ABSTRACT

In the era of management by objectives and the obligation of results as in the utilitarian era of Charles Dickens, these are difficult times for the promoters of an emancipatory vision of education, concerned by social justice rather than management performance. Since the 1980s, the increasing recourse to statistical ratios, econometric data or even performance indicators in the decision-making process, to justify a measure, to be used as the basis for a strategic programme, has become a routine practice both in states and the corporate environment. As a science of the state, statistics have always served as a tool of evidence and a tool of government. By adopting the methodology of clinical trials, evidence-based policy proceeds by empiric corroboration, in the manner of evidence-based medicine. Imagination is not by essence emancipating, whereas facts by nature are alienating. The art of governing by facts thus coexists with forms of mythocracy, in the terms of Yves Cittons concept.