The tyranny of student satisfaction: Cruel optimistic fantasies in education

Abstract

In this theoretical paper, we reflect on the optimistic neoliberal fantasies that are played out in today’s education, even though that they rarely live up to their promises. Inspired by Lauren Berlant’s concept of cruel optimism, and psychoanalytical thinkers as Slavoj Žižek and Ilan Kapoor, and their focus on concepts such as fantasy, desire, enjoyment, and the unconscious, we argue that there is a contemporary tendency for critical thinking and complicated conversations to be neglected or avoided in education, especially these forms of thinking and conversations that can question the neoliberal fantasmatic order and the cruelnss as well as the enjoyment that come with it. Instead, educational institutions and educators must live up to the demands of the big (neoliberal market) Other and its desire for positive student evaluations that mirror satisfaction and quality regarding the educational “product” that students are promised. How it looks will be illustrated by means of examples that derive from a Danish educational context. On that basis, we claim that we are witnessing a form of satisfaction tyranny in education and discuss what it means if educational institutions and educators cannot release themselves from their neoliberal involvement.

The UX University

“…To help build resilience to emotions of this kind, critical theory must engage students in an education of the senses, drawing particular attention to Laurent Berlant's (2011) description of the paradoxical feelings of cruel optimism. Indeed, Hansen and Mellon (2022) have already pointed to the detrimental effects of a model of student experience shaped by optimistic promotional fantasies and reinforced by an emphasis on surplus-driven performance measures, impact evaluations, satisfaction metrics, and the portrayal of students as consumers. These factors can have significant implications for the intellectual development and growth of students.…”