GLOBALISATION AND THE GOVERNANCE OF NATIONAL EDUCATION SYSTEMS
4. WORLD SYSTEM AND GLOBALISATION
An international framework has always existed, experienced by, in particular, small countries, but globalisation processes have made the world quantitatively and qualitatively different from before (Hirst, 2000). The world system consists of structures, “spaces” and interdependent components (nations, companies, organisations, etc.), and when more intensive and more extensive chains, networks, exchanges and transactions, these processes may be seen as globalisation (Henderson, 1996). While such processes result from or are the sum of state, company, NGO and INGO actions, others are driven by Transnational Companies, and tend to take place rather independently from single country actions and frontiers (Sklair, 1995).
Globalisation results in economic growth but also increasing poverty and marginalisation, and spread of risk and uncertainty (Cox, 1996; Edwards, 1998;
Griffin, 2003). Risk and uncertainty have become common in all spheres of life, but mainly in the domains of employment, certain economic branches and family constellations (Carnoy & Castells, 1995). The sector of the economy mostly involved in global processes requires flexible companies, and a flexible labour force.
Companies and workplaces in this sector have to a large extent been restructured from a Fordist to a post-Fordist organisation of production (Waters, 1995). The Fordist organisation is characterised by a hierarchical structure and mass production, whereas the Post-Fordist organisation is characterised by, among other things: total quality management (by the team itself), teamwork, and managerial decentralisation (Waters, 1995:82-84). However, for large sections of the economies, work places are not very different from before (Morrow & Torres, 2000).
Now globalisation is changing the conditions by placing the states in a position where they have less control than before of economic processes and flows. The state and companies are dependent on finance but finance capital has become decoupled from production, investment and trade. This capital has been globalised while production and investments are geographically based, a fact that has implications for state revenues and state abilities to redistribute resources (Castells, 1993; Freeman and Soete, 1994; Storey 2000). The state has to handle, among other things, economic restructuring, increasing complexity and specialisation and, at the same time, increasing networking in the economic and civil spheres (Messner, 1997). The requirements of competition result in an increasing pressure on the state to struggle not only for peoples´ willingness to become efficient producers, consumers and citizens but also for their willingness and ability to become competitive in a global context. In order to achieve this, the state cannot use regulation and economic measures as much as before but has to find new forms of relating to its national context. In all, states have been and are restructuring themselves but not necessarily shrinking themselves (Cerny, 2000). According to Pierre (2000), “few states actually spend a lower percentage of their GDP than they did in the 1960s” (p. 1).
Culturally, globalisation causes or encompasses standardisation and homogenisation as well as particularisation and heterogenisation; secularisation as well as de-secularisation and revitalisation of moral and religious values (Berger, 1999). Economic imperatives dominate over all others; there is a universal commodification of life and pricing is being extended to more and more services and activities (Giddens, 1994; Saul, 1997). Also, with the spread of the market model, a consumer culture is disseminated (Ahmed, 1992; Appadurai, 1991). Local cultures are challenged and questioned through this diffusion of a "universal culture"
(Mayer & Roth, 1995; Waters, 1995). The taken-for-granted aspects of cultures are challenged and ”Traditions have to explain themselves...” (Giddens, 1994, p. 23).
All this might provoke exaggeration of the importance of local ideas and values
With increasing globalisation; national governments and ministries of education tend to formulate a similar policy all over the world and to introduce the same type of educational arrangements in the name of global competitiveness (Brown &
Lauder, 1996; Daun, ed., 2002). This seems to be related to dissemination of world (cultural particularism). The fact that some countries have started to give more attention to moral and values education in the schools may be interpreted in this context (see, for instance, Cummings, et al., 1988; Taylor, 1994).
