Devaluing what cannot be counted: Why Commercialisation is problematic for Education

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Devaluing what cannot be counted Why
Commercialisation is problematic for Education

• Kathleen Lynch,
• UCD Equality Studies Centre,
• School of Social Justice
• www.ucd.ie/esc
• Kathleen.Lynch_at_ucd.ie
• Presentation Clare VEC Adult and Community
  Education Service Conference on Exploring the
  Benefits of Non-Formal Learning in Adult
  Education, November 30th 2007

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Why is education for educations sake being
devalued?

• Growing emphasis on Commercialisation and
  Privatisation and an underestimation of its
  medium and long-term implications for public
  goods such as education
• Those who are meant to uphold public interest
  values in Ireland have remained silent or
  collaborated with the commercialisation project
• Strong anti-intellectualism in Irish public life
  so we lack the analytical and conceptual skills
  to assess the impact of these changes in the
  public sphere
• Deep-rooted culture of consensualism in the
  education field which has not encouraged critical
  thinking
• There is a lack of a strong critical educational
  discourse a) in universities and colleges of
  education generally b) among the education
  journalists in the media c) and the churches
  declining moral authority has weakened their
  voice
• A Culture of consensualism was exacerbated under
  social partnership
• Controlling and Demonising of Dissent from the
  reigning economic orthodoxies
• Market-led language has taken hold without a
  debate It is redefining educational values by
  redefining language
• customers, clients, internal markets, choice,
  consumers, curriculum delivery, deliverables,
  work packages, performance indicators,
  performance managers- only what is measured is
  counted

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Understanding Educational Change in the Global
Context- growing power of neo-liberal policies
(see David Harvey, 2005, A Short History of
Neo-Liberalism)

• Since the early 1990s power of global
  capitalist interests have increased massively as
  they have attempted to reduce costs of state
  expenditures to capital
• Reducing expenditure on public services has been
  core to this project and
• Limiting the subvention to the development of
  civil society institutions especially when
  critical of the State Rising influence of global
  commercial stakeholders e.g. Roundtable of
  Industrialists in the EU
• Education is seen as the new target for investors
  once privatised first step is to privatise
  higher education, further, adult and community
  education will follow
• Sections of secondary education are privatised
  (for-profit grind schools) public private
  partnerships (PPS) in the building of schools
  poor value for money
• Role of the (WTO) World Trade Organisation and
  the GATS (General Agreement on Trade and service)
  is central in moving all of education into
  marketable and measurable forms
• EU Services Directive is also pressing the
  privatisation-for-profit agenda
• Once services are defined as private they are not
  entitled to state subsidisation or state
  management/control only the profitable sectors
  will survive
• Education is the new target for investors once
  it is privatised (see Merrill-Lynch, 1999 The
  Book of Knowledge)

4
The Neo-liberal model of the citizen guides
educational policy

• Neo-liberal politics offer a market view of
  membership of society
• It is premised on the assumption that the market
  can replace the State (the people) as the primary
  producer of cultural logic and cultural value
• Neo-liberal politics defines the citizen as a
  consumer, an economic maximiser, a free
  chooser
• It builds on the idealisation of choice in
  classical liberalism which prioritises freedom
  over equality
• It is fundamentally Hobbesian in character focus
  is on creating privatised citizens who care only
  for themselves
• A Market Citizen only needs education for market
  participation non-market forms of education are
  trivialised, especially if they are not
  accredited
• Cutting back and limiting informal adult and
  community education that is not market relevant
  is inevitable within a marketised citizenship
  framework as
• Education of those who are not economically
  productive is not valued
• And neither is education for forms of work that
  are not marketable (e.g. for the social economy)

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How has the market ideology gained control?

• Neoliberalism has gained legitimacy in popular
  culture through the metaphor of Choice -
  choice is promoted as a value even for those
  without choice the concept of the citizen as
  free chooser completely ignores the
  well-researched reality that those without
  resources have no choices about school,
  education, hospitals or other services
• It has gained credence by public relations
  campaigns spinning the truth
• The discipline of Economics has played a central
  role in granting it ideological legitimacy new
  theologians of neo-liberalism are conservative
  economists
• Implications of neo-liberal policies
• They create a culture in which individuals are
  held responsible for failure and success this
  discredits collective belonging and solidarity
• There is a development of the anxious classes,
  those who feel there is no security for
  themselves or their children outside of that
  achieved by their own efforts.
• Anxiety is exacerbated through the
  intensification and glorification of competition
  all groups have to compete for funding- time is
  devoted to the competition (tendering for
  funding) instead of running the service

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What is Masking the move to commercialisation?

• Reorganisation of the public sector, including
  education, is presented as a simple Technical
  Solution to technical problems to improve
  efficiencies
• There is an institutionalising of market values
  by technical processes e.g. the creation of
  internal markets within organisations focus on
  what can be measured deliverables/each NGO
  competes with the other for funding/
• Hidden hand of the market is masquerading as
  neutral through the discourses of restructuring
  education re-organising the health services and
  regenerating public housing
• The Operational Focus masks the way public sector
  services are being commercialized (albeit
  packaged in the development discourses of
  centres of excellence world class
  universities and modernising education
  generally)
• Pragmatic focus hides the growing elision of the
  differences between public interest values and
  commercial values in the operation of education

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What is the challenge to Adult and Community
Education from Neo-liberal policies?

