The Ideals of Globalization and Neo-Liberalization - Essay Example

Running Head: Globalisation, Neo-liberalism and Education Globalisation, Neo-liberalism and Education Name Course Lecturer Date PART A: Globalization Challenges as faced by educators Since mid 1980s, the ideals of globalization and neo-liberalization have infiltrated through systems all levels locally, nationally, regionally and internationally with forces that cannot be ignored. The collapse of the socialism of Eastern Europe and the USSR created space and gave momentum for global trade and financial liberalization, now known as neo-liberalism. This is the supporting ideology globalization. It lays emphasis on the social market importance and banks on deregulation and free-market policies. Globalization has given impetus to regional and international trade agreements and associations with international links and agreements getting prioritized by countries over national policies. National development matters are now being filled with liberalization policies on economical, social and cultural fronts. Globalization and neo-liberalization forces have modified the contexts and conditions in which educators work, thus modifying the learning experience, formally and informally globally though the effects and challenges are more felt in Asia and Africa, in developing and third-world countries. The forces meet the education sector with aspects such as changing space and time concepts, relatively high cultural interaction, globalised common problems and organizations deeming to tackle challenges. The interaction of these at international, national and state level policies has created challenges for the educators, learners and educational mangers alike. This paper seeks to illuminate on the challenges faced by educators and suggest ethical ways of coping with the challenges in a dynamic educational environment. An evident change that has grown with the implementation of neoliberal policies is that the states have either withdrawn from providing and administering public resources or reduced expenditure on materials and capital infrastructure. For example, the World Bank/IMF driven Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) which incorporated policies reducing government role in education provision, decentralization, cost recovery and higher education privatization resulted in bigger debts and poverty and declined quality due to reduced expenditure and involvement of the governments. (Robertson et al., 2007)There has been lower public expenditure and withdrawn state subsidies and support especially on social votes which include education. This takes several different forms in the developed and developing worlds being termed as sound fiscal policy and structural modification programs and loan management respectively. The graph below, made from World Bank data shows the public spending of the Australian government Data source: (World Bank) This translates to scarce educational resources such as stationary, texts and programs. In addition, there is inequality in the availability which adversely affects the lower parts of the economies more so within public institutions. As such, the resources in the educators’ exposure in the public sector institutions are way too little to meet the demand. Globalization and neo-liberalism present the public education system with a double-edged concern: they have led to increased enrollments in institutions given the need to beat the Millennium Development Goals demands. On the other hand, they influence public expenditure-cutting monetary policies. The sediment of these scenarios is felt by the educators. This has pushed educators and administrators to bigger challenge of changing the learning institutions into business enterprises for fund raising. Often times, this has put them in the dilemma since fundraising ventures have carried along compromised quality of education. Many universities today are providing education with more of an eye toward profit than quality (Chou, 2008) with quality issues being less emphasized in the globalised times of market-oriented environments. This also translates to relatively low terms of remuneration which is worsened by deregulated labor market with private ventures and corporate setting pay scales and conditions. With neo-liberalism, there is relatively unrestrained selling and buying of labor coupled with oppression of unions. The policies represent an offensive against teacher unions. Some commentators have suggested that one of the effects of contemporary globalization is reshaping cultural identities in new ways (Tikly, 2001). Globalization has crept through world’s dissimilar cultures, messing up stable localities, erasing the differences amongst locally-defined cultures which make up identities by bringing a market-driven homogenization of cultural experience. Due to processes such as migration, diasporas formation and cultural hybridization, there has been transformation of individual and group identities creating new ones. The challenge faced by the educators is not in the new identities created, but that the new forms created are contingent and fluid rather than being fixed. This flows along the ever dynamic globalised information world. The fluidity presents the educators with ever new and changing learning situations and attitudes for which they are challenged to stay up-beat. The fluid identities are major sources of conflicts especially since there are new ethnicities which have heavily borrowed from the western. Cultural hybridization is also linked to the ever recurrent problem of discrimination based on race, ethnicity and socioeconomic class amongst learners and educators alike. For the educators, especially in regions denoted to have minorities such as Africa, Asia, amongst African-Americans and Hispanics, negotiating the issues of language, identity and power is critical in service delivery. The neo-liberalization developments in the globalised world are highly capitalist and market oriented and sees every human being