Knowledge into Activism

In discourse surrounding the fashionable consumption of leadership education, and vocational education generally, the phrase ‘knowledge into action’ is regarded as axiomatic and unquestionable. I want to question the political naivety with which this phrase is generally used. This, in order to precipitate a sense of radicalized action (political ‘activism’) within leadership education that acknowledges the role of duty, moral obligation and right action of a form of education that has not, hitherto, accepted the role it plays in legitimizing dominant political regimes. The phrase ‘knowledge into action’ implies a mutually consistent set of ideas with which sense can be made of the world via a form of education, and as such I will call it an ideology. As a lexical device (to recognise the full semiotic contingency of the phrase ‘knowledge into action’) and as an ideology, the phrase has as its unstated claims that all knowledge is actionable; that the two components of knowledge and action are separable; that action is a better mode of existence for knowledge; and that action is founded on imparted ‘knowingness’. The sentiments of the phrase also imply that leadership education should be instrumentally opportune and real-world directed, as distinct from an intrinsically worthwhile education from, say, the liberal arts. Endeavours in the latter form of education, it is said, ‘merely’ cultivate in individuals a sense of mind and intellectual grace for a mutually respectful engagement with society. In sharp and ideologically nuanced distinction to this, proponents of vocational and instrumental educational endeavours side with Illich’s deschooling claim that individuals should learn from the world, not about it. For Symes and McIntyre (‘Working Knowledge, 2000, p.3) knowledge is no longer the product of idle curiosity, pursued in the spirit of open and disinterested inquiry, but is something which now invokes use-value and application. But what exactly is being applied? I think this model has run its course: it has run out of rails.