Education and Neoliberal Globalization

Carlos Alberto Torres

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781135853105
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Educación general

This volume by noted critical education scholar Carlos Alberto Torres takes up the question of how structural changes in schooling and the growing impacts of neoliberalism and globalization affect social change, national development, and democratic educational systems throughout the world. The first section of the book offers analytical avenues to understand and criticize the practices and policies of neoliberal states, both domestically and internationally. More than a mere lament of the state of educational policy, however, Torres also documents the critiques and alternatives developed by social movements against neoliberal governments and policies. Ultimately, his work urges readers to engage in the struggle to resist the oppressive forces of neoliberal globalization, and proactively and deliberately act in informed ways to create a better world.

Part I
A Critique of Neoliberal Globalization

1
Globalizations and Education¹

A PORTRAIT OF CONTRASTS, CONTRADICTIONS, AND CONFLICTS

Our civilization … is a civilization which has destroyed the simplicity and repose of life; replaced its contentment, its poetry, its soft romance dreams and vision with the money-fever, sordid ideals, vulgar ambitions, and the sleep which does not refresh.²

Last September, I was traveling by train from Porto to Lisbon, Portugal, when I witnessed what struck me as a familiar scene in the lovely Portuguese countryside. It was raining. A man left a shack, a very humble house, lit a cigarette, and began to walk. A barking and quite aggressive dog tied to a makeshift doghouse greeted him. The man kicked the dog in the jaw with what seemed to me was formidable force. The apparently ferocious animal quickly hid in the doghouse howling in pain. While the rapid passing of the landscape through the windows of the first class wagon fragmented my observations, like a slow motion frame-by-frame movie, I remember the man, walking a few more meters and shepherding a dozen or so sheep that were leisurely grazing not so far away from the doghouse.

I remember asking myself: Is this globalized Europe? That is, a Europe full of animal rights activists, sophisticated capital lending, highly developed food technology, and extensive social movements challenging capitalism, globalization, and American imperialism? Or is this simply an example of life in a third-world village, which happens to be located on the Iberian Peninsula at the heart of the old continent?

Let me elaborate a bit on this impressionistic example, because it is telling of one of the principles of this chapter: globalization is a contradictory phenomenon full of tensions and contradictions. To me, the man in the shack was a shepherd tending to a small herd of sheep, perhaps not enough to bring sufficient food to the table. The act of kicking the dog shows total disrespect for an animal as an inferior being that easily can be sacrificed at the mercy of our own temper. The simplicity of rural life accounts for contradictory phenomena as well; one that is well exemplified in Mark Twain’s epigraph that I used in the heading of this section. Yet, one may think that my example could be either a simple folksy episode or, on the contrary, a description of a scene that sharply reflects the complexities and contradictions of social life.

No matter what conclusion one may reach regarding the conflicts of knowledge management and behavior in the era of globalization, one may think that some of the precepts of the Enlightenment have faded away. Moreover, one may also conclude that if one places this example in the broader context of the post-September 11^th world, the discussions on globalization, markets, knowledge, subjectivity, and education have been dramatically altered.

Globalization has been defined as “the intensification of worldwide social relations which link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa.”³

David Held suggests, among other things, that globalization is the product of the emergence of a global economy, an expansion of transnational linkages between economic units creating new forms of collective decision making, development of intergovernmental and quasi-supranational institutions, an intensification of transnational communications, and the creation of new regional and military orders. Considering the combining effects of education and globalization, there are at least two possible scenarios.

EDUCATION AND GLOBALIZATION: TENTATIVE SCENARIOS

The first scenario is that globalization reflects, and eventually heightens, conflicts and contradictions of social life in the context of differential processes of internationalization of social relations deeply affecting (or, as in the case of my example, touching in rather limited fashion) portions of the globe. A second scenario will argue that, no matter what globalization has achieved, or what the pros and cons of globalization may be as a set of social relationships or an ideology, after the 11^th of September 2001, the situation has been altered in terms of worldwide market dynamics and security concerns.

In the first scenario, a great deal of the arguments from the Enlightenment about the role of education in the process of internationalization of the world could be more easily applied. That is to say, education may help bring down barriers pushing for open markets while simultaneously training more competent workers to compete in those international markets.

For instance, the argument advanced by Robert Reich, an economist who was Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration, is that the United States can no longer compete solely by means of cost-cutting because there are workers in other parts of the world willing to produce for lower salaries than their American counterparts. According to Reich, the comparative advantage of the United States lies in its ability to rely on highly qualified workers, with great flexibility, precision and specialization. Given that in the global economy new scientific discoveries and innovations are appropriated globally at a surprising velocity, and are implemented on standardized products, the only factor of production that is relatively immobile is labor. What counts at the level of the international workforce is its competitiveness, vision, and capacity to work collaboratively.

