological

turn in catechesis, with its focus on the subjective experience of the individual and its

reliance on the human and the social sciences: the class became a discussion group tackling

contemporary issues (Pollefeyt 2004). However, I would argue that rather than the

anthropological, it is above all the psychological discourse which one finds in catechesis

textbooks, which often recite verbatim psychological theories and data pertaining to, for

example, puberty (puberty and sexuality became important themes in catechesis). Just

think of the typical Who Am I? books or learning units in religious education, with the

obligatory drawing of a centralised Me-figure. As a religious education book from

Northern Ireland literally states, its purposes are as such: that pupils will ‘‘have considered

the term identity and what it means’’ (Maggil and Colson 2008, p. 4).

Weak catechesis, strong psychology? Perhaps this is a general issue: psychology is

invocated to re-mobilize a stranded discourse, a theory or praxis which has reached a limit

or deadlock.8 In this sense, the psychologisation of catechesis can be seen as a prelude to

7 Do we not move here from the plus est en vous to the capitalist scheme of pursuing the surplus, the latterof which is achieved via outsmarting the labourer, the colonial other, future resources…, and now, in turn,the brain?8 The psychologisation of unemployment, for example (e.g. the individualising psycho-social programmesaimed at the unemployed), testify to the impasse governmental labour policies find themselves in (Crespoand Serrano 2010; De Vos 2012b; Parker 2007).

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the psychologisation of education, which had reached crisis-point itself in the post-war era.

Indeed, one could argue that with globalisation, and the shift from a Fordist production

economy towards a post-Fordist knowledge economy, the classic educational approach,

grounded in the transference of knowledge and an attendant regime of discipline, had run

its course. It is here that the psychological turn made its appearance.

Initially the psy-discourse found its way into the school via the para-scholar services,

such as vocational guidance and psycho-medico-social counselling. However, it did not

take long for psychology to colonise the curricula. To again use the example of Flanders,

the psy-discourse entered the class rooms via the so-called attainment targets (the minimal

learning outcomes). The government stipulated, for example, that three to 6 year olds

should be able ‘‘to speak about feelings such as joy, fear, sorrow, and surprise’’ (Vlaamse

Gemeenschap). Authors who would applaud this thus want the school to become ‘‘an

optimal care system which gives every child maximum opportunity of a full and well-

balanced development of their personality’’ (Roelands and Druine 2000, p. 79). These

attainment targets are evidently saturated with psy-terminology: referring to social skills,

assertivity, the ability to be respectful and tolerant, etcetera (see: De Vos 2008). Kathryn

Ecclestone describes a similar movement in the United Kingdom whereby wellbeing and

mental health permeated the classroom through what she perspicuously calls the ‘‘cur-

riculum of the self’’ (Ecclestone and Hayes 2009).9

However, if at first glance this looks like strong psychology, a closer inspection might

afford another perspective. For if we look at the pedagogical methods developed for

teachers operationalizing the attainment target of emotional literacy, we are presented with

learning material which aims at teaching the children ‘‘a more differentiated vocabulary

concerning emotions’’, in order to ‘‘express feelings in a more appropriate way’’ (Kog et al.

1997). It is important to highlight here how the toddlers are turned into students of psy-

chology: nursery school teachers introduce them into the Elementary Psychology of

Feelings. This is the ultimate undertow of psychologisation: implementing psychology in

the school cannot but involve educating the pupils in psychology. Weak psychology,

strong education?

One could argue that psychology structurally leads to the embracing of an educational

paradigm: it is in this way that psychology establishes itself as a scientific discipline. That

is, through its theories and praxes, psychology addresses the human being as homo psy-

chologicus and henceforth produces the psychologised subject who views oneself as an

object of psychology. Psychology’s ‘‘that’s what you are’’ thus invites the modern subject

to view itself (as well as others and the world) via the objectifications of the psy-discourse.

Hailed into the psychological discourse we come to identify with the operator/agent

position of scientific objectivations: we become our own psychologist (De Vos 2012b).

