Critical questions of purpose, quality, choice, and access in public education have been key in processes of neoliberal globalization spanning the last four decades. The growing privatization of schools around the world has resulted in fundamental changes regarding the ways in which local systems of education are imagined and re-constructed. Schools and schooling are now increasingly (re)fashioned in alignment with global neoliberal imaginaries for the purpose of (re)producing human capital in the service of private interests. As a result, education for social betterment and democratic engagement, two pillars of public school policies throughout the 20th century, are compromised, even undermined.
Employing models and research findings from critical international political economy and progressive education, Globalization and the Neoliberal Schoolhouse: Education in a World of Trouble explores the corrosive influences of commodification and privatization on public education worldwide, within the context of crisis-ridden neoliberal globalization and expanding global capitalist governance. The consequences are nation-state de-evolution, social and cultural decay, and the forfeiture of public schools as engines of progress.
Understanding how the historical emergence, political economic processes, and governing institutions of neoliberal globalization are adversely impacting local systems of education – and what to do about it – is important to free education advocates, civic-minded educators, student teachers, social activists, and education development specialists everywhere!
John L. Lyons, MA (1985, 2002), has taught economics, history, psychology, and philosophy for more than three decades in international schools and colleges on five continents. He has published articles on Middle East history, cross-cultural conflict, and transformative travel.
Preface
1 The Hope of Education in a World of Trouble
2 The Four Defining Elements of Globalization: Integration, Interdependence, State Erosion, Transnational Power
3 Globalization and the Ascendancy of the Neoliberal School Yard
4 The Washington Consensus, the WTO, and the Neoliberal State: An Archeology of the Globalized Schoolhouse
5 Global Governance and the Neoliberal Schoolhouse
6 The World Bank and The International Monetary Fund: Twin Horsemen of the Edpocalypse
7 The World Bank’s Impact on Local Education: A Case of the Chickens Coming Home to Roost
8 The WB/IMF Symmetry of Influence in Global(ized) Education
9 The WTO and the OECD: The Other Two Horsemen of the Global Edpocalyse
10 The Impact of the D/evolved State on Local Systems of Education
11 Social Consequences of the Neoliberal Schoolhouse
12 Culture and Relationship in the Neoliberal Schoolhouse
13 Extinguishing the Flames of Our Village Burning: The Spirit and Ground of Education Re-Imagined
References
Index
Those interested in the effects of neo liberal globalization on schools and education, including socially-engaged educators, public school advocates, anti globalization activists, and students and scholars of contemporary world affairs.