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models. Institutionalist sociologists employ a world systems theory according to which there exists a world polity (Meyer et al., 1997), not as a physical body or institution but as a complex of cultural expectations “stored” in and disseminated by international organisations and national governments in the biggest countries. The world polity may be seen as hosting world models (one for education, for instance), including different features, from the epistemological features to concrete recommendations, and taking a form ranging from tacit understandings to explicit policy suggestions and impositions (Dale, 1999; Gill, 2000; Popkewitz, 2000). Also, they inform policy-makers and researchers about opportune, desirable and appropriate educational policies, prescribe the role of the state and education, and signal, among other things, efficiency, effectiveness, school-based management, privatisation, choice, and accountability (Meyer et al., 1997; OECD, 1998).
In addition to the world models, there are different motives, justifications, and driving forces behind human conduct (Gerth & Mills, 1974; Thomas (1994). Ideal typically they may be conceptualised into the following ideological orientations: (a) market, (b) etatist-welfarist, (c) professional-managerial, (d) professional- pedagogical, and (e) communitarian/humanistic (Watt, 1994). The orientations most influential in the NG have been the market, professional-managerial and the communitarian. One of the basic features of the Market orientation is that human beings are utility-maximizing beings and act accordingly - regardless of history and geographical place (Gill, 2000). The education system is seen as a market and education as a private (individual) good and for the formation of human capital (Chubb & Moe, 1988; Chubb & Moe, 1990; Crowley, 1987).
In the Etatist-welfarist orientation, equality and the common good are two of the principal reasons for the existence of a state and political activities (Dow, 1993).
According to the Professional-managerial orientation, the leader is a chief executive driving the processes in the organisation (Bush, 1995). Other organisational participants (teachers, for instance) are generally viewed as essentially passive recipients of the leader’s vision (McGinn & Welsh, 1999, p. 37). The leader compels the participants or members of the organisation to adopt his or her vision. In order for school leaders and teachers to be able to implement school improvement, they need to be liberated from bureaucracy and political interventions (Chubb & Moe, 1990).
Goffman, 1963, Illich, 1971; Lash, 1990). The driving forces are, to a large extent, idealism, altruism, and solidarity (Doyal & Gough, 1991; Miller, 1989).
Communitarians reject large scale arrangements and reforms, be they capitalist companies or bureaucratic state bodies, because largeness creates anonymity and alienation (Etzioni, 1995; Lewis, 1993). A distinction can be made between traditional and modern communitarianism (Barber, 1996). The former is linked to the traditional local community based on residence, kinship, religion or all of them (Wesolowski, 1995), while the latter sees society as “atomised”, the individual as autonomous and community as based on some type of “sameness” among the Different ideas and approaches (from philosophical to practical ones) are behind the Communitarian/humanistic orientation (de-institutionalists, de-schoolers and
‘some postmodernists’ are part of this orientation) (Barber, 1996; Best, 1994;
“community members” (Offe, 1996). Sometimes, in the modern variety, those who have their children in the same school form a “school community” together with the school staff. Each orientation has its core values, basic assumptions and logics of action.
The world models include parts of and carry combinations of contradictory ideas such as the market orientation (the autonomous individual as a rational chooser, consumer and utility-maximizing being) and the modern communitarian orientation (the individual as an autonomous but altruistic and solidaristic being).
Another feature, already mentioned, is the rationalisation that penetrates different spheres of society, also organisational life. Organisations initially driven by idealism and humanitarian intentions (including voluntary or idealistic organisations dealing with health care and development assistance) now tend to be required to be efficient, not primarily in terms of value rationality but in terms of instrumental professional and organisational rationality. State subsidies and mandatory program evaluations reflect the requirements of effectiveness and efficiency in terms of per unit costs and goal achievement. A move of emphasis is taking place: From idealism, humanism morals/value rationality, and struggle for souls to efficiency, utility, profit; from amateurism to professionalism; from authority based on charisma, competence in subject matters and personality traits to management (leadership formed on organisational efficiency in narrow production terms) (see, for instance, Smyth, 1994).
The emergence of the NG should be understood in this context of globalisation but also in relation to some factors here termed “internal”.