Psychology, then, is in itself a weak discourse: it structurally relies on the educational

paradigm; it has to be taught. In this way psychology is psycho-education; psychology is

psychologisation. My somewhat bold claim, therefore, is that psychology cannot but enter

the school, whether it be as an actual course or as learning content. This is not only

discernible in the field of affective education—although obviously the affective turn is

closely related to the psychological turn—but also in the growing preoccupation with

‘‘mental disorders’’ in education. ADHD as a phenomenon, for example, is based upon

masses of information and educational campaigns. In clinical settings even the child itself

9 Purdy and Morrison make a strong case against the ‘‘The Northern Ireland Revised Curriculum’’ and itsclaim for scientific support in neuroscience, condemning it for being ‘‘another unwitting step in a ‘curric-ulum spiral’’’ (Purdy and Morrison 2009, p. 108).

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is subjected to theory: you suffer from ADHD and you know what that is… Even cognitive

psychology must enter the classroom as part of the curriculum:10 not only are teachers

taught how humans think, but the pupils themselves are also instructed in the theoretical

basics of cognitive processes.11 In short: the modus operandus in the psy-praxes is the

administration and the implantation of scientific knowledge into the subject’s life-world,

imploring it to internalise this scientific, objectifying gaze and turn it upon itself.12

Moreover, as the school became an integral care-centre, the other side of this psy-

chologisation almost inevitably involved an equally sweeping pathologization. That is, a

focus on the personal and the subjective runs the risk that everything which goes wrong

within schools will be framed through the same subjective and personal paradigm. This

perhaps goes some way to explaining the widespread fixation in schools on all sorts of

personality disorders. The prevalence of ADHD, autism-spectrum disorders, dyslexia,

dyspraxia is a testament to this (see for a critique: Timimi et al. 2010; Timimi and

Radcliffe 2005). It is precisely in the growing morbidity of these mental disorders within

education that one witnesses the shift from the psychological to the neurological, as these

disorders are predominantly viewed as neurological rather than mental disorders—the

development of matching pharmaceuticals (see higher) also played a decisive role here.

Psychology, it seems, even as it has proved to be a very powerful and invasive discourse,

has a fundamental weakness: it cannot account for that which does not work; that is, it

cannot account for that what thwarts its humanist ideals. The psy-discourse cannot think

the flaws in the psyche on its own terms, so it would appear, and it is this that fuels the turn

to the neurological (De Vos 2012b). Weak psychology, strong education thus must be

paired with weak psychology, strong neurology. Or will we again need to turn this around?

I will take a closer look to this in the following section.

Neurologisation or Why Psychology Sticks

Psychology, for structural reasons, necessarily has to deflect criticisms that it is grounded

upon competing and conflicting theories rather than, as it as a discipline prefers to claim,

empirically certifiable facts. Hence, the vantage point psychology implores us to adopt to

view ourselves is never entirely beyond doubt. With the advent of the neurosciences this

limitation is seemingly solved, as it is no longer the psychologist who can see inside us,

but rather the fMRI scan, which, compared to the partial and blurred imagery provided by

psychological theories, allegedly delivers uncontested, high-definition images of our

brain.

10 So if, for example, behaviourism and later Carl Roger’s positive existentialism were important threads ineducation in the recent past (as one of the reviewers of this paper remarked), then the next move would be tolook there for traces of psychologisation also, that is, for traces where pupils and students themselves wereintroduced theoretically into these psychological theories. But such an undertaking falls out with the scopeof this paper.11 See, for example, an educational brochure for 16 year old pupils which contains a whole chapter on ‘‘thelearning brain’’ dealing with the basics of cognitive psychology and its correlate neurology (Raeymaekers2009).12 This sets the implementation of the psychological discourse apart from that of the medical discourse, forexample. Even though the latter often goes together with medically educating the pupils, the backbone ofmedicalization does not rely on it: screening and vaccination programmes, for example, can adequately runentirely independently from this.

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However, the following question immediately rears its head: how strong is neurology?

Can it unilaterally encompass the field hitherto covered by the psy-sciences? A useful

touchstone via which to confront this question is precisely the burgeoning theories and

praxes of neuroeducation, which will rapidly return us to the observation that the weak/

strong carrousel has not stopped quite yet.

