Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram

Neo-liberal attacks on education flayed

— Photo: S. Gopakumar

Participation: Delegates at the inaugural session of the three-day international seminar being held on the Karyavattom campus of the University of Kerala.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Education in the United States and around the world is under attack from neo-conservatives and neo-liberals who are seeking to marginalise certain forms of knowledge and infuse education with the ideological forms and mechanisms of colonialism, according to Michael Apple, Professor, University of Wisconsin, USA.

He was chairing a thematic session on ‘State and Education’ on Thursday — the first day of the three-day international seminar on ‘Democratic and Secular Education-Kerala Experience,’ organized by the State government on the Karyavattom campus of the University of Kerala.

Professor Apple who began his presentation by saying that he is joyful that the USA now has a ‘resident Bush’ rather than a ‘president Bush’ pointed out that the very act of drafting a curriculum in education is a political act. As part of that political action one knowledge is designated ‘official’ and another, ‘popular.’ The knowledge of the majority is recognised and lauded. Thus there is often a ‘hidden curriculum’ beneath what is being taught in the classroom, he said.

There have been instances of perfectly good teachers who look surprised when a black child from a poor background is able to solve a complicated problem noted on the black board. When a well-dressed white child does the same thing the teachers smile; such children know reality, they think.

Education budgets have been the subject of neo-liberal attacks. Elegant theories of teaching are powerless if the State does not restructure its resources. It is important to note the kind of social movements a State listens to. The subaltern always speak, but are they listened to? he asked.

For the neo-liberals, private means good and public, bad. The only role of the State, according to them, is to collect lesser and lesser taxes. Neo-conservatives, for their part, want a ‘return to the real knowledge.’

For the professional middle-class, the only curriculum that is good is one that can be easily taught, easily manageable and easily testable. In the final analysis, the ‘shrinking of the State’ will only further class differences. In the U.S. there are more money for prisons than there is for education, he pointed out.

In his special address, ‘The paradigm that did not work,’ noted economist and Professor at the Council for Social Development, New Delhi, Amit Bhaduri called for a decentralised model of development and industrialisation that would be an alternative to the present-day model of globalisation that bows to the dictates of global finance capital.

As part of globalisation there is privatization not only of capital but also of knowledge, its production and use. In a political democracy, one adult has one vote. In India, the Ambanis and the Tatas will end up having more votes, he said.

Finance Minister T. M. Thomas Isaac also spoke at the session.

© Copyright 2000 - 2009 The Hindu