4.1 Internal factors
Factors such as (a) increasing costs and less control of economic flows; (b) the need to delegate risk and uncertainty away from the central state; (c) increasing
‘enlightenment’ due to mass education; and (d) the shift in policy and research discourses have preceded or accompanied introduction of the NG. They derive more or less from processes of globalisation but are articulated within national frameworks. The move towards the NG started in “contexts of unprecedented education budget cuts” (Townsend, 1997:210). Due partly to world recession in the 1970s and 1980s and partly to the policy of state withdrawal, less money was made available for education in many countries.
Also, central states had experienced a number of costly failures in education and started to look for “secure” solutions (Duffield, 2002). Weiler (1993) argues that decentralisation could be a way for the state to displace conflicts or to “dissolve”
them but also as a way to improve state legitimacy. If we combine these two features, it may be argued in the same way that decentralisation may be seen as a way for states to delegate costs, “wastages”, risk and uncertainty to local levels; that is, “policy and funding mechanisms designed at the centre to steer from a distance more autonomous local units” (Blackmore, 2000, p. 134)
In the North and in rapidly growing economies in the South, post-compulsory education has become a rule and in countries at lower economic levels, primary
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education has increased tremendously since the 1960s. Education has maintained its sorting, selecting and reproducing functions, and now - in addition to these functions - it seem to contribute to the emergence of other categories of people than socio- economic classes in the traditional sense, e.g. those who become critically reflexive and demand participation, and those who are unable to fulfil the requirements of the education system and the labour market and become marginalised (Giddens, 1994;
Inglehart, 1997; Messner, 1997; Popkewitz, 2000). The reflexive and marginalised are problematic for the state and the economy but for different reasons. The former because they to a large extent demand “life quality” and reject consumerism (Inglehart, 1997) and the latter because they tend to be seen as not “employable” and competitive (Gordon, 1991). This seems to be one of the reasons why “inclusion”
and “social cohesion” have become new buzz-words in the international discourse (see, for instance, OECD, 1998).
As far as policies and research are concerned, they were centred in the national state, and the centre was in focus until the beginning of the 1980s. A shift from structuralism (and determinism) and state centrism to individual agency and economically oriented views of realities then started. The latter is an aspect of the NG. Individuals´ participation in construction of their own realities is now seen not only as a means to solve various problems and to tackle different challenges but also as a value in itself; poverty is now perceived not only in economic terms but also as a matter of individual ability, knowledge and skills to participate in the construction of the own life situation. World Bank, OECD, UNESCO and UNDP have all adopted the idea that, for instance, “the poor themselves could contribute to move out of poverty” (Schneider, 1997, p. 9) if they are given an opportunity to participate in decision-making (Patrinos & Laksmanan, 1997, p. 9). What Giddens (1994) calls
“Generative politics” has been a salient feature in political discourse since the 1980s. Such politics “seeks to allow individuals and groups to make things happen rather than have things happen to them” (pp. 30-31).
4.2 Educational Restructuring
The education system has traditionally had some degree of relative autonomy in relation to the state and society (Althusser, 1972; Dale, 1989). This has implied, for instance, that some degree of failure to achieve the goals has been accepted.
The globalisation processes affect national education systems directly as well as indirectly in different ways. Most countries have restructured their education systems during the past two decades. The fact that the formulated policies are rather similar everywhere, indicates that ideas related to the construction of education have been borrowed from the world models. Despite the discourse on education for and as democratisation and enactment of Human Rights, there has been a general tendency to link the administrative structure, curriculum and measurement of the outcomes (evaluation, assessment and monitoring) more firmly to the central state and the requirements of the economy. Other aspects have been de-linked and left to forces of governance other than those deriving from the state sphere (Daun, 2002).
Like the state in general, the education system is to a large extent under the cross-pressure between local cultures, and the globalisation aspects. Education systems around the world are experiencing one or several of contradictory, for instance: unitarian vs. diversified curriculum; religious-moral vs. secular subjects;
local vs. national or international subjects; principally formation of human capital and merits vs. broad personality development; individual good vs. common good;
mother tongue vs. international language/s (Benhabib, 1998; McGinn, 1997;
Robertson, 1994).