Take, for example, the ‘‘Brain Targeted Teaching’’ project of Mariale M. Hardiman of

the Johns Hopkins University. It stems from neurological research demonstrating that

while particular threats impede learning, positive emotional experiences can contribute to

long-term memory (Hardiman 2010). The programme promotes the use of ‘‘Mood Man-

agement Skills’’, a CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) program with adolescent students:

Caught up in all of its contradictions it is often difficult for you to understand that

adolescence is simply a phase of your life. You are embroiled in its passion and

caught in its web. You may act before you think and jump to conclusions before

checking out the entire story. Amidst all of this confusion, you may need a road map

that helps you find your way through this maze called adolescence. Mood Man-

agement is a skills-building program designed to be your road map (Langelier 2001,

p. 1).

Adolescents, then, are to be acquainted with neurological sciences. Of particular

significance is the strongly interpellative ‘‘you’’, which, together with the developmental

approach, draws the ‘‘adolescent’’ out of his or her life-world and summons them to adopt

the theoretical perspective of the neurosciences to look upon themselves. ‘‘Adolescents’’,

we are told elsewhere, ‘‘can learn to closely examine their emotional response to a given

situation’’ (Sylwester 1994, p. 64, my emphasis). One should not overlook how

neuroeducation is packaged in an educational form: it is neuro-education, literally

educating the pupils and students themselves in neurology. The educational neuroscience

laboratory Engrammetron at the Simon Fraser University, for example, not only offers

teacher/parent workshops and presentations, but also gives student workshops. One such

workshop entails: ‘‘How to Study Effectively: Strategies that consider cognition, emotion,

and motivation’’. Whilst the workshop ‘‘Brain, Mind, and Emotion’’ is designed ‘‘to

acquaint school age students with what neuroscience can tell us about brain functions,

specifically learning and the affective component of human existence.’’.13

In order to answer the question, where does this inculcation and/or enforcing of this

meta-perspective ultimately lead to, we need only refer to the words of neuro-education-

alist Langelier himself: ‘‘Emphasis is placed on teaching them to recognize when they are

in their emotional mind with the ultimate goal of learning how to exit from it’’ (Langelier

2005, p. 4, my emphasis). Here we see in vivo the shift from the psychological to the

neurological. For, is the basic message of this Mood Management Skills program not that,

at the same time that you are called upon to contemplate yourself from the expert’s

perspective, you should attempt to supersede the psychological strata? You should reject

your direct psychological ways of reacting, and, hence, de-psychologise yourself! That is,

through becoming a scholar, a CBT expert of emotions fluent in the latest research on the

issue, you become de-psychologised.

Weak psychology, strong neurology. But to be absolutely clear, this de-psychologisa-

tion was always already at work within the actual psy-discourses themselves. This was

because, during the psychological turn the subject was hailed into a position beyond its

own psychology, turning it into a mere spectre that hovered above its own psychology. But

13 http://www.engrammetron.net/outreach/workshops.html.

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now, during the neurological turn, the subject is seemingly grounded by virtue of such

down-to-earth issues as heart rates, oxygen levels and adrenal glands secreting cortisol.

Does this signal the death knell for the psyche and the expiration of psychology and

psychologisation? Perhaps not, if only for the fact that the psy-complex has a longstanding

tradition and expertise in psycho-education which, as we can observe, is most readily

offered in service to the expansion of the neuro-discourses. Just consider how in the case of

ADHD it is primarily the psychologists who are eager to spread the news in therapy

settings, schools, and in the media that ADHD is not a psychological disturbance but a

brain disorder. Here, already, some weakness seeps into the neurological: it needs to pass

through education. To put it bluntly, the first lesson of any ADHD-discourse (that it is brain

based) needs so much repetition precisely because decisive evidence for the neurological

basis of ADHD is still lacking. Weak neurology, strong education. Hence, neurology’s

twin is neurologisation; just as in the tradition of psychology, it interpellates us into the

scientific vantage point. We are once again hovering above ourselves.