as a ready market. It has infiltrated in the education system controlling educational objectives and curriculum. The policies dictate by indicating their willingness to spend more state and private funds on schools, if the institutions meet the needs expressed by the capital. As such, resources are only provided for changes that endear the school system to the policies needs. The ever changing market needs indicate the need for an ever changing curriculum which destabilizes educators’ consistency. The educators have the challenge of ever trying to put up with new developments and needs. This is a cost concern, especially with the consideration of the expenditure cuts imposed. The teachers may at times require retraining. The shift has led to loss of equality issues in curriculum development and educational objectives. This is because of political influence on curriculum development which aims at implementing neo-liberalization policies throughout nations without questioning. The schooling curriculum ought to be one that trains graduates with critical autonomous thinking skills and abilities. The change brought into schools is a symptom of curriculum the project of capital, which requires the suppression of oppositional, critical and autonomous thought (Cooper, 2009) and teaches one to be consumer. There is the incursion of commerce and advertising into schools which has created dilemma amongst teachers and school administrators. This entry intends to use learning institutions as marketing media since they are a captive market. The teachers are expected by the implemented policies and trends to be a marketing representative before their learners. Sponsorships, which take advantage of the resource scarcity, carry along an education agenda not of the given curricula but the marketer’s own eventually creating a conflict of interest between pursuing educational objectives and protecting learners from exploitation. The emphasis on competition and ranking along market forces has brought a shift with the understanding that the importance of education is to be focused on training with evaluation based on testing for which policies have been developed. This new utilitarian approach leads to classification of learners against fellow learners, learning institutions in the categories of those who deserved either to fail or succeed a classification which reflects market segmentation. There is a persistent emphasis on success and failure by the market force and this is transferred to educators to implement. The educators are solely held accountable for the learners’ success raising the pressure on the educators to teach the test, and they feel compromised on the need to develop students with analytical, democratic and moral dynamics of adapting in various environments. The instructions have become test-oriented rather than developmental. The education sector underwent a systematic and complete reform in the mid 90’s which forced government educators in many nation of the world to consider education as an independent sector. This also brought about democratization of social life and transition to market economy. During this period, there was succession of decrees and laws from the government to the private sector and also the birth of new laws in the education sector. It acted as a platform for policy makers, educator, international organizations and foreign investors to make major reforms in political and social sectors. However, these developments had far reaching consequences to the education sector and especially universities. For instance many technical institutions, universities and other institutions of higher learning were completely disconnected from the broader society unlike in the former system whereby they were considered as an integral part of society. At this point, educators faced a wide range of formidable challenges. There was sudden collapse of most of the organizations that had pioneered and funded the education system sin many nations. For instance the Moscow-centered system which had fully funded the education sector and all its operations in Russia dramatically fell during the early 90’s following emergence of neo-liberalism globalization in education. As a result of this many teachers and lecturers who were employed under these systems had to be laid off since many of the new systems preferred to employ new educators. In addition, the question of who would fund the education sector also became an issue since education would now be owned and controlled by different parties. Previously, money availed by the government to the education sector was systematically accounted for hence reducing chance of embezzlement or fraud. However, with neo-liberalism, the purpose of funds given to the education sector are not clear which in many times has led to lack of accountability and conflicts among the parties involved (Roger, et al 2011). In addition, neo-liberalism has resulted to the springing of many private universities arousing the question of quality of education offered in higher institutions of learning. Evidently, this has resulted to increased competition in the education sector which in turn has forced many of the learning institutions to upgrade the quality of education they offer. Consequently, tuition fees has been hiked in both public and private learning institutions in order to sustain this high standard levels of education as the states support and contribution on the education sector is slowly evaporating. The fast growth in the number of education centers implies depletion in the number of qualified educators which in turn leads to sub standard quality of education. This results from a small teacher to student ratio hence the teacher cannot attend to individual students as it should be. Furthermore, more and more under qualified teachers are being employed to fill up the deficiencies which definitely lower the quality of education especially in the private learning institutions. There are also increasing cases of fake degrees selling in the back streets