Emma Dierkes
Emma Dierkes is a fourth year UBC-Sciences Po dual degree student majoring in honours Sociology, with an focus on economics.
Her thesis explores how merit, and deservingness more broadly, is understood in education systems in non-capitalist regimes, specifically in socialist post-war East Germany.
When she’s not stuck in the archives, you might find Emma busy at the pottery studio.
The concept of merit is deeply entangled with contemporary capitalism as the mechanism underlying legitimate stratification. We accept inequality because we are meant to believe that it is the result of unequal ability people are naturally endowed with. Common knowledge would tell us that capitalist and socialist societies are diametrically opposed, not only in their totality but in their working parts, and yet, throughout state socialist societies some form of merit-based selection has often emerged. Indeed, from its inception in 1949, the GDR constructed a differentiated high school education landscape, enabling some selected students to prepare for higher study, and others to first gain practical knowledge.
This begs the question: how can the social meaning of merit be understood in state socialist societies, and how does this create evaluation systems? Drawing on high school application and rejection decisions and parental appeals from 1950-52 in Brandenburg and Saxony, this paper attempts to understand how the education ministry in the GDR, which constitutionally and ideologically, promised equality and demolition of existing stratification, thought about evaluation and justified new forms of selection within education.
At the same time, this paper interrogates how parents and other key actors engaged with these new evaluatory systems. The concept of evaluation, and its product (merit), are considered through Luhmann’s treatment of education as a system, as well as through a Foucauldian understanding of modern information creation as a site of control and domination. Finally, Althusser’s theoretical framing of state domination through ideological state apparatuses, is used to motivate my inquiry into education. In particular, his claim that without radical change to key apparatuses socialist regimes risk inheriting and reproducing similar, if not the same, forms of domination they aim to destroy.
I expect this paper to illuminate unexpected ideological and practical contradictions institutionalized in the GDR.
How did you become interested in this topic? Why did you choose it for your thesis?
When we think about socialism, we don’t generally think of meritocracy. I became interested in the meaning of merit, and strict metrics of merit like grades, under socialist rule because of this seeming contradiction. How do societies founded on ideals of equality make sense of evaluation, especially when it seemingly creates hierarchies?
After doing some preliminary research and speaking to people around me, I realized that the answer didn’t seem obvious. This was the first sign that delving into this topic could be fruitful as a thesis project. Then, I spent more time looking into educational policy in the German Democratic Republic and discovered that merit-based selection practices were a major part of the educational reforms they pursued. After finding this out, I knew I needed to understand the ideological and social implications of such policies.
Can you summarize your project and its main findings for us?
My project is oriented around archival material, produced between 1950 and 1952, which I accessed at two different state archives in historical East Germany.
I analyzed around 75 high school applications, including the application itself and the rejection/acceptance notice. Often, they also included written exchanges between parents, commissions and ministries, revolving around appeals to rejections.
Regarding the parental appeals, I found that they were centred around five different arguments: constitutionally enriched rights, the academic merit of their child, extenuating circumstances which influenced academic performance, their social/class position, and their political alliance with the ‘project’ of the GDR. I also found that parents took up ideas related to ideology, ministerial policies, and decision-making commissions.
What was your favourite part of doing research?
My favourite part has been being exposed to so many new thinkers and ideas.
This project has enabled me to read some social theorists that I may not have come to otherwise. For example, Louis Althusser, a Marxist philosopher, who articulates how—through what mechanisms—states imbue ideology into their citizens. Since the end of the Cold War and what some have termed the ‘end of history,’ I think students get less and less of a chance to dig deeply into socialist imaginations of society, both theoretically and concretely, and I have enjoyed being able to do just that.
What was the most difficult part of this learning journey? What was most satisfying?
While very rewarding, navigating archives was super challenging. Firstly, with the relevant archives being in Germany, it was difficult to find out where to look. When I found a file name that I thought sounded interesting, it was impossible to know what I would find inside until I opened it up in person.
Luckily, I had the help of some amazing archivists that looked through some files for me and helped me with all the bureaucratic hurdles. They made this project possible!
If you could continue this project, what other facets of your topic or research question would you want to explore?
Something that seems surprisingly absent from the documents I found is the role of the students themselves. I was able to access information about most levels of government, the decision-making committees, and the parents, as representatives of the children, but very little about the children and their perspective/experience.
Exploring how children were taught to think about academic performance would be very interesting. Anecdotally, having spoken to some people who grew up in the later years of the GDR, academic performance was treated as a site of political action. In other words, doing well in school was framed as a way to support the political project of the GDR. This is something I would love to explore in the future!
