Post by Moses on Apr 12, 2005 6:38:20 GMT -5
Understanding That the "Education Reforms" of NCLB are simply a piece of the agenda of urestricted, globalized capitalism helps not only in understanding NCLB and the motives behind it, but why politicians (put in office by capital and not people) & the publishing princes support it despite hostility to NCLB on the part of parents who the education was heretofore understood to serve, and education workers.
While the shift of the raison d'etre of public education to serving corporate interests has been clear from the rhetoric of the think tanks, politicians, and publishing princes, a document appeared in 1997 in one of the globalization organizations that was explicit.
This is the document produced by APEC, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, a grouping of eighteen "economies" with borders on the Pacific, both in Asia and the Americas.
"Unlike the other major international trade liberalization initiatives, APEC's process is not one of negotiating and signing treaties.
It thus differs from NAFTA, GATT/WTO, the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) and the like. APEC is a talk shop aimed at reaching a consensus. If any one of its participants disagrees with an action, then that "economy" is free to ignore it, even if all others agree.
In addition to an annual meeting of the leaders of the APEC economies (in fact, the official political leaders of the countries), Ministerial meetings are held, bringing together heads of like ministries, such as environment, transportation and trade. The Korean paper has been prepared for the second Human Resources Development Ministerial Meeting."
In 1997, the Human Resources Ministerial meeting of APEC was held in Seoul, & Korea that developed the "concept paper" for the education discussion, although other "designated member economies will prepare a concept paper of their own."
www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=876
With that background, let's take a look at the content of the Korean paper. Like much of what is written about education and the new demands of the global economy, this paper is filled with cliches, false promises, and identification of the interests of the people with the interests of capital. I will highlight here the common globalization premises repeated in this APEC paper, with an explanation as well as a critique of the claims.
Globalization is Inevitable and Education Must Comply with its Requirements
"At an economy level, the economies must work on a system of education complying to the changing environment."
This powerful sense of inevitability silences any consideration that education should serve the social and cultural needs of a particular people, not just the economic needs of a world economy that is out of control. It also makes incredible and unthinkable the view that groups should be getting together on an international basis to figure out how to bring the global economy under control so that it meets the needs of people, not the other way around.
Education Means Preparing Workers for Business
From the APEC document:
Business Should Determine the Content of Education
Once the job of the school is defined as preparing workers for business, it logically follows that business should have a central role in determining the content of schooling. Again, the APEC paper could not be more explicit. It says "that decisions must be taken by a school system for good business reasons with maximum business intervention."
The authors condemn existing schools because curricula have been developed by "intellectual elites with emphasis on learning for the sake of learning without much emphasis on outcomes." These impractical intellectuals also focus on concepts and theories, rather than applications and work experience in the field. Where work experience does exist, it is dismissed as superficial.
These problems will be fixed up, they suggest, by business-school partnerships, a code phrase for letting corporations shape the schools.
They want employers to share the role of educating students, an exchange of personnel between industry and school and to have industry personnel "take part in the curriculum development pertinent to their industry to make the curriculum realistic to the needs of the industry."
The content of education should be work ethic, attitudes and skills
APEC document states:
We have an oversupply of the educated; an under supply of the trained
When education is viewed from the "human capital" perspective, the current situation can be seen as the classic problem that creates a crisis in capitalism -- overproduction. The capitalist's choices for dealing with excess supply over demand are two:
1) shut down production until inventories are down, or
2) shift production to another product for which the demand is greater than the supply.
Training will eliminate unemployment
The claim that training will eliminate unemployment is the most misleading of the many claims of those who place the blame for unemployment on the unemployed rather than on an economy that does not produce enough jobs.
This APEC paper claims that "the strengthening of the workforce will increase employability...and resolve unemployment, under-employment and other problems in the labor markets."
The only way in which this would be a credible solution is if the main cause of youth unemployment were structural -- a mismatch of training and employment opportunities. This is, in fact, the claim that is made: through "smooth transitions from school to work, the economies can lower the level of unemployment among young people and cut the inefficiency associated with frequent job changes."
