STATISTICS REASONING, GOVERNING EDUCATION, AND SOCIAL INCLUSION AND EXCLUSION

Abstract:

Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)'s Program for International Student Assessment can be understood historically as a particular way of telling the truth about people and change. Central to this style of reasoning in contemporary research and school reforms is statistics. Historically, modern statistics entail the paradox of the state administration of populations in the name of freedom and liberty. Contemporary international calculations and ranking of student performance embody this paradox of the administration of populations. Their numbers fabricate principles about who the child is and should be. The fabrication or making the child as a certain kind of person is produced through the distinctions, categories, and magnitudes embedded in statistics. Further, the comparativeness in the inventories or profiles of classes of people produces difference and exclusions in the impulse to include. The analysis is directed to science studies and to the politics of knowledge.

Keywords:
Statistics; System of reason; Governing; Inclusion/exclusion; Fabricating human kinds