of almost all nations due to increasing number of institutions with some being illegal. Privatization of government institutions also became a major concern for many governments as more schools including universities searched for funds from international organizations which in turn made local governments left out in the process of making their own professionals. This kind of system has consequently made education less accessible to the poor and made more affordable to the rich in society. A recent report availed by the Unite Nations Development Program revealed that global consumption has increased tremendously over the past decades as a result of increased globalization and development. Many students especially in developing countries in Africa and Asia do not attend schools regularly due to hunger, sanitary and medical issues. Those that make to go to school are either malnourished or are suffering from other sicknesses which disrupts their understanding capabilities. In situations like these, teachers spend most of their time attending to children who are sick which definitely disrupts the learning process. Neo-liberalism has far reaching results in causing inequalities among schools in any one given nation whereby poor schools continue to become poorer while rich schools become richer in terms of both academics and resources. For instance, India, one of the fastest growing economies in the world has principally eliminated equality in education by legitimizing private schools at all levels which leaves out the poor who have to rely on the low quality education offered in government schools. Furthermore, inequality is created in the side of tutors as those in private schools have bigger wage packages in comparison to those in public institutions (Tikly, 2001). Educators Response to the challenges of globalization In order to deal with these challenges, the educators may or have taken drastic measures. For example, as a result of cut of labor costs, the educators have formed unions which advocate and protect the educators, defend educators’ interest. These unions have fought for increase of wages, benefits and an increase of educators in school or institutions where there is increase in class size. Demonstrations and strikes have been organized by the unions to ensure that their voices are heard by the concerned governments (Harris, 1994). The struggle for better payment has led to the necessities of direct engagement with the social democratic, liberal and Radical Right ideologies and programs. Moreover, there is an increase of resistance campaigns aimed against neoliberal in education. For example, the Socialists Teacher Alliance which campaigned against a cut of education budgets; parents/ teachers union in Scotland which was opposing the Standardized Assessment Tasks (SATs), it also campaigned against Education Action Zones; in England, the Anti-SATs Alliance of parents, teachers, and governors; National Union of Teachers that campaigned against proposal for schools as they opted for local education authority; and coalition of parents, teaching unions, students and governors against the infamous private finance initiative (PFI)(Harris, 1994). To counter the effects of loss fine quality in educational objectives and curriculum content, the educators may start to mobilize support for well humanized and run school systems, erode competition between schools and create an environment that will enhance an un interfered cooperation among schools, varied and rich curriculum that will include the fostering of social cooperation and critical awareness, assessments practices that are creative, a well increased democratic control, and the administrators and educators to act as a role model of care and integrity (Hickey, 2006). In actual fact, these are principle that may form the major basics of core curriculum in the education sector. This curriculum, will assume a transformational and critical role of educators and education in the interest of environmental and social egalitarianism and justice. The fluidity of the culture presents a major challenge to the educators. The educator will have to be ready to experience this challenge and, therefore, has to keep abreast of these changes in culture. In order to get rid of ‘classes’ formed as a result of neo-liberalization, the educators may or some have laid down strategies to overcome this (Hoxby, 2003). The strategies include; speaking in conferences and meetings, radical publishing and teaching, taking part in community uprising, production of websites to sensitive on the issues brought about by the latest development in education, forming alliances with the media. Issues surrounding the supply of resources in schools and learning institutions should be handled by the government. The educators require these facilities for the smooth running of the education. However, due to privatization of most learning institution as a result of neo-liberalization development, the governments in most countries have been resistant in the provision of these requirements. The educators can therefore, use the parliamentary reformist to voice their grievances. The parliament may then set laws that will govern the education systems for the advantage of the so- called lower class. To meet the challenge of the institutions being seen as a market, as a result of advertisement, commerce and marketing being brought to the school (Hoxby, 2003) the educators should adhere to the set curriculum and also caution the student ways to differentiate basic and helpful course work from advertisement that will only benefit the advertiser. The training of the educators should be intensified and involve all the necessary and basic learning tools. This will get rid of the graduation of the unqualified educators, who will then equip and sensitize the students. The students will then be able to comprehended the emerging issues of neo-liberalization and will be to challenge the agendas especially those set up by International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank in relation to education, for example, the structural adjustment programs (SAPs). Resistance should be international and should link all the major targets of the neoliberal attack, should also enhance solidarity, turn the affected people into subjects of learning mainly for future. Information Communication Technology (ICT) may be seen as a major tool that will facilitate networking among the educators and students (Cooper, 2009). As a result of neo-liberalization, education has been seen as big business only to a few individuals, therefore, the educators have to be ready to take initiative in dealing with the emerging issues that deteriorate the level of education among the less fortunate in the society. In conclusion, it is evident that education is one of the fundamental rights and constitutes a crucial tool that will enable the society to face potential future challenges. However, the educators seem to be facing more and more challenges with increasing neo-liberalism globalization and development which has resulted to increased commercialization, privatization, corporatization and capitalization of the education sector. Although the concept of neo-liberalism has received much back up from international economic organizations for example World Trade Organization, majority of other human right organizations argue that it has caused education to bring about more inequality rather than harmonization in society. However, international human rights law have put in place laws that will safeguard education and ensure that it will not be completely sold out to economists who have selfish ambitions. In addition, there are increasing organizations being formed across the nations to protect the rights of educators from the adversities they are bound to encounter from globalization and development. Part B: Question 1 Knowledge economy being information services rendered and perceived as an area of growth while ideological package being the use of knowledge based upon several disciplines then the deviation in their intended purpose is what is termed as deviance. The globalization goal has been to disseminate knowledge to as wide audience as possible for the main goal being to use it across all human activities yielding the greatest benefit (Junarsin, 2005). This has changed in that the outcomes of intended benefits are used for selfish goals. Being knowledgeable is the balancing of judgmental, evaluative, rational, scientific and transcendent entity of knowledge that proves firmness in value based and knowledge-based entities. Most people especially those in developing countries are motivated by intrinsic rewards like self actualization and self esteem though they pursue extrinsic rewards like safety needs and enormous salaries since they are part and parcel of their survival and growth. Consequently the drive behind knowledge economy has also been to use science to make the world a safe and predictable place, which may remain a dream considering that it aims to gain complete control of the world. Universities are gradually commercializing knowledge drawing towards political economy rather than offering it for the good of the public (Rooney et al, 2008). Ideological packages have resulted in creation of the social economic classes that have resulted in exploitation of the disadvantaged in the field. In conclusion capitalist ideologies have corrupted pursuits and the purpose behind knowledge economy and ideological package remain misplaced. Part B: Question 4 As development result to better housing, accessibility of healthcare services and better schools, the cost of living increases and hence only those who have the money get the best. This widens the gap between races, social classes and gender-the poor-rich gap. Education positions individuals to better their lives. For individuals to compete fairly, there must be education accessibility equality (Cooper, 2009). Since educational programs enhance the cognitive growth of individuals, it promotes non-racist and nonsexist attitudes important in eliminating gender, and racial inequalities. When this is attained, the hard work of desegregation will bear fruit as schools become more humane places for children and adults (Dollar & Kraay, 2002). In addition, elimination of sexist attitudes will see girls being given equal opportunities in games, elimination of gender-role ideologies resulting in less women engaging in science and mathematics courses and equal promotion opportunities for education sector employees. Education contains the seed for social and individual transformation resulting in socialization systems change. As racial, social class and race segregation which are an outgrowth of socioeconomic and residential segregation are eliminated, all students will benefit from well-run programs socially and academically. The outcome this is that black students will eventually be in a position to attend multiracial colleges, realistically select occupations, work in high status jobs, live in integrated neighborhoods and form interracial friendships (Robertson et al, 2007). Though education alone cannot reduce inequalities resulting from development, it is crucial in fighting inequalities and for survival of societal democracy. References Chou, P. (2008). The Impact of Neo-Liberalism on Taiwanese Higher Education . International Perspectives on Education and Society, Vol. 9 , 297-311. Cooper, C. (2009). Review Essay: Neoliberalism, education and strategies of resistance. Journal For Critical Education Policy Studies Vol.6 No.2 , 206-217. Dollar, D. & Kraay, A. (2002), Growth is good for the poor. Journal of Economic Growth Junarsin J. E (2005). Learning experience in creativity: a reflective essay. Assignment paper the Australian National University, Australia Robertson, S., Novelli, M., Dale, R., Tikly, L., Dachi, H., & Alphonce, N. (2007). Globalisation, Education and Development: Ideas, Actors, and Dynamics . London: DFID. Roger, K., Simon, M. and Rajani, N. (2011). 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