• Commercialisation is presented in a TINA form
  (There is no Alternative)
• Deep-rooted Authoritarianism underlying the
  project- rule by experts
• Bodies such as the OECD operating powerful
  political and financial influences are presented
  as objective and independent yet they are not
• Much of adult and community education is not for
  the market it is to educate the citizen as a
  member of civil society, as a whole person (with
  personal, cultural, social, emotional and care
  needs)
• Yet, education for the citizen as a cultural,
  political or social being or as a private and
  caring/loving citizen is not valued in a
  market-led society that equates citizenship with
  being an economic maximiser and consumer
• And the outcomes of informal community and adult
  education are not easily quantified and measured

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Why Commercialisation is problematic for Equality
of Access, Participation and Outcomes in Education

• Education is a basic human right
• The State is an in-eliminable agent in matters of
  justice only the state can guarantee to
  individual persons the right to be educated.
• If the state absolves itself of the
  responsibility to educate all members of society,
  rights become more contingent
• in a commercial system the right to education
  will be contingent on the ability to pay.
• Informal Adult and Community Education often
  serves the most vulnerable in society their
  rights to be educated cannot be contingent on
  market forces
• Democratic Accountability must be distinguished
  from Market Accountability
• In a democratically accountable system, each
  individual has an equal right engagement
• In a market-led system accountability will be
  contingent on market capacity or resources
• Access to education at all levels is no longer a
  matter of choice but an economic necessity

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Impact of Commercialisation on Teaching and What
is Taught

• Markets are driven by concerns for profit
  maximisation so commercialisation undermines
  non-market forms of education, yet
• a) education for work and activities that is not
  marketable is still vital (e.g. for public
  service, civil society, the arts, carers etc.)
• b) education of those who will never be major
  producers in market terms is still necessary
  older and isolated people, people who have
  long-term mental health difficulties, people with
  intellectual disabilities
• Critical thought, especially critical discourses
  and dissent is disabled by commercialisation
• Disciplines and fields of education that have a
  strong tradition of critical discourse and debate
  are not expanding at the same rate as
  commercially-driven fields of knowledge
• There is Censorship of Dissent by the removal of
  funding from groups that are critical of
  government policies e.g. Community Workers
  Co-operative

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Why Education Matters and why it needs to be
publicly controlled

1. People have a right to education Article 24 of
   the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
   Article 14 of the International Covenant on
   Economic, Social And Cultural Rights (ICESCR)
2. Education is indispensable for realising other
   rights
3. Education has an intrinsic value for the
   development of the individual for the exercise
   of capabilities, choices and freedoms
4. Education has a care function as well as a
   development function this cannot be guaranteed
   in a commercialised system
5. Education enables one to overcome other social
   disadvantages
6. Education is a Public Good as well as a Personal
   Good- it enriches cultural, social, political and
   economic life locally and globally
7. Education credentials play a crucial role in
   mediating access to other goods, notably
   employment, culture etc.

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Why is there a move towards commercialisation in
education?

• To further reduce the cost of education to
  Capital
• The share of national wealth going to workers has
  been declining at a higher rate in Ireland since
  the early 1990s than in the EU generally Only
  the poorer EU Eastern European states compensate
  employees at an equivalent rate e.g. Bulgaria,
  Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania
• The Welfare effort has been declining in Ireland
• Source European Commission Statistical Annex of
  European Economy, Autumn 2007
• http//ec.europa.eu/economy_finance/publications/e
  uropean_economy/2007/statannex0207_en.pdf -
  accessed 17th Nov. 2007

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Distribution of Wealth via Wages(see K. Allen,
2007, Corporate Takeover of Ireland)
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Are Social Expenditures a way of compensating for
inequalities in wealth in Ireland? No

• Country Total Social Expenditure on
  Education on Health
• as a of GDP as a of GDP as a of GDP
• Sweden 49.4 7.7 9.2
• France 45.7 5.8 9.7
• Netherlands 27.6 5.1 9.1
• UK 26.4 5.3 7.7
• Slovenia 25.3 6.1 8.2
• Czech Repub. 20.2 4.4 7.1
• Ireland 15.9 4.3 7.3
• Lithuania 14.1 5.9 5.7
• Social Expenditures have decreased between 1994
  (19.7 of GDP) and 2006 (15.9)
• Source Tables, 4.1 and 4,2, Central Statistics
  Office (CSO) Measuring Irelands Progress, 2006.
  accessed at www.cso.ie/ October 12th 2007

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Are Social Expenditures a way of Compensating for
inequalities in Wealth in Ireland?
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Rational Economic Actor (REA) Model of the
Citizen- citizen valued for performance
Competing Rational Economic Actors
 
X
X
X
X
Visible Political Cultural Relations
X
Economic Relations
X
X
X
X
X
Invisible Affective Relations
(Love, Care Solidarity Work)
O Self interested, Calculating, Competing
Economic Actors. X Competition Between Actors.
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Care-Full Model of the Citizen Recognising
Relational Realities
Tertiary Care Relations Relations of
Solidarity Solidarity work
Secondary Care Relations generalised care work
Primary Care Relations love labour