However, there might be other reasons yet why neurology(zation) does not mean the

end of psychology(zation). Looking at the literature on neuroeducation, and how it leans

predominantly on the cognitive-behavioural approach (Ansari et al. 2012), it appears that

neurology will not easily usurp psychology. If research shows, for example, that pupils

with better mathematical skills use more of this or that part of the brain than poorly

performing pupils, is this really the definitive explanation? Does it really usurp the typical

hermeneutic explanations (or psychologising explanations) of bad results at schools in

terms of family relations (systems theory), or in terms of Oedipal transference (psycho-

analysis)? In fact, one could argue that the fundamental reason why this or that brain region

is used or not is not explained per se with neurology and fMRI’s—unless one takes the

radical position that educational differences only reflect lesions, anatomical malfunction-

ings or idiosyncrasies. At least, then, some doubt is introduced as to whether neurology is

truly strong enough to counter psychology(zation).

Interestingly, a project aiming to get pupils acquainted with the ‘‘fascinating world of

the brain’’ asks the same question:

Do we really understand how the brain computes that 9 times 6 equals 54, or how

they recognize the face of my boyfriend (without equivocating it with that of the

geography teacher, or how they can remember how happy I was with my first little

bike? Even after twenty centuries of research and speculation we do not have the

answers to these questions ready at hand (Raeymaekers 2009, p. 5, my translation).

In the end, neurology can only show us mute images, mere chemistry and pure electricity:

there is a lot to see, to count, to show…, but there is not really something to know. It is

there, as the quote implies, that classic psychology reappears: one could even argue that,

alongside cognitive psychology and developmental psychology, the much maligned

Freudian psychoanalysis is evoked: indeed, how else are we to interpret the peculiar

example of a brain that interchanges my boyfriend with the geography teacher, if not along

standard Freudian lines of love following the oedipal scheme and education being a setting

under the spell of transference?

This weak neurology, strong psychology is the logical counterpart, then, of the earlier

weak psychology, strong neurology. That is, neurology cannot but evoke the psychological

as its hermeneutic counterpart, while psychology cannot but solicit something like neu-

rology in an attempt to fix its structural groundlessness (De Vos 2012a). Here I argue

against Andrew J. David and against Paul Howard-Jones who, in their critical assessment

of neuroeducation, propose that psychology can stand on its own, as it would be adequately

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supported by behavioural studies (Davis 2004; Howard-Jones 2008). Nor, I claim, can

neurology stand on its own; in fact, for some neuroscientists this is not even remotely

problematic: Kenneth Pugh of the Haskins Laboratories in New Haven, for instance, says

in an interview: ‘‘psychology is a glue holding the system together, mapping the direction

in brain imaging, now, 5 years from now and into the future’’ (Murray 2000). Should we

not conclude, then: brain imaging is pre-mapped, or brain mapping is pre-imagined? What

appears to be sticking is the psychology.

However, to be absolutely clear on this point, the paradoxical link between the two

disciplines, and the true glue so to speak, is education. In psycho-neuro-education the late-

modern subject, interpellated to occupy the vantage point of the sciences, becomes a meta-

subject, beyond both the brain (a non-human, non-experiential, non-phenomenological

entity), and the mind or the psyche (in its turn a non-human, non-experiential, non-

phenomenological category). This problematic (in the sense that it remains unquestioned)

Von Munchausen meta-subject that is called into life by psycho-neuro-education—that

which is able to pull itself out of the morass by its own hair, and thus transcends both

nature and nurture—affords me the opportunity to take my argument a step further yet still,

in order to ask the question: what is education? Or, alternatively, what should it be? Is it

not the case today that we are at a loss when confronted with such a question? In other

words, we seem to know less and less about what education is.14

The Problem with Education

What education is, is a question which is either barely addressed or not addressed at all

within the field of neuroeducation. Consider, for example, the way in which the well-

known and widespread idea that the neurosciences reveal the relevance of affect in edu-

cation is taken for granted and/or seen as obvious in the literature. The basic message of a

paper by Mary H. Immordino-Yang and the well-known neuroscientist Antonio Damasio,

