Contesting Neoliberal Education

Public Resistance and Collective Advance

Dave Hill

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781135906306
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Neoliberal education policies have privatised, marketised, decentralized, controlled and surveilled, managed according to the business and control principles of new public managerialism, attacked the rights and conditions of education workers, and resulted in a loss of democracy, critique and equality of access and outcome. This book, written by an impressive international array of scholars and activists, explores the mechanisms and ideologies behind neoliberal education, while evaluating and promoting resistance on a local, national and global level.

Chapters examine the activities and impacts of the arguably socialist revolution in Venezuela, the Porto Alegre democratic community experimental model in Brazil, the activities of the Rouge Forum of democratic socialist teachers and educators in the USA, Public Service International, resistance movements against the GATS (General Agreement on Trade in Services), and trade union and social movement and community/parental opposition to neoliberal education policies in Britain and in Latin America.

1 Introduction

Gustavo Fischman

No matter how important, contentious or debated an idea may appear to scholars, when a concept becomes a buzzword and is used to describe phenomena as varied as political processes, musical rhythms, economic styles, educational programs and culinary approaches; something akin to a process of willful ignorance begins. Based on the huge number of articles and books using the word in their title, and its ubiquitous presence in casual explanations, I suspect that globalization must be one of the most abused buzzwords in contemporary times. In some academic buzzing circles, globalization is so powerful and so pervasive that it appears to explain everything and, thus, any further effort to theorize the phenomenon appears to be a waste of time.

Fortunately, the contributors of this book consistently demonstrate there is an important difference between polysemic concepts and abused clichés. The editor of this volume, Dave Hill, has gathered an impressive group of scholars who, using a variety of critical lenses, engage in the very timely and needed analysis of globalization and neoliberalism as manifested in the economic, educational, political and social dynamics affecting educational institutions.

Globalization is often equated with a vaguely-defined notion of modernization and is conceptualized as a technologically determined process, unavoidable and unstoppable (Friedman, 2005). From this top down perspective, globalization is a seemingly complex yet “natural” phenomenon and related phenomena, from the intensification of the use of information and communication technologies, unregulated growth of transnational capital, the supranational character of the management of productive processes, implementation of new worldwide trade and tariffs agreements, to increasing trends pressuring in the direction of internationalization of a culture of consumerism, are also equally naturalized (Bauman, 1998; Harvey, 2003).

Within this top-down perspective (Ball, 2003), there are at least two distinct phenomena. First, globalization implies that political, economic, cultural and social actions are reaching a worldwide scale. Second, it suggests that this worldwide scale is being achieved through an increasing homogenization of patterns of production, consumption and cultural understanding (e.g., human rights, etc.) among states, international corporations and societies. Further, worldwide homogenization is forcing local communities to compete not only in pure economic terms, but also politically and culturally by accommodating their cultural and social particularities to the demands of corporate-defined and standardized indicators of economic efficiency and success.

Doubtless, globalization has resulted in increased levels of capital accumulation, information dissemination and technological discoveries, but it has also intensified disparities and inequalities between and within nations (Hill, 2005; Hill and Kumar, 2009a, 2009b). These gains, disparities and inequalities are reflected in differences in the top and bottom perspectives of globalization (Tabb, 2006). In financial terms, the benefits of globalization have disproportionately gone to the top of society. The income share of the richest 20 percent compared to the poorest 20 percent of the world’s population has increased from 30:1 to 61:1 in the last 30 years (Brown & Lauder, 2003). The wealth of the world’s 358 billionaires equals or surpasses the combined annual income of 45 percent of the world’s population. At the same time, the United Nations Development Program (1996) reports that 1.3 billion people still earn an average of $1 US per day and almost 60 percent (3.3 billion) of the world’s population continues to survive on less than $750 US per year. The consequences of globalization have increased the sense of economic precariousness felt among the working and middle classes (Klein, 2007; Stiglitz, 2002; Tabb, 2002).

