The Cycle of Order and Work Efficiency in Adult Education: From Americanization to Neoliberalization

• In Event: Roundtable Session 56
  In Roundtable Session: Is There Promise in Precedent? Learning From Our Curricular Paths

Abstract

This paper presents a comparative and historical approach to the phenomenon of 'social efficiency' at the turn of the 20th and 21st Centuries. Focusing on curricular policies concerning adult immigrant students, it examines the Americanization movement vis a vis the more recent developments emerging out of neoliberalism; and draws on social and cultural reproduction theorists to understand them as part of the structural dynamics of a system of stratification. In a broader approach, I contend that an analysis of similarities between these developments matters greatly in engaging with a critical examination of race/ethnicity and its intersection with class in education, and that a thorough knowledge of a hidden agenda behind the neoliberal policies needs to inform plans for educational change.

Author

• Maliheh M. Vafai, University of California - Berkeley