ABSTRACT
Much of educational scholarship concerns the proper use of knowledge, lesson plans, curricular materials, classroom resources, and even schools in order to promote specific learning outcomes. But what would happen if we did not assume the primacy of the logic of operability within education? While it is often the case that scholarship on schools asserts either that (a) schools can operate better through reform or (b) that schools are operating precisely through their failures (thus reproducing intentional inequalities), this chapter examines what could happen if we deactivated the operability of schools. To engage in this thought experiment, the chapter provides a detailed analysis of the relationship between the schoolhouse and studying found in the novel Jakob von Gunten by Robert Walser. What emerges through this novel is a truly inoperative school. And in this inoperative state, the school provides the main character, Jakob, with the freedom to experience his potentiality without end.
