The dialectics of education and development in Central America and the Latin Caribbean

• In Event: Highlighted Session: Education and development in Central American and the Latin Caribbean: Global forces, local responses

Proposal

One characteristic of the relationship between education and development in Central America and the Latin Caribbean (CALC) is its dialectical nature. Although research on the region rarely speaks to this characteristic, it is clearly evident when looking across the cases presented in this panel (and the underlying book). By dialectical nature, I am referring, first, to the reality that education helps to resolve or reduce tensions between the state and capitalism and, second, to the fact that the ways in which this tension is resolved repeatedly creates new opportunities for a range of international actors to insert themselves into education reform dynamics in the region. Involvement by these actors, together with counterparts from state agencies then proceeds—typically while ignoring or without input from teachers, students, and families—until a new crisis emerges, at which point the cycle repeats itself. The goal of this paper is to make explicit that which is typically unacknowledged or insufficiently addressed in research on education in CALC—that is, the extent to which education, in its reform and implementation (or lack thereof), is inextricably linked to and constrained by tensions and incentives produced as a result of the relationship between the state and the global capitalist economy. This argument is demonstrated by drawing on examples from the other papers on this panel as well as additional examples from the other chapters in the book on which this panel is based.

Author

• D. Brent Edwards, University of Hawaii