Given this scenario, it is not surprising then, that the United Nations report on the world social situation concluded that: “Surveys conducted in Africa, East Asia, Europe and Latin America indicate that a growing majority of individuals feel they have no control or influence over the economic, political and social factors that affect their lives. Economic and security concerns are causing a great deal of anxiety, and there is little confidence in the ability or commitment of State institutions to manage these growing problems” (UN, 2005:113) Undoubtedly, for the majority of the poor working class and unemployed as well as the increasingly impoverished middle classes, their analysis of globalization is much more skeptical, and full of contradictions:

On one hand, globalization unfolds a process of standardization in which a globalized mass culture circulates the globe creating sameness and homogeneity everywhere. But globalized culture makes possible unique appropriations and developments all over the world, thus proliferating hybridity, difference, and heterogeneity proliferating difference, otherness, diversity, and variety (Meyer, 2007). Grasping that globalization embodies these contradictory tendencies at once, that it can be both a force of homogenization and heterogeneity, is crucial for students to be able to articulate the contradictions of globalization and avoid one-sided and reductive conceptions (Kellner, 2005:35).

Kellner’s suggestion of avoiding reductionism is an underlying premise of this work, and it explains the focus on neoliberal globalization, framed as a complex and worldwide combination of forces and dynamics promoting simultaneously the expansion of loosely regulated market economic exchanges, Anglo-American-like “democratic” forms of government, the use of intensive information technology in all areas of human life, the internationalization of exchanges of goods, services and people and the re-configuration of the meaning, size and functions of the public sector.

The contributors of this book are well aware that neoliberalism is another concept that runs the risk of becoming a catch-all buzzword; that is why while rejecting easy definitions, they expose the ideological bases of key arguments of the neoliberal rationale. The many advocates of the neoliberal reforms in education articulate their discourses around the core belief in the self-correcting qualities of the free market but take pains in depicting their positions as part of a self-proclaimed ideologically neutral discourse of efficiency and accountability (Fischman et al.2003; Giroux, 2008).

Within the neoliberal discourse, institutions associated with the market and loosely-defined notions such as private sector, choice and business like, are sanitized and romanticized. Market failings as well as corrupt operations (such as Enron and WorldCom) and potentially disastrous policies (such as ignoring global warming or neglecting to implement adequate “public policies” as demonstrated during the Hurricane Katrina evacuation) are minimized or erased while the “perfections” of competition are set over and against the “inefficiencies” of state bureaucracies. The role of the State in regulating the corporate sector and in implementing policies aimed at promoting basic social fairness or even timidly redistributing forms of social capital (such as education, health and retirement benefits) are glossed over as the “nanny state” in the enthusiasm for neoliberal politics (Cato Handbook, 2005; Huntington, 2005). In this sense, the world is facing what the late Pierre Bourdieu referred to as the “‘gospel’ of neo-liberalism, a conservative ideology which thinks itself opposed to all ideology” (1998:126). This gospel is one that serves as a clarion call to combat “by every means, including the destruction of the environment and human sacrifice, against any obstacle to the maximization of profit” (1998:126).

This ideology without ideology is set over and against the “failures” of social democracy, and the inability of welfare systems to meet the needs of all citizens. Neoliberalism gathers discursive strength and political influence from both its promises of a new kind of non-ideological freedom and a telling critique of democratic failures. It represents, in its own terms, a move beyond politics and back to a state of nature, back to the “natural” impulses of individualism and competition.

At the beginning of the 21st century, there are plenty of “democracies” that have failed to secure minimum standards of fairness and justice. As Brenkman (2000) notes:

While liberal democracy offers an important discourse around issues of rights, freedoms, participation, self-rule, and citizenship, it has been mediated historically through the damaged and burdened tradition of racial and gender exclusions, economic injustice, and a formalistic, ritualized democracy, which substituted the swindle for the promise of democratic participation. (123)

Despite the problems noted by Brenkman and others (Baudrillard, 2003), the liberal and republican traditions of democratic thought have had enormous influence on the development of extensive systems of public education and a related ethos about the role of education as one of the most effective tools for societies to attempt to address social inequalities emphasizing the principles of fairness, common good and citizenship rights (Anyon, 2005; Lipman, 2003). Granted, the enunciation of these principles was not enough to overcome all the forces that opposed the implementation of truly fair educational systems. Moreover, as the contributors of this book demonstrate in their sharp analyses, it is important not to present the pre-neoliberal educational system as a “golden age of public education.” In fact, public schools have never worked as autonomous institutions but as state agencies in a system of controlled democratic institutionalism and increasingly de-regulated capitalism (Carnoy & Levin, 1985). In that regard, schools today always take part in the process of securing the reproduction of the contradictions of the larger social systems.

