[Marxism] Fwd: The War on Public Education in Europe

[David Walters <dwalters@xxxxxxx>]

Some I'm concerned with, I though this may generate some discussion.
--David Walters

The April 2004 issue of The Faculty Advocate, newsletter of the AAUP
chapter at UMKC, is now online. Its address is:
http://iml.umkc.edu/aaup/facadv14.htm

The War on Public Education in Europe

by David Brodsky

In certain respects neo-liberal education policy in Europe is much more
radically regressive than in the US, if only because free public
education at all levels has long been an established tradition there.
Nevertheless, it reveals what is in store for the US, since neo-liberal
goals are uniform globally. European neo-liberal documents propose the
following kinds of "reforms."

Compulsory, full-time, formal schooling provided by professionally
trained teachers is to be replaced for most students by so-called
non-formal and informal education provided by untrained persons.
Non-formal refers to knowledge picked up in the workplace, and to
schools run by businesses and churches. Since it does not confer
diplomas, degrees, or certificates, a student is left with nothing to
show for his efforts. Informal education turns out to mean no education
at all. In the euphemistic language of one report, informal education
is what "one acquires at home, at the workplace, in the bosom of the
community, in the society in its entirety," i.e. in "daily life."

The absence of formal schooling prevents the transmission of a common
body of knowledge to new generations, starting with basic literacy. The
uneducated and undereducated will be ready prey for official propaganda
and for right-wing religious schools, like the madrassas in Pakistan
that produced recruits for the Taliban.

Education is closely associated with jobs, and neo-liberal policy aims
to deeducate, deskill, and degrade the workforce, including teachers.
Inferior education prepares students for inferior employment. Formal
qualifications are to be replaced by so-called "competencies," or
"'qualities, skills, savoir-faire, attitudes toward work' that the
employee has to prove daily and that can be called into question at any
moment." Thus degraded education channels students into a life of low
skilled, short-term, high exploitation jobs. Informal, that is, zero
education corresponds to the informal, that is, black market economy,
guaranteeing a life of permanent unemployment, poverty and
immiseration.

Because qualifications are linked to good jobs, diplomas and titles are
being destroyed in order to end the expectation of stable employment
and a decent salary. Instead workers will face frequent unemployment
and job change, with the burden of survival placed on individuals. In
addition, many will be forced to join a permanent migrant labor force,
easily intimidated, vastly underpaid, disposable, and deprived of the
most basic legal protections.

Extreme localization and individualization of study and the
deprofessionalization of teaching destroys the possibility of
maintaining national or disciplinary standards. When standards are
eliminated, so are professional qualifications, professionals, and
professional organizations, such as teachers unions, or the AAUP, for
that matter. Likewise, the entire argument for academic freedom and
tenure grounded in professional qualifications evaporates. In place of
public accreditation agencies and professional oversight by the
faculty, the responsibility for quality control of education is placed,
absurdly enough, on each student.

The slogan of "lifelong education" signifies a lifetime of impermanent
jobs and retraining, and an end to normal life patterns of schooling,
work, and retirement. At best lifelong education will give most people
some immediate knowledge useful for their current job. And because
workers are no longer entitled to retirement, they are expected to work
until they drop.

"Lifelong apprenticeship" implies workers can never advance to
journeyman or master, they are at the mercy of an endless certification
process. A permanent testing regime instills constant insecurity in
employees, while making big profits for the testing industry. And since
non-formal certification is free of enforceable standards, it opens the
door to massive arbitrariness and corruption, a regime of favoritism
and bribes.

Excerpted from "The War on Public Higher Education," a talk for the
Forum series of All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church.

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