The Anatomy Of Neoliberalism And Education

This book is about the Anatomy of Neoliberalism and Education from a Marxist perspective. It is the dialectical materialism of neoliberal ideas, examining the material conditions of how these ideas and practices emerged, and under what conditions. Each of these elements is related to the other and can only be properly understood as part and parcel of the whole system of capitalism, which links them together. This book investigates neoliberalism's political, cultural, and financial tools. It goes deep in the forces who have supported neoliberalism and how it became "common sense". It explores the imperialist outcomes and the social devastation it created. It then goes to see how these ideas and policies have been implemented in education. In short, it is the materialist conception of the history of the American empire. It then uses the analytic tools developed through this investigation to re-read the neoliberal educational reforms.

This volume examines the role of neoliberalism and its impact on education in South Asia. It contends that education is in a state of crisis across the world. This is reflected not only in the way the state has withdrawn to pave way for private capital but also in the manner in which knowledge and ways of understanding the world are being challenged by manipulation and adverse influences. A process of ‘factoryisation’ is underway as disciplining of human minds and redefinition of the purpose of human existence are being geared to fall in line with the needs of private capital. The book brings together incisive contributions from India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Nepal to explore newer possibilities to deal with the educational crisis, and looks at a range of critical themes in education: pedagogy, teacher–learner relationship, teacher education, the state of the university, and policy. Rich in content, critical and insightful, this book will be a valuable addition for scholars and researchers of education and education policy, sociology, public policy and South Asian Studies.

The ongoing neoliberalisation of education is complex, varied and relentless. It involves increasingly diverse material and structural changes to curriculum, pedagogy and assessment and at the same time transforms how we are made up as educational subjects. It rearticulates what it means to be educated. This collection brings together creative and unanticipated examples of the adoption and adaptation of neoliberal practice, both collective and individual. These examples not only demonstrate the insidiousness of neoliberal reform but also suggest that its trajectory is uncertain and unfixed. The intention is that these examples might embolden education scholars and practitioners to think differently about education. This book is shaped by a reading of the processes of the neoliberalisation of education as a dispositif. This heterogeneous dispositif encompasses and spans an uneven, miscellaneous and evolving network of educational regimes of knowledge, practice and subjectivities, as well as artifacts and non-human actants. The papers included address different aspects or points within this complex arrangement at different levels and in different sectors of education. They have been chosen to illustrate the evolving and multi-faceted penetration of market thinking and practice in education and also points of deflection and dissent. They also offer coverage of some of the uneven geography of neoliberalisation. They consider the potential for the production of subjectivities to provide the ‘wriggle’ room that can exist to refuse or subvert neoliberal identities. This book will have appeal across the social sciences and specifically to those working in education. The chapters included here were originally published in various Taylor & Francis journals.

This book has two primary goals: a critique of educational reforms that result from the rise of neoliberalism and to provide alternatives to neoliberal conceptions of education problems and solutions. A key issue addressed by contributors is how forms of critical consciousness can be engendered thought society via schools, that is, paying attention to the practical aspects of pedagogy for social transformation and organizing to achieve a most just society.

Papers presented at a workshop organized by the Department of Sociology, South Asian University.

Neoliberal education policies have privatised, marketised, decentralized, controlled and surveilled, managed according to the business and control principles of new public managerialism, attacked the rights and conditions of education workers, and resulted in a loss of democracy, critique and equality of access and outcome. This book, written by an impressive international array of scholars and activists, explores the mechanisms and ideologies behind neoliberal education, while evaluating and promoting resistance on a local, national and global level. Chapters examine the activities and impacts of the arguably socialist revolution in Venezuela, the Porto Alegre democratic community experimental model in Brazil, the activities of the Rouge Forum of democratic socialist teachers and educators in the USA, Public Service International, resistance movements against the GATS (General Agreement on Trade in Services), and trade union and social movement and community/parental opposition to neoliberal education policies in Britain and in Latin America.

The restructuring of teaching is a global issue, the result of a transnational movement of policy. Gender shapes the occupational reform and binds the global-to-the-local movement of reform ideas. Gender is also implicated in how policy is done and how it leads to particular outcomes. This volume examines the behind-the-scenes work done to make sense of reform and implement it during the workday and questions the new forms and controls over teaching reforms—the labor process—revealed to understand the implications of neoliberal education reform on teachers’ work. Based on ethnographic research undertaken at public high schools in Argentina, this volume introduces the everyday work lives of teachers. It includes interviews and observations revealing what it means to be a teacher in the reform context, and explores the ways masculinities and femininities shape teachers’ decision-making about reforms. At a time when teachers are at the center of political controversy around the world, this volume is an important reminder that school change is about changing the work of teachers.

Neoliberalism and Education Systems in Conflict: Exploring Challenges Across the Globe explores how neoliberal values are imprinted onto educational spaces and practices, and by consequence, fundamentally reshape how we come to understand the educational experience at the school or system level. Countries across the globe struggle with the residual effects of increased accountability, choice/voucher systems, and privatization. The first section of the book discusses the direct imprint of neoliberal policies on educational spaces. The next section examines the more indirect outcomes of neoliberalism, including the challenges of inequity, access, violence, racism, and social justice issues as a result of neoliberal ideologies. Each section of the book includes case studies about education systems across the globe, including Britain, Middle East, Turkey, United States, China, and Chile written by international contributors. Neoliberalism and Education Systems in Conflict is essential reading for educators, scholars, and faculty of educational leadership and policy globally.

Neoliberalism, with its worldview of competition, choice and calculation, its economisation of everything, and its will to govern has ‘sunk its roots deep’ into Early Childhood Education and Care. This book considers its deeply detrimental impacts upon young children, families, settings and the workforce. Through an exploration of possibilities for resistance and refusal, and reflection on the significance of the coronavirus pandemic, Roberts-Holmes and Moss provide hope that neoliberalism’s current hegemony can be successfully contested. The book provides a critical introduction to neoliberalism and three closely related and influential concepts – Human Capital theory, Public Choice theory and New Public Management – as well as an overview of the impact of neoliberalism on compulsory education, in particular through the Global Education Reform Movement. With its main focus on Early Childhood Education and Care, this book argues that while neoliberalism is a very powerful force, it is ‘deeply problematic, eminently resistible and eventually replaceable’ – and that there are indeed alternatives. Neoliberalism and Early Childhood Education is an insightful supplement to the studies of students and researchers in Early Childhood Education and Sociology of Education, and is also highly relevant to policy makers.

In this groundbreaking critique of neoliberalism in schooling and education, an international cast of education policy analysts, educational activists and scholars deftly analyze the ideologies underlying the global, national and local neoliberalisation of schooling and education. The thrilling scholarship that makes up Global Neoliberalism and Education and its Consequences exposes the machinations, agenda and impacts of the privatising and 'merchandisation' of education by the World Bank, the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), biased think tanks, global and national corporations and capital, and the full political spectrum of Neoliberal governments. Including such topics as the increasing polarization of racialized and gendered social classes as a consequence of neoliberal policies, the role and shape of markets and education in the era of globalised Capitalism, the effects of the profit motive in higher education, the impact of the Heritage Foundation in the USA, and even a critical evaluation of education in Cuba--readers are sure to find startling insight and provocative arguments throughout Global Neoliberalism and Education and its Consequences.