Global Education Reform Movement in the Latin-American Terrain

• In Event: Movement in the Latin American Educational Terrain - Trends and Analysis on the Regional Discourse

Proposal

Pasi Sahlberg coined the term GERM (for Global Education Reform Movement), which at the same time is a play on words to explain the growing power of intergovernmental organizations in defining the global education agenda and policy (Sahlberg, 2015). The key concept to explore the influence of the GERM in Latin America is educational reform. There is no precise definition of this notion that satisfies all palates; authors accommodate them according to their research objects or case studies. Martin Carnoy and colleagues, for example, detailed meanings of ad-hoc educational reform for the Southern Cone of Latin America in the 1990s, while David Tyack and Larry Cuban looked at it from a 100-year historical perspective in the United States. In both processes, they refer to local government actions and, although there are allusions to the global order, the domestic analysis predominates (Carnoy 2004; Tyack and Cuban 2001).
For this paper, I will use an operational definition that I worked in a text that analyzes the educational reform of Enrique Peña Nieto’s government (2013-2018) in Mexico; this, in turn, includes other concepts: 1. purposes, 2. traditions (practices or routines) that those who propose reforms wish to modify, 3. political, institutional and implementation instruments (Ornelas 2018). In this paper, I will expand the territory of analysis and, based on literature and official documents, I will try to explore GERM’s effects in policy design. Besides, how Intergovernmental agencies, such as the World Bank, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and UNESCO influence educational policy in Latin America.
The central argument and associated evidence reveal that the reformers have a national tone even if they resort to “itinerant ideas” globally. This ideology appeals to change, even to maintain power and remain as a hegemonic group. The central thesis I argue in this piece is that every educational reform proposal faces the rebelliousness of social actors who foresee those institutional changes may affect their interests and acquired skills. Resistance to reforms can be legitimate or arbitrary. Teachers’ unions play a key role in opposition to reforms.
I base the theoretical construction on contributions from classical authors such as Niccolò Machiavelli, Max Weber, Antonio Gramsci (Machiavelli 2003; Gerth and Mills 1946; Gramsci 1970). Also, from contemporary writers who contribute key concepts, such as the technology of power (March and Olsen 1996) and dialectics of control (Giddens 1995), and hegemony (Takayama 2012), and Latin American essayists.
To offer an interpretation—which I hope will be coherent and sensible—, I will summarize and provide tentative answers based on what I consider the three predominant theoretical propensities in comparative education today. I will outline the world culture theory, the neo-cultural imperialism perspective, and the lender-borrower current.
I will attempt a summary of GERM’s action in Latin American countries since the 1990s. And, as a cause, I will describe the basic purposes of an Edutopia that may encourage illuminating the power of idea/lism.

Author

• Carlos Ornelas, Universidad Autonoma Meropolitana