for example, is that we have the wrong idea about learning: rational thought is not opposed

to the affective; the affective always already permeates rational thought and is a necessary

and inextricable part of it (Immordino-Yang and Damasio 2007). While the authors con-

sider this a ground-breaking insight, our initial reaction may be to simply shrug our

shoulders: is this not old hat, a commonplace insight? However, the real issue is perhaps

that, given that the authors want to sketch ‘‘a biological and evolutionary account of the

relationship between emotion and rational thought’’ (Immordino-Yang and Damasio 2007,

p. 3), they all too readily and uncritically conclude that addressing this issue is what

education is about. By making the brain the locus of educational praxis in this way, do not

Immordino-Yang and Damasio unwittingly transform the old dualistic nature versus

nurture discussion into a paradoxical, but just as dualistic, nature versus brain dichotomy?

That is, in an another apparent Von Munchausen-esque gesture, educating the brain seems

to be required in order to confront nature. Perhaps this paradox is at work in many

contemporary disorders themselves: in the case of ADHD, genderdysforia and autism, for

example, nature (that is, ideal nature or nature as it supposedly should be), is thwarted by

the brain! The brain, then, is supposed to play tricks with nature, and it is on this same

paradoxical level that theorists of neuroeducation place education as such. Hence, the first

14 This is yet another paraphrasing of Jose Saramago’s seminal utterance: ‘‘We will know less and less whatis a human being’’ (Saramago 2008).

Deneurologizing Education?

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question to be asked of such supporters of neuroeducation might not be, what do you mean

by ‘neuro’, but, rather, what do you mean by ‘education’?

At a minimum, it is evident that the cognitive-emotional divide, once a central construct

within the old public/private partition, is no longer believed to be the bedrock of education.

Formerly, one could argue, the school dealt with rational thought. Emotions, if deemed to

be unhelpful for attempts to instil discipline and character in support of the rational project,

were supposed to be reserved for the realm of the home and the family. The call to bring

emotions into education itself in this way seems to signal that something did not work

anymore in this scheme. This led to a decisive and profound shift in education: education

used to be disinterested in the personal and the psychological, you were not probed on

these terrains. Now, by contrast everybody is duty-bound to bring the personal into the

equation; in fact, not doing so is readily considered as indicative of problems or even

disorders.15

Hence, the aforementioned crisis in education, to which the psy-discourse came to the

rescue, might in the first place concern a faltering partition of the public and the private

sphere. Why don’t you share your emotions with us, as Dr. Phil says, the echoes of which

can be heard in the class-rooms during circle time. Psychologisation and neurologisation

are the paradigms through which subjectivity, a formerly supposed sovereign and private

terrain, folds over, as it were, to the public and political domain. In other words: (psy-

cho)neurologising subjectivity means turning the private inside out to the public.

Do we not, moreover, end up being unable to conceive not only of education, but also,

more generally, of the public and cultural field as such? Let us reconsider the aforemen-

tioned blind-spot within the psy-paradigm which leaves it structurally unable to account for

that which does not work, and pushes it towards the neurological paradigm. Learning

disabilities, for example, are believed to be brain-based and heritable (Fletcher 2012), and

violence and aggression are considered as dysfunctions of the neural circuitry (Davidson

et al. 2000). Concomitantly, today, any potential malfunctioning in the social or political

spheres is increasingly reduced to the biological and the neurological. Think of the

attempts to explain the success of right wing rhetoric with the functioning of the amgydala

(see e.g. Connolly 2002). Even if one professes an interdependence of the biological and

the cultural, problems and symptoms seem to be only thinkable at the level of the bio-

logical (De Vos 2013a). Whilst, for example, Connolly explicitly claims an interdepen-

dency of nature and culture, and Davidson et al. point to environmental and social

influences, these authors converge around the position that the sole and conclusive ground

for explanation is the brain; the cultural is thus no longer thought of as being capable of

harbouring problems in its own terms. Strong biology, weak culture.

However, the central claim of neuroeducation is that, ultimately, biology is not that

strong, for it can be manipulated, or better yet still, to use the appropriate terminology, it

can be managed by an educated brain. This is where, surprisingly, Immordino-Yang and

Damasio conceive of emotions in a very technical, functional, and cold-rationalistic way.