While the paper claims there is a shortage of craftsmen and technicians within the Korean economy, the more general experience in the more developed as well as less developed economies is that the real shortage is of jobs, not skills. As the experience of Malaysia has shown, workers drawn from rural areas, working at low pay, can be trained to produce in the most high tech factories. It is the combination of low pay with high skill, not the high skill itself that means that the jobs will temporarily locate there.
The problem of lack of jobs is centred not in workers, but in the two characteristics that the APEC paper says will characterize the 21st century as the century of globalization: "severe competition, and rapid changes in technology."
Severe competition in the cost of labour means that industry moves from country to country, without constraint, to take advantage of a still lower wage and higher tax incentives being offered elsewhere. William Greider's book, One World, Ready or Not, describes these peripatetic corporations, jumping from one Asian economy to another, from establish factory to southern maquiladors, with no responsibility to any interests other than their own profit. Low-cost production of athletic shoes in Indonesia loses out to lower cost production in Vietnam. This movement is facilitated by technology that requires fewer and fewer production workers, as well as puts legs on the jobs that do exist.
The central promise of the APEC education strategy is that more training will produce jobs. Since a better match of improved training is all that is offered to produce more jobs, it will inevitably fail. The purpose of APEC -- to liberalize trade by eliminating government intervention and control over corporate power -- means that an important tool has been given up: government action to mitigate the social impact of cutthroat competition and rampant technological change.
We are developing a common culture as a result of globalization
....culture is a particular set of products that can be sold and consumed, just as hard goods can be sold and consumed. The objective is to commodify culture and to find the biggest market. Homogenization of tastes and desires will produce the biggest market for "cultural products."
Labour should be co-opted into helping reshape education to serve globalization
While unions have and will remain advocates of training for workers, the emphasis here is not on meeting the interests of workers, but that of the corporate globalized system. While the authors of the paper may see those interests as the same, many labour activists do not.
What is to be done?
While the shift of the raison d'etre of public education to serving corporate interests has been clear from the rhetoric of the think tanks, politicians, and publishing princes, a document appeared in 1997 in one of the globalization organizations that was explicit.
This is the document produced by APEC, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, a grouping of eighteen "economies" with borders on the Pacific, both in Asia and the Americas.
"Unlike the other major international trade liberalization initiatives, APEC's process is not one of negotiating and signing treaties.
It thus differs from NAFTA, GATT/WTO, the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) and the like. APEC is a talk shop aimed at reaching a consensus. If any one of its participants disagrees with an action, then that "economy" is free to ignore it, even if all others agree.
In addition to an annual meeting of the leaders of the APEC economies (in fact, the official political leaders of the countries), Ministerial meetings are held, bringing together heads of like ministries, such as environment, transportation and trade. The Korean paper has been prepared for the second Human Resources Development Ministerial Meeting."
In 1997, the Human Resources Ministerial meeting of APEC was held in Seoul, & Korea that developed the "concept paper" for the education discussion, although other "designated member economies will prepare a concept paper of their own."
www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=876
With that background, let's take a look at the content of the Korean paper. Like much of what is written about education and the new demands of the global economy, this paper is filled with cliches, false promises, and identification of the interests of the people with the interests of capital. I will highlight here the common globalization premises repeated in this APEC paper, with an explanation as well as a critique of the claims.
Globalization is Inevitable and Education Must Comply with its Requirements
"At an economy level, the economies must work on a system of education complying to the changing environment."
This powerful sense of inevitability silences any consideration that education should serve the social and cultural needs of a particular people, not just the economic needs of a world economy that is out of control. It also makes incredible and unthinkable the view that groups should be getting together on an international basis to figure out how to bring the global economy under control so that it meets the needs of people, not the other way around.
Education Means Preparing Workers for Business
From the APEC document:
The emphasis on education for itself or on education for good members of a community without a large emphasis on preparations for the future work are no longer appropriate. In other words, the idea that work is only an instrumental part of one's life is no longer appropriate. Such a diachotomic view on education and work cannot be justified in the world where economic development is emphasized.
Business Should Determine the Content of Education
Once the job of the school is defined as preparing workers for business, it logically follows that business should have a central role in determining the content of schooling. Again, the APEC paper could not be more explicit. It says "that decisions must be taken by a school system for good business reasons with maximum business intervention."