Reich distinguishes between types of workers or occupations in an internationalized economy. There are routine production service workers, in-person service workers, and symbolic–analytic service workers. The routine production service worker is the classic blue-collar worker of enterprises of massive, high-volume production. This also includes supervisors and white-collar workers that carry out monotonous activities. The in-person service workers realize simple and repetitive tasks, are paid in hourly wages, are intensively supervised, and generally do not require more than a high school education, except for occasional vocational training. The principal requirement of this group of workers is to be punctual, reliable, and courteous in dealing with the public. Finally, the symbolic–analytic service workers are those who work on the identification and solution of problems, including strategic mediation activities and brokering. Examples of this are scientists and researchers, design engineers, software engineers, financial consultants, tax consultants, specialized lawyers, organization specialists, public relations executives, film directors, producers, editors, production designers, investment bankers, real estate investors, etc. The majority of them have a university level education and, on occasion, a graduate degree.⁴

Reich’s proposal is that only symbolic analysts contribute great value to the internationalized economy. One of the historical reasons for the high concentration of these workers in the United States is the link between industry, protected residential areas, and universities of an international category (e.g., Silicon Valley and Stanford University in California are classic examples of such a link). If Reich is right, a central concern for the development of public universities in Latin America and other developing countries should be—in addition to performing their traditional roles in science and technology, letters, and humanities—their ability to produce increasing numbers of symbolic analysts.

In contrast, the role of education in the second scenario becomes less clear. This is particularly true when the push for open markets loses supremacy to imperialist behavior leading to preemptive strikes. A manufactured war in the search for weapons of mass destruction, which have hardly been found, or potential nuclear instability in the Korean peninsula, are just a few international factors that deserve recognition given their currency and gravity.

These crises call into question the role and effectiveness of the State as a modernizer and social regulator. Paradoxically, during the seventies and eighties, the Left had been criticizing the ideological and repressive apparatus of the State. Since the nineties some business analysts like Keinichi’ Ohmae denounce the nation-state as a creature of the past, arguing that the real centers of wealth creation are the region-states.⁵

For Ohmae, the four I’s (that is, investment, industry, information technology, and individual consumers) drive the expansion and operation of the global economy, taken over the economic power once held by the nation-state. The result of this economic process is the rise of the region-state, defined simply as an area that often comprises communities situated across borders that develop around a regional economic center having a population of a few million to twenty million people.

From a neoliberal perspective, Ohmae offers a devastating critique of the nation-state, coupled with a critique of liberalism and democracy, because these are unable to satisfy popular demands while at the same time offering a minimum of public services. Ohmae’s argument could be considered a right-wing perspective of what James O’Connor called in the seventies the “fiscal crisis of the state,”⁶ or what has been termed in a famous Jürgen Habermas book, the dilemmas of legitimacy of the capitalist state.⁷

It is perhaps unnecessary to argue about the relevance of these questions for education, particularly when in the twentieth century, the educational systems and practices have been sustained, organized, regulated, and certified by the state. In fact, public education is a function of the state in terms of legal order or financial support. The specific requirements of certification for the basic teaching qualifications, textbooks, and curriculum are controlled by official agencies and defined by specific politics of the state.”⁸

EDUCATION AND GLOBALIZATION: SOME HYPOTHESES

Multiple Globalizations: Tentative Scenarios

Let me propose the following hypothesis: there are multiple processes of globalization interacting simultaneously in a fairly convoluted fashion. Yet, all of them are deeply affected by the dynamics of international relations from the past few years, and by implication, they affect the role education and educational reform may play in the improvement of people’s lives and societies. The idea of multiple globalizations deserves to be discussed in detail before we embark in a discussion about their educational impacts.

There is one layer of globalization, which I have called “globalization from above,” in which an ideology of neoliberalism has called for the opening of borders, the creation of multiple regional markets, the viability of faster economic and financial exchanges, and even the presence of forms of state other than the nation-state, shrinking state services, and its overall presence in civil society. Selective deregulation is the motto of this globalization process.

There is a second layer of globalization representing the antithesis of the first, known as the “anti-globalizers,” or what could be named “globalization from below.” These are individuals, institutions, and social movements that have actively opposed what is perceived as the neoliberal globalization. For these social sectors, groups, individuals, and communities, no globalization without representation is their motto.

There is a third layer of globalization that pertains not so much to markets, but to rights: the globalization of human rights. With the growing ideology of human rights taking hold on the international system and international law, a number of traditional practices (from religious practices...

Table of contents

• Routledge Research in Education
• Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Part I A Critique of Neoliberal Globalization
• Part II From Critique to Utopia
• Part III Biography as a Genre of Political Pedagogical Struggle
• Index