When they describe how patients with brain damage fail to put into use their emotional

resources, they note that they have lost ‘‘their ability to analyze events for their emotional

consequences and to tag memories of these events accordingly’’ (Immordino-Yang and

Damasio 2007, p. 5). Living becomes an issue of ‘‘managing life’’ using ‘‘emotional

strategies (Immordino-Yang and Damasio 2007, p. 7). Here, the life-world is academified:

15 Of course, I am not calling for a return to a rational knowledge and disciplinary model within education.My interest, once again, is to look for the conditions of (im)possibility within, in this particular case,education.

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the lay person is viewed as a scholar, someone who tags events, providing them with

metadata and deals with them as if he was an entrepreneur. Hence, strong education/

culture/economy, weak nature/life-world? The urgent question, as such, is if neuroedu-

cation in this way is not the ideal tool for the neo-liberalization and mercantilization of the

school. The fact that schools take the emotional on board can in part be explained by the

fact that single or dual working parents no longer have the requisite time to dedicate to the

emotional regulation of their children. But perhaps a more pertinent argument yet still, is

that it is precisely in this way that the emotional field can be put to use for the particular

surplus characteristic of the post-Fordist affect-economy and post-Fordist market: that is,

the direct commodification of social relations and subjectivity.

Conclusions

In concluding with a discussion of the role of the neuro-discourses in the realization of

surplus in late-capitalism, this brings us back to one of the central critiques against the

eager embracement of the neurosciences within education. That critique concerns the

following questions: what do we know more about now because of neuroscience? What do

neuroscientists teach us that we did not in fact already know, besides telling us where this

or that function is ostensibly located in the brain? In this paper, I have demonstrated that

the surplus, above all, hinges on redistributing positions. That is, neuro-education wants

everybody, from the teachers, parents, up to and including the child, to know about the

brain. And as we are turned into proto-neurologists ourselves, we can benefit from this

knowledge. Or, as Immordino-Yang and Damasio put it: ‘‘The more people develop and

educate themselves, the more they refine their behavioral and cognitive options’’ (Im-

mordino-Yang and Damasio 2007, p. 7). They literally speak of managing one’s physi-

ology, mind and life (Immordino-Yang and Damasio 2007, p. 4 and 5) without taking into

account that neuroeducation culminates in neuro-education and its aforementioned para-

doxes which I have documented in this paper (you become your own Von Munchausen-

like educator, your own pedagogue).

But here, of course, our original question returns: is neurologisation not a mere con-

tinuation of psychologisation? For we have already identified within psychology the

interpellation of the modern subject to understand itself, others and the world as if he or she

were a psychologist. In neuroeducation, this partition of discursive positions is repeated:

everybody is called upon to become a student of neuroscience. Nevertheless, a peculiar

shift can be discerned in this changing of the guard. Ramaekers and Suissa rightfully argue

that ‘‘more so than developmental psychological language, neuropsychological language

has the effect of establishing the idea that it is now possible to have ‘real knowledge’’’

(Ramaekers and Suissa 2012, p. 20). That is, it is argued that we have moved from the

contingencies of competing and conflicting psychological theories to the firm ontology of

neuroscience. And this, in contradistinction to the limits of classical psychology, allegedly

has the means to effect very tangible and material effects in education. For example, the

previously discussed ‘‘Mood Management Program’’ claims that its nine-steps programme

actually alters the number and strength of synapses: ‘‘[i]t is exciting to realize that as

adolescents learn these steps, they are actually changing their brain’’ (Langelier 2005,

pp. 5–6).

Here we have it again: strong culture/education is believed to be capable of changing

nature/biology. Consider how Douglas Chute, a neuropsychologist at Philadelphia’s Drexel

University, expresses his hopes in an interview:

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that eventually his research team can use nIRS—a portable imaging form involving a

sensor clamped to the head—to find out if conditioned changes in blood flow to

various brain regions can improve learning performance in ADHD children. In real

time, children would watch on computer screens how their blood flow changes as

they approach learning tasks differently (Murray 2000).