It is important to emphasize that the criticisms presented in this book are not a nostalgic longing for better times, where supposedly a truly democratic public school system existed, but in the assessment of the poor educational results of neoliberal educational reforms. As David Hursh (2006) comments:

Contrary to the prevalent view that urban education has been in decline, education achievement has increased for most of the decades following World War II, as measured by the percentages of high school and college graduates and by a decreasing gap in test scores between White students and students of color. It is only within the last few years, under the current high-stakes reforms, such as in Chicago, New York (Hursh, 2004), and Texas (Haney, 2000), that the dropout rate has increased and the test score gap widened. However, even with the increase in overall educational achievement, students have not benefited with better-paying jobs. (19)

Even if the measures of educational achievement do not produce the expected good results, it is undeniable that neoliberalism as an educational discourse has been very influential, not only in changing school practices but also in defining the educational common sense, what can be thought or imagined about schools. The contemporary common sense of the restructured neoliberal global economy is that any society that wants to remain competitive needs to implement educational reforms emphasizing the development of a flexible, entrepreneurial teaching workforce (i.e., broadly educated, specifically trained and without tenure) and a teacher-proof, standards-based and market- oriented curriculum (Peters, 2005; Fischman & McLaren, 2005). Schools and universities must be held responsible, their efficiency and quality measured, their status and outputs ranked, all based on a reductionist logic that equates educational worth with supposedly ideologically free and technically superior perspectives (Altbach, 2007).

The hegemonic position of this rationale was not the product of “natural causes” but part of a long struggle in which the neoliberal defenders were very effective to

hide public concerns while foregrounding private interests–to encourage people to think of themselves as taxpayers and homeowners rather than as citizens and workers, to depict private property interests and the accumulated advantages accorded to white men as universal while condemning demands for redistributive justice by women, racial and sexual minorities, and by other aggrieved social groups as the complaints of special interests. (Lipsitz, 2000:84)

Similarly, in most schools, it is nearly impossible to find discourses that emphasize the need for greater democracy or improving quality of life in ways that cannot be measured in economic terms. There is a hegemonic inevitability about the logic of neoliberal reforms, particularly because these reforms are presented as simply rational-technical solutions to the problems of under-achievement, separated from their ideological and philosophical origins (Almonacid, Luzon and Torres, 2008; Fischman et al., 2003).

For many educators, the neoliberal emphasis on individualism, measurement and technical solutions can fit well with a commonly accepted (and also carefully and constantly monitored) characterization of schooling within the parameters of a redemptive function: Teaching and learning are individual acts that when properly performed, will solve most problems associated with the lack of formal education (poverty, productivity, morality and many more social ills).

The neoliberal educational discourse is also articulated as a redeeming narrative, and thus, schools should be apolitical institutions, implementing scientifically verified “best practices” which will be assessed through standardized testing (e.g., Elmore, 1996). Taken against public school’s constant challenges, mixed record of success and failure and the strong associations between notions of the “public” with authoritarianism, bureaucracy, inefficiency and the paucity of truly democratic schools, neoliberal perspectives reinforce educators’ common sense about their individual roles and the need for politics to be kept out of the classroom.

Most of the criticisms briefly presented in this introduction, are carefully considered and analyzed, and pedagogical and political alternatives are presented by this diverse and politically engaged group of educators and schola...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• List of Tables
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The Public Services International
• 3 Critical Education for Economic, Environmental and Social Justice
• 4 Rethinking Education in the Era of Globalization
• 5 Campaigning Against Neoliberal Education in Britain
• 6 The Rouge Forum
• 7 Solidarity Building Dominican–Haitian Cross Cultural Education
• 8 Learning from the South The Creation of Real Alternatives to Neoliberal Policies in Education in Porto Alegre, Brazil
• 9 Resistance to the GATS
• 10 Teacher Conflicts and Resistance in Latin America
• 11 The State Apparatuses and the Working Class Experiences from the United Kingdom: Educational Lessons from Venezuela
• 12 Socialist Pedagogy
• Contributors