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  • To What Ends:Educational Reform Around the World
  • Robert F. Arnove (bio)

Introduction

Many "reforms"-such as those related to welfare programs in the United States-can be actually seen as "deforms." These so-called "reforms" have led to increasing impoverishment and lives of misery for many instead of improving the lives of individuals and their communities. In examining educational initiatives that are purported to contribute to improvements in educational equity, quality, and efficiency-the three major challenges facing educational systems around the world-it is useful to examine who is instituting the changes, based on what assumptions and values (i.e., what ideologies), with what ends in mind, and with what outcomes. In basic policy analysis, a leading question is who pays and who benefits from efforts to change or reinforce the status quo.

In attempting to provide a conceptual framework that would simplify and provide coherence to an enormous amount of material at issue, I have decided to adopt a model suggested by Rolland Paulston and Gregory LeRoy to examine nonformal educational programs.1 The framework consists of two principal axes-a vertical one, concerning where reform is initiated (whether at the top in international and national bureaucracies or at the bottom in grassroots movements), and a horizontal axis, concerning the goals of educational changes-varying between principal economic instrumental goals or sociocultural and political change (often associated with identity movements).2 Paulston and LeRoy's review of the literature on nonformal education indicated that most programs fell in the upper left quadrant of Figure 1and were designed to meet the so-called "manpower" or "human resource" requirements3 and the needs of [End Page 79] dominant groups. Still, there were also a number of grassroots movements that viewed education as a catalyst for fundamental social changes.

I. Top-Down Impositions

Turning to the broader ambit of national systems of schooling around the world and attempts to initiate policies and practices that contribute to major improvements in the management, financing, content, processes, and outcomes of education, it is apparent, at least to me, that the most common pattern has been one dominated by the neoliberal, economic, and educational agendas of the major international financial agencies. These agencies include the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, as well as bilateral technical assistance agencies of North America, Europe, and Japan, and national governments, both conservative and liberal, that have bought into this agenda to secure needed external funds to stabilize their economies and pay off their tremendous debt burdens. This agenda derives from

the work of the classical economists, Adam Smith and David Ricardo, who believed that the role of the state consisted of establishing the conditions by which the free play of the marketplace, the laws of supply and demand, and free trade based on competitive advantage, would inevitably redound to the benefit of all.4

"Government policies based on these notions have led to a drastic reduction in the state's role in social spending, deregulation of the economy, and liberalization of [trade] policies."5

The educational counterparts of these policies have included moves to decentralize and privatize public educational systems. The economic and educational "restructuring" that has occurred as an integral part of this agenda has led to a substantial diminution of the role of the state in the public financing of education, [End Page 80] but not necessarily its control. It also led to the application of a market logic and business rhetoric to the goals of education, and the evaluation of the processes and outcomes of schooling, rather than the social utility or what has been called a logic of the majority.6


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Figure 1.

Chief among the concerns of national decision-makers is the international competitiveness of their economies and the products (the graduates) of their educational systems (as measured by standardized tests)-the upper left quadrant of Figure 1. The previous dominant themes of education for the formation of participatory citizens and national unity, as well as international solidarity and individual fulfillment, are barely mentioned or given secondary consideration in policy reforms/deforms which have tended to focus on the excellence or quality of an...

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