Somebody must be writing an app right now. But are we not here shifting from heavy

ontology to the virtual world of screens and avatars? At the least, the assumption that

visualizing your inner core would allow you to transcend your hardware is not

unproblematic, for it appears to posit an unquestioned virtual vantage point from where,

as if in some control room, a homunculus steers and corrects the workings of the brain by

means of some unexplained, if not magic, contrivances.

In this respect it seems that neuroscience potentially has a far greater effect than the old,

inevitably speculative psy-sciences. Just consider how Laurence Steinberg, on the one

hand, proclaims in a very balanced fashion that the relevance of brain science for policies

and laws concerning adolescents is far from straightforward, whilst, on the other hand,

claiming knowledge on brain development is important: ‘‘… because this is part of what it

means to be 15’’ (Steinberg 2009, p. 747). Is the problem here not precisely that neuro-

science, through its claim to provide the meaning of being fifteen, actually risks taking

away from the adolescent the experience of the meaninglessness of being fifteen? That is,

at the risk of psychologising, is not puberty a privileged encounter with the fundamental

alienation of the modern subject that I hinted at in the introduction? In other words, being

fifteen in my estimation is not so much about the struggle involved with what it means to

be fifteen, but rather with the meaningless of being fifteen, or at the very least, it is about

struggling against all the meanings imputed by the vested authorities about being fifteen.

To take this a final and decisive step further, this might eventually be the ultimate lesson

of the booming neurosciences themselves. That is, if I as a 15 year old am told how my

brain functions—this is the crux of neuroeducation as we have seen, everybody has to

know—is such a knowledge not in danger of producing the question: if what I feel, desire

or do is dictated by my brain, does this not leave me like the proverbial dog watching a sick

cow? In the end neuroscience itself reveals to us the fundamental alienation of the modern

subject, the ancient wound of meaninglessness. Neuroscience, potentially, eventually

presents us with a zero-level of subjectivity: neuroscience takes apart the psychological

entity we are imagined to be. Even if the radical conclusion, that there is nobody at home in

the brain (see e.g. Metzinger 2003), that there is no self (Churchland 2013) or no Ego

(Dennett 1991) is not always made explicit, the contemporary neurosciences are far from

reviving a fully fleshed out subject or a factual agency. But is this not the skandalon which

is above all obfuscated in the applied neurosciences themselves? In the end, the neuro-

sciences, and especially the field of neuroeducation (structurally and inevitably?), succumb

to the temptation to know, finally, what it means to be fifteen, or more generally yet, what

it is to be human. And as everybody is interpellated to assume this knowledge, to look upon

oneself from the perspective of the neurosciences, this neurologisation brings into being a

new, although albeit this isn’t necessarily made explicit, unified image of the human: the

homo academicus, the agent looking with sheer amazement at the colourful brain scans.

Consequently, what current critiques of neuroeducation risk overlooking is that the

(late)modern subject is the subject of the sciences: since modernity subjectivity cannot be

cut loose from the hegemonic discourses within Academia. Here we might have found the

ultimate couplet in our weak/strong series: strong neuroscience, weak subject (neurosci-

ence’s implication in the end of the full and unified subject) and weak neuroscience, strong

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subject (the academic agent engendered by the neurological gaze being itself the blind

ground upon which that very gaze rests). In this way, merely debunking popular neuro-

myths and categorical mistakes in neureducation in an attempt to save neurology and put

forward a better, more pure form of neuroeducation (Howard-Jones 2008; Kraft 2012;

Schrag 2013), might fail to assess the foundational paradox underlying each science of the

human:16 it cannot but engender its own subject. A simple plea, then, to deneurologise

education so as to save psychology or pedagogy17 would fall into precisely the same trap.

Given that this paper has identified a fundamental mismatch between education and

neurology, between psychology and neurology, between nature and culture and, eventu-

ally, between subjectivity and science, the challenge might be to understand these gaps as

structural, and why not, as ontological and eventually material. This decentring of the

material might be precisely the very condition from which to rethink education.

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