The authors condemn existing schools because curricula have been developed by "intellectual elites with emphasis on learning for the sake of learning without much emphasis on outcomes." These impractical intellectuals also focus on concepts and theories, rather than applications and work experience in the field. Where work experience does exist, it is dismissed as superficial.
These problems will be fixed up, they suggest, by business-school partnerships, a code phrase for letting corporations shape the schools.
They want employers to share the role of educating students, an exchange of personnel between industry and school and to have industry personnel "take part in the curriculum development pertinent to their industry to make the curriculum realistic to the needs of the industry."
The content of education should be work ethic, attitudes and skills
APEC document states:
*A school system should have an integrated framework on education based on standards and expectations set by a society.
*Students should acquire a breadth of knowledge, skills and attitudes necessary for adjustments into work environment.
*All students are expected to develop work ethics and attitude appropriate for a working life.
*Schools should provide a comprehensive skills-based achievement record to better inform the employers of a student's social skill development level and width and depth of a student's knowledge and skills. This will aid the employers to better select and recruit workers.
*Students should acquire a breadth of knowledge, skills and attitudes necessary for adjustments into work environment.
*All students are expected to develop work ethics and attitude appropriate for a working life.
*Schools should provide a comprehensive skills-based achievement record to better inform the employers of a student's social skill development level and width and depth of a student's knowledge and skills. This will aid the employers to better select and recruit workers.
We have an oversupply of the educated; an under supply of the trained
When education is viewed from the "human capital" perspective, the current situation can be seen as the classic problem that creates a crisis in capitalism -- overproduction. The capitalist's choices for dealing with excess supply over demand are two:
1) shut down production until inventories are down, or
2) shift production to another product for which the demand is greater than the supply.
Training will eliminate unemployment
The claim that training will eliminate unemployment is the most misleading of the many claims of those who place the blame for unemployment on the unemployed rather than on an economy that does not produce enough jobs.
This APEC paper claims that "the strengthening of the workforce will increase employability...and resolve unemployment, under-employment and other problems in the labor markets."
The only way in which this would be a credible solution is if the main cause of youth unemployment were structural -- a mismatch of training and employment opportunities. This is, in fact, the claim that is made: through "smooth transitions from school to work, the economies can lower the level of unemployment among young people and cut the inefficiency associated with frequent job changes."
While the paper claims there is a shortage of craftsmen and technicians within the Korean economy, the more general experience in the more developed as well as less developed economies is that the real shortage is of jobs, not skills. As the experience of Malaysia has shown, workers drawn from rural areas, working at low pay, can be trained to produce in the most high tech factories. It is the combination of low pay with high skill, not the high skill itself that means that the jobs will temporarily locate there.
The problem of lack of jobs is centred not in workers, but in the two characteristics that the APEC paper says will characterize the 21st century as the century of globalization: "severe competition, and rapid changes in technology."
Severe competition in the cost of labour means that industry moves from country to country, without constraint, to take advantage of a still lower wage and higher tax incentives being offered elsewhere. William Greider's book, One World, Ready or Not, describes these peripatetic corporations, jumping from one Asian economy to another, from establish factory to southern maquiladors, with no responsibility to any interests other than their own profit. Low-cost production of athletic shoes in Indonesia loses out to lower cost production in Vietnam. This movement is facilitated by technology that requires fewer and fewer production workers, as well as puts legs on the jobs that do exist.
The central promise of the APEC education strategy is that more training will produce jobs. Since a better match of improved training is all that is offered to produce more jobs, it will inevitably fail. The purpose of APEC -- to liberalize trade by eliminating government intervention and control over corporate power -- means that an important tool has been given up: government action to mitigate the social impact of cutthroat competition and rampant technological change.
We are developing a common culture as a result of globalization
....culture is a particular set of products that can be sold and consumed, just as hard goods can be sold and consumed. The objective is to commodify culture and to find the biggest market. Homogenization of tastes and desires will produce the biggest market for "cultural products."
Labour should be co-opted into helping reshape education to serve globalization
While unions have and will remain advocates of training for workers, the emphasis here is not on meeting the interests of workers, but that of the corporate globalized system. While the authors of the paper may see those interests as the same, many labour activists do not.
What is to be done?