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Session Submission Summary

21st Century Socialism & Education Panel #6: Capitalism, Neoliberalism and the rise of entrepreneurship discourses in Africa and Asia: A South-South Exchange

Tue, April 27, 1:45 to 3:15pm PDT (1:45 to 3:15pm PDT), Zoom Room, 102

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

21st Century Socialism & Education Panel #6

Capitalist discourse is further seeping into public education in Africa and Asia in the guise of ‘entrepreneurship education’ and the shifting from global policies of ‘education for all’ to a renewed drive for private education and the deployment of non-traditional teachers to teaching for the urban and rural poor. Both entrepreneurship education and private education are being promoted as alternatives to ‘failed’ state interventions in public education, despite the efforts of many African and Asian governments to provide education for all its citizens. Entrepreneurship education is being promoted as the solution to youth unemployment by non-governmental and governmental agencies alike, a discourse we argue that reflects the historic incursions of capitalist ideologies into public education (Bowles and Gintis, 1977, Hill, 2014, Klees, 2017).


These reforms push back against the responsibility of states to provide basic services and economic security for their citizens by shifting the burden of economic development to individuals and families. ‘New’ education models are strongly influenced by capitalist discourse and controlled by new and old economic actors who present entrepreneurship education as a viable alternative to state failures in education and employment. This panel will critically assess the problematic of capitalist discourses and ‘solutions’ that are purported to address issues in education in Africa and Asia, solutions that essentially present ‘old wine’ in new skin.


Among the older actors with new roles in education policy is the World Bank, who took over from the underfunded UNESCO as the leader of the Education for All (EFA) movement (Klees, 2017). The newer actors influencing education policy are part of ‘new philanthropy’ or ‘philanthropy 3.0’ which privileges ‘market-based’ solutions to education problems and leads to the increased use of commercial and enterprise models in education policy. (Ball & Olmedo, 2011). These ‘philantrocapitalists’ include billionaires turned philanthropists such Gates from Microsoft and Walton from Walmart. (Klees, 2017). This turn in philanthropy crystallizes a new policy strategy that proposes that markets can solve social problems where governments and civil society organizations have failed, paving the way for what Ball and Olmedo refer to as ‘philanthropic governance’ (Ball & Olmedo, 2011, p. 85).


This panel presents four diverse yet complementary cases from Sri Lanka, Nepal, Nigeria and Kenya that show how discourses of privatization and entrepreneurship are being embedded in public education in response to global economic crisis and the encroachment of market logics in the education sector. The papers analyse the implications of these discourses, highlighting how these discourses and ‘reforms’ impoverish the education sector and reproduce the marginal position of African and Asian youth in the world economy. The panel presents a south-south exchange and delves deep into the similarities of the policy prescriptions that authorize more, rather than less, capitalism, as a solution to deeply entrenched poverty and place the burden on the poor to uplift themselves by becoming micro-entrepreneurs. The paper on Nepal examines how Teach for Nepal, based on America’s corporate model of education reform, inscribes students as entrepreneurial subjects. The paper on Sri Lanka highlights how free education in Sri Lanka survived the ‘neo-liberal turn’ but remains under threat by the commodification of education and the push for privatization of education. The paper on Nigeria highlights how global and local actors converge to incorporate neo-liberal capitalist ideologies into public education reforms, highlighting the shift and focus on ‘entrepreneurship’ education and technical and vocational training, continuing a historic struggle between elite actors and civil society and labour movements. The paper on Kenya contests the global discourse of education as a path to social mobility by examining how college graduate become ‘entrepreneurs’ in the online academic outsourced economy and highlights the continued contradictions in labour demands between the global South and global North.


These papers challenge the ideas that more and better international education policy agreements and thrusts, such as Education for all, the MDGs and the SDGs will result in benefits for the billions of the world’s poor. Rather the papers collectively highlight how capitalistic education reforms are used as a diversion from the structural issues of capitalism which include the ‘triple challenge’ of job creation, poverty elimination and inequality reduction (Motala and Vally, 2014,). Rather than assess the failings of capitalism, the education system and its teachers, planners, parents and students become the ‘scapegoats’ for the problems that capitalism creates (Klees, 2017).


Ball, S. J., & Olmedo, A. (2011). Global social capitalism: Using enterprise to solve the problems of the world. Citizenship, Social and Economics Education, 10(2-3), 83-90.
Bowles, S. & Gintis, H. (1977) Schooling in Capitalist America. NY: Basic Books.
Hill, D. (2014). Class Struggle and Education: Neoliberalism, (Neo)-Conservatism, and the Capitalist Assault on Public Education—A Marxist Analysis. In Demythologizing Educational Reforms (pp. 42-75). Routledge.
Klees, S. J. (2017). Beyond neoliberalism: Reflections on capitalism and education. Policy Futures in Education, 1478210317715814.
Motala E and Vally S (2014) ‘No one to blame but themselves:’ Rethinking the relationship between education, skills and employment. In: Motala E and Vally S (eds) Education, economy and society. Johannesburg: UNISA Press, pp.1–25.

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