Spaces of Crisis, spaces of conflict:
European education and its uneven
development
Ken Jones
Goldsmiths, University of London
Themes of the conference papers: Side
1
1. Analysis of aspects of policy orthodoxy and
its effects.
• School performance indicators
• School choice and spatial segregation
• Students & worrying about the future
• Differentiation & inequality
• Effects of the crisis on schools
Side 2
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Inclusion and social justice.
Justice through inspection
Supporting minority belonging
Building agency among immigrant mothers
Inter-cultural education
Diversity and integration in Higher Education
Education and Roma and Sinti people
A sense of tension
Between critical analysis and constructive practice
Between the direction of economic, social and educational
policy and the values and commitments of educators and
researchers.
This duality is not only a way of describing a research agenda,
but also a way of describing the conditions in which such an
agenda is produced. A condition of being both in and against
the powerful shaping currents of contemporary academia.
Letters and petitions I’ve recently
signed against
- The visa status of overseas students being checked
against their attendance in seminars
- Arrest and suspension of students protesting
university policies
- Selling off the student debt book
- Uploading of all files on university computers onto
Microsoft cloud servers
- Discrepancy between the pay of lecturers, and that of
university managements
- Outsourcing of cleaners’ work at University of London.
The academic and the hydra
A name for this many-headed monster?
“The term neoliberalism … resonates as a
convenient label for describing how and why
so many things in Academia seem to suck.”
(Banas 2014).
Other names
• The new world order in education (Laval &
Weber).
• A global policy-making project (Moutsios)
• A globally-structured educational agenda (Dale).
• Names that outline the main features of the
project, and the institutions that have elaborated
it.
But …
• We need to discriminate between different
aspects of this