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Abstract

We are being evaluated, but who is evaluating who, and on what terms? Today universities are obliged to be transparent and comparable by the “Bologna Process”, which is great for student mobility. But who is evaluating who and on what terms? What are the qualifications of the evaluators? Why do market oriented managerial reforms loose track on educating individuals who can relate to societal questions? This project has the ambition to evaluate the evaluators. The educational reforms following the “Bologna Accords” have sought legitimation through intensive evaluation methods. This evaluation process has opened up for strong political influence over higher education by various governmental agencies. How do we as educators in the humanities and the arts deal with this? For trying out how managerial methods work within the humanities in practice I hired Mr. Rhaman K.J. Wagner, who works within the German Bad-Homburg-based department of the Kaizen Institute — a world wide enterprise mainly helping industries to improve efficiency — and presented him to six students from the Carl von Ossietzky University in Oldenburg, Germany. Staging this was a way for me to understand a true story I was told by an artist friend of mine, Markus Degerman, who experienced exactly the same scenario at the Tromsø Art Academy in Norway. The ambiguity in how the students react to this Kaizen lean management education performed by coach Mr. Wagner, and how he approaches them, to me, is the content of this event and video. And on a symbolic level: lean management method Kaizen, developed by the car manufacturer Toyota meets 1935 Nobel Peace Price winner Carl von Ossietzky within his own context. What does this mean? How would the idealist Carl von Ossietzky have reacted to these lean management strategies?