Petro Prokopovych
Founder of commercial beekeeping
Prokopovych's revelatory invention of the world's first dismountable and portable frame hive allowed keepers to freely inspect the bee colonies and remove honey without destroying the bees. Previously the usual practice was to kill all the bees with smoke before taking the honey.
«Through the Window»
Arthur Wasse, 1926
Culture in the foundations of civil society
Pascal Gielen and Theis Leister
A book in the Small Run Books series on the sociology of art, combining two articles co-authored by Pascal Gielen and Theis Leister.
The Hidden Curriculum Exposed
Terry Underwood essay at Substack
When teachers rage against AI-enabled cheating, they're identifying a symptom while missing the disease. The fundamental problem isn't that students can now use artificial intelligence to generate essays or solve equations; it's that our educational system has been redesigned to prioritize sorting and ranking over authentic learning, making cheating more alluring even without AI. Students aren't cheating because AI made it easier—they're cheating because, for generations, we've taught them that the grade matters more than the knowledge.
Are.na
Playlist for ideas
Online software for saving and organizing the content .
A toolkit for assembling new worlds from the scraps of the old
IST PUBLISHING
An independent press based in Kyiv, specializing in contemporary art, theory, anthropology, design, and photography. Despite the ongoing war, we continue to publish, process orders, and deliver books worldwide. Through our publications, exhibitions, and festivals, we foster critical dialogue and innovative storytelling.
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Culture in the foundations of civil society
by Pascal Gielen and Theis Leister
The task of culture is to define meanings: it is what determines what we will consider valuable and how we will look at the world. Defining meanings also involves practice. Culture is not a collection of objects, it is shaped by human actions. Culture is kept alive by repetition, adaptation, actualization, interpretation and criticism, ensuring its continuous development. The primary task of culture is socialization: it allows individuals to integrate into a certain social, political and economic order. Culture teaches how to behave and exist in a certain society, and thus gives meaning to the lives of its representatives. That is why it contributes to social integration and unity. Let no one have any doubts: not the family, but culture are the foundations of society.
***
The cultural sector has been entrusted with a great social responsibility, and in some places it has even acquired a monopoly on the reflexive influence on the social sphere. Its key functions are in the social realm, and it is increasingly becoming the bearer of knowledge and methods that, for example, promote integration, community projects or initiate social innovations. The cultural heritage sector also plays a central role in processes of socialization, qualification and subjectification. Many museums and cultural heritage institutions deal with existential questions such as “Who am I?”, “Why am I here?” They provide information about the cultural order in which we, the newcomers, find ourselves. By understanding history and cultural customs, we can better understand the social order in which we live. This allows us to orient ourselves to the extent to which our own cultural background differs from the new one and to what extent we ourselves want to retreat from it.
***
Art and culture are dialectically linked, but art often questions or undermines cultural customs and traditions. Art is disturbing because it can disrupt established cultural customs. This is why contemporary works of art often generate heated debates—at least about whether a particular artifact is art. Such debates have become an important part of the cultural realm since the dawn of modernity, because they show that there is always room for different views, opinions, interpretations, and sometimes even different ways of coexisting. In art, the question is not whether an alternative view is more beautiful, more interesting, or closer to the truth, but rather the very possibility of another perspective.
***
Art is not identical with the creative industry. There are two reasons for this. (1) The creative industry calculates in advance the economic factor of marketability, and/or (2) it is weighed down by the standards of potential technological or organizational innovations. Thus, non-standard is expected of creative thinking, but it is invariably weighed down by relatively predictable standards.
Of course, the artifacts produced by the creative industry are cultural products. They are of a qualifying nature and are also involved in the game of socialization and subjectification. Moreover, cultural products can influence the existing cultural order and fundamentally change it. Let us recall at least smartphones or games to understand how deeply such creative shifts have affected our idea of coexistence. However, as already noted, the intervention of such a product always occurs according to certain pre-measured standards, economic or technological. Such shifts can have a more significant impact on culture than art, but they depend on the standards of qualification and consumption, as well as on how user-friendly they are.
In other words, the creative industry undoubtedly changes culture, but within quite limited parameters, pushing it towards qualification and the free market.
***
Democracy also relies on a common cultural space. Democracy is not just a political system where votes need to be counted every few years, which is evident in the West’s clumsy attempts to “bring” democracy to countries without a specific democratic tradition. Democracy presupposes the opportunity and ability of citizens to acquire knowledge (and therefore independent media), to reflect on their values, to develop divergent views on them, to discuss and debate. It is in the realm of culture that we think about what is important to us and encounter the views of other people.
***
The cultural sector has been entrusted with a great social responsibility, and in some places it has even acquired a monopoly on the reflexive influence on the social sphere. Its key functions are in the social realm, and it is increasingly becoming the bearer of knowledge and methods that, for example, promote integration, community projects or initiate social innovations. The cultural heritage sector also plays a central role in processes of socialization, qualification and subjectification. Many museums and cultural heritage institutions deal with existential questions such as “Who am I?”, “Why am I here?” They provide information about the cultural order in which we, the newcomers, find ourselves. By understanding history and cultural customs, we can better understand the social order in which we live. This allows us to orient ourselves to the extent to which our own cultural background differs from the new one and to what extent we ourselves want to retreat from it.
***
Art and culture are dialectically linked, but art often questions or undermines cultural customs and traditions. Art is disturbing because it can disrupt established cultural customs. This is why contemporary works of art often generate heated debates—at least about whether a particular artifact is art. Such debates have become an important part of the cultural realm since the dawn of modernity, because they show that there is always room for different views, opinions, interpretations, and sometimes even different ways of coexisting. In art, the question is not whether an alternative view is more beautiful, more interesting, or closer to the truth, but rather the very possibility of another perspective.
***
Art is not identical with the creative industry. There are two reasons for this. (1) The creative industry calculates in advance the economic factor of marketability, and/or (2) it is weighed down by the standards of potential technological or organizational innovations. Thus, non-standard is expected of creative thinking, but it is invariably weighed down by relatively predictable standards.
Of course, the artifacts produced by the creative industry are cultural products. They are of a qualifying nature and are also involved in the game of socialization and subjectification. Moreover, cultural products can influence the existing cultural order and fundamentally change it. Let us recall at least smartphones or games to understand how deeply such creative shifts have affected our idea of coexistence. However, as already noted, the intervention of such a product always occurs according to certain pre-measured standards, economic or technological. Such shifts can have a more significant impact on culture than art, but they depend on the standards of qualification and consumption, as well as on how user-friendly they are.
In other words, the creative industry undoubtedly changes culture, but within quite limited parameters, pushing it towards qualification and the free market.
***
Democracy also relies on a common cultural space. Democracy is not just a political system where votes need to be counted every few years, which is evident in the West’s clumsy attempts to “bring” democracy to countries without a specific democratic tradition. Democracy presupposes the opportunity and ability of citizens to acquire knowledge (and therefore independent media), to reflect on their values, to develop divergent views on them, to discuss and debate. It is in the realm of culture that we think about what is important to us and encounter the views of other people.
The Hidden Curriculum Exposed
by Terry underwood
Many teachers appear to agree with Taylor on the obscene consequences of valuing AI. However, rather than calling en masse for a difficult and costly reform of the letter grade system, shifting it back to the earlier qualitative approach, many of these same teachers refuse to use AI in their teaching. Interestingly, the greatest problem those teachers who are concerned with AI present is its invitation to students to cheat. A moment’s reflection suggests real issues here.
The first major scholarly studies on academic dishonesty in higher education emerged in the 1960s, finding that between 50-70% of college students nationwide had cheated at least once. This established a baseline for understanding the scope of the problem. One of Bowers’ (1964) primary conclusions is that, at least according to one set of questions regarding academically dishonest behaviors, “fully three-quarters of the students have engaged in at least one act of academic dishonesty; half have committed two or more (p. 48).” By the late 20th and early 21st centuries, research showed that cheating begins early and increased with age. Approximately 20% of students started cheating in first grade, rising to 56% in middle school and 70% in high school. The problem wasn't limited to students; studies found that about 35% of teachers in North Carolina had witnessed colleagues engaging in some form of cheating.
So What?
As we emerge from our historical journey, a pattern emerges from the dust. The system that began with personalized, formative assessment steadily transformed into a bureaucratic sorting mechanism. What was once a tool for meaningful communication between teachers and families became a standardized numerical scheme for efficiently processing students through an expanding educational system.
This trajectory—from learning-centered to organization-centered—wasn't caused by AI. It was exposed by it.
When teachers rage against AI-enabled cheating, they're identifying a symptom while missing the disease. The fundamental problem isn't that students can now use artificial intelligence to generate essays or solve equations; it's that our educational system has been redesigned to prioritize sorting and ranking over authentic learning, making cheating more alluring even without AI. Students aren't cheating because AI made it easier—they're cheating because, for generations, we've taught them that the grade matters more than the knowledge.
The 75% of students who admitted to academic dishonesty in the 1960s—long before digital technology entered the classroom—weren't responding to technological temptation. They were responding to a system that had already made extrinsic rewards the point of education. When learning becomes secondary to classification, when assessment serves administrative convenience rather than pedagogical purpose, is it any wonder that students optimize for the outcome rather than the process?
It’s either disingenuous or ignorance of the history of schooling in this country to blame AI for the current angst. AI hasn't created our educational crisis. The algorithmic efficiency with which it can generate acceptable academic work exposes how our system has come to value standardized outputs over meaningful learning. AI outputs, after all, are standardized outputs. If a machine can satisfy our assessment criteria without understanding or curiosity, perhaps humans can do the same.
What teachers should be angry about isn't AI—it's the long, slow transformation of education from a sacred exchange of knowledge into a bureaucratic sorting mechanism. AI hasn't corrupted our students; our system has been corrupting the very purpose of education for generations.
Rather than fighting the technology, perhaps we should use this moment of disruption to reconsider what education is for. Maybe it's time to return to those earlier models of assessment—qualitative, formative, and focused on growth rather than classification. Maybe it’s time to march in the streets and demand the resources education needs to meet the challenges of a world AI-enabled. Maybe the real lesson of AI isn't about preventing cheating but about rebuilding an educational system worth engaging with honestly.
The first major scholarly studies on academic dishonesty in higher education emerged in the 1960s, finding that between 50-70% of college students nationwide had cheated at least once. This established a baseline for understanding the scope of the problem. One of Bowers’ (1964) primary conclusions is that, at least according to one set of questions regarding academically dishonest behaviors, “fully three-quarters of the students have engaged in at least one act of academic dishonesty; half have committed two or more (p. 48).” By the late 20th and early 21st centuries, research showed that cheating begins early and increased with age. Approximately 20% of students started cheating in first grade, rising to 56% in middle school and 70% in high school. The problem wasn't limited to students; studies found that about 35% of teachers in North Carolina had witnessed colleagues engaging in some form of cheating.
So What?
As we emerge from our historical journey, a pattern emerges from the dust. The system that began with personalized, formative assessment steadily transformed into a bureaucratic sorting mechanism. What was once a tool for meaningful communication between teachers and families became a standardized numerical scheme for efficiently processing students through an expanding educational system.
This trajectory—from learning-centered to organization-centered—wasn't caused by AI. It was exposed by it.
When teachers rage against AI-enabled cheating, they're identifying a symptom while missing the disease. The fundamental problem isn't that students can now use artificial intelligence to generate essays or solve equations; it's that our educational system has been redesigned to prioritize sorting and ranking over authentic learning, making cheating more alluring even without AI. Students aren't cheating because AI made it easier—they're cheating because, for generations, we've taught them that the grade matters more than the knowledge.
The 75% of students who admitted to academic dishonesty in the 1960s—long before digital technology entered the classroom—weren't responding to technological temptation. They were responding to a system that had already made extrinsic rewards the point of education. When learning becomes secondary to classification, when assessment serves administrative convenience rather than pedagogical purpose, is it any wonder that students optimize for the outcome rather than the process?
It’s either disingenuous or ignorance of the history of schooling in this country to blame AI for the current angst. AI hasn't created our educational crisis. The algorithmic efficiency with which it can generate acceptable academic work exposes how our system has come to value standardized outputs over meaningful learning. AI outputs, after all, are standardized outputs. If a machine can satisfy our assessment criteria without understanding or curiosity, perhaps humans can do the same.
What teachers should be angry about isn't AI—it's the long, slow transformation of education from a sacred exchange of knowledge into a bureaucratic sorting mechanism. AI hasn't corrupted our students; our system has been corrupting the very purpose of education for generations.
Rather than fighting the technology, perhaps we should use this moment of disruption to reconsider what education is for. Maybe it's time to return to those earlier models of assessment—qualitative, formative, and focused on growth rather than classification. Maybe it’s time to march in the streets and demand the resources education needs to meet the challenges of a world AI-enabled. Maybe the real lesson of AI isn't about preventing cheating but about rebuilding an educational system worth engaging with honestly.