|
European Educational |
ISSN 1474-9041 |
||
|
Volume 3 Number 2 2004 |
|||
Other issues available | Journal home page | Publisher home page |
|||
|
|||
|
CONTENTS [click on author's name for abstract and full text] |
|||
|
|
|||
|
Ulf Fredriksson. Studying the Supra-National
in Education: GATS, education and teacher union policies, pages
415‑441
|
|||
|
Studying the Supra-National in Education: GATS, education and teacher union policies |
| VIEW FULL TEXT | BACK TO CONTENTS LIST |
|
This article starts by putting the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) into a general context of privatisation. It is noted that the privatisation process is in many cases complex and not only about full-scale privatisation of schools. The growing trade in education must be seen in this context. GATS is not an agreement which deals with educational issues from a political or educational perspective, but from a commercial and trade perspective. The purpose of GATS is to liberalise trade in services, which also includes education. Commitments made in GATS negotiations are difficult to withdraw and the protection of commercial interests which GATS provides is stronger than the protection of human rights, in, for example, the Convention of the Right of the Child. The protection given in GATS to public services, including public education, is ambiguous at best and in many cases open to interpretation by Trade Dispute Panels. It can be assumed that such panels will deal with some educational matters in future. Another risk for the future is that governments will use GATS as an excuse for deregulation and privatisation within the education sector. There is also a risk that education will become part of a general negotiation game where governments may have to open up the education market in their own countries in order to get access to other markets and that education policies will increasingly be decided by trade ministers instead of education ministers. The international trade union movement, including Education International, has been critical of GATS and has raised a number of issues. Also, there is a growing concern about GATS among national teacher unions. Many teacher unions have taken different initiatives: produced information material; established a dialogue with governments; and built broader coalitions with other trade unions, student organisations, etc. |
|
The Three Axes of School Merchandization |
| VIEW FULL TEXT | BACK TO CONTENTS LIST |
|
Deregulation and privatization of the school systems are the symptoms of the transition from the era of ‘massification’ of education to the era of ‘merchandization’. This process is generated by a new relation between education and the needs of the globalized economy. Education is charged to supply the economy with a skilled and flexible labour force, to stimulate the markets by fashioning the consumer and to become itself a new, profitable market. |
|
Too Eager to Comply? OECD Education Policies and the Finnish Response |
| VIEW FULL TEXT | BACK TO CONTENTS LIST |
|
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has strongly influenced European education policy and the entire global neo-liberally toned discourse that nowadays prevails in the implementation of national education policy and educational reforms. The educational policy governance of the OECD is based on overall and supranational information management – the instruments of which in practice are published analyses, statistics and indicator publications, as well as country and thematic reviews. This article presents, first, four phases in the history of the OECD educational policy based strictly on an analysis of documentary material. These phases provide a context for the analyses of the connections of the OECD and Finnish education policies in which the country and thematic reviews of Finland are used as empirical material. Finland has, especially in recent years, attained a status of a model pupil in implementing the educational policy recommendations of the OECD. Thus, several connections between the OECD recommendations and the development of education policy in Finland can be found in the material. In this study Finland has a role of an example of the field of activity of supranational actors and the connections and influences between the OECD and Finland should not be considered unique. Similar rapprochement of politics and thinning out of the independent authority of nation-states can even be seen on a larger scale. |
|
Evaluation in the Transnational ‘Management by Projects’ Policies |
| VIEW FULL TEXT | BACK TO CONTENTS LIST |
|
There is a supranational tendency in educational governance towards a ‘management by projects’ policy, which substitutes democratic procedures and norm-based control in the materialisation of educational justice. The organisational level becomes crucial for the management of education and the pressure to conceive education as a managerial activity increases. At the same time, educational expertise in public administration becomes substituted by subcontracted, policy-led research. In the context of transnational governance the civil service is turning into a busnocracy, which is responsible for the quality of education to the global markets instead of to people. The article discusses this transnational policy agenda through one European Union project which aims at developing tools for transnational evaluation of re-integrative programmes targeted at students who have problems in following the mainstream pathways to vocational education. |
|
Bildung: a paradigm regained? |
| VIEW FULL TEXT | BACK TO CONTENTS LIST |
|
Bildung is a key concept in the German tradition of educational theory. Originally meant to indicate a specific state of mind and ideal of perfection, it now serves as a symbol of the unity of whatever refers to the field of education, particularly to its organisational and functional aspects. The aura of Bildung is bestowed on its counterpart in the form of preparation for the needs of the day. However wrongheaded or deplorable that may appear in the light of traditional values and ideas, this alienated use of the concept of Bildung may be a blessing in disguise: it keeps alive the memory of autonomous learning as opposed to regular training under the imperatives of the day. The paradigm of Bildung survives in title if not in substance as a paradigm to regain. |
© SYMPOSIUM JOURNALS |
