Ignoring concepts of the nation in educational development: comparing today's development agenda and historical case studies of Japan and Korea

• In Event: Roundtable Group 11
  In Refereed Roundtable Session: Politics, Systems Thinking, and the Development Agenda: A roundtable discussion on the politics of educational reform and learning

Proposal

The roundtable presentation is based on a paper that shows, via case studies of the development of education in two countries that are canonical success stories of educational development, namely Japan and Korea, that potentiating the role of education in a nation-project was key to educational success. Education was seen not as inherently valuable in and of itself (as a matter of rights, say), though it was that too, nor as playing an instrumental role in development (impact on GDP, social indicators such as infant mortality, etc.), nor solely or even primarily as an investment in human capital). Rather, education in these cases was seen as a matter of cultural, civilizational, and even military survival, a matter in which the concept of the nation itself was tightly bound. This, it is posited, allowed for very creative processes of policy borrowing and rejection from abroad, as well as a true zeal in reaching every citizen with educational opportunity in a way that was quite revolutionary. The presentation will use a detailed exegesis of the key policy documents of two agencies, the World Bank and UNESCO, to show that this “socialization” or cultural role of education has been systematically ignored in how these agencies provide policy support to countries. The possible political economy and ideology behind this posture will be tentatively explored in the presentation. The plausible consequences, in terms of educational outcomes inequality, will be highlighted via the use of appropriate statistics.

Authors

• Luis Crouch, RTI

• Deborah Elaine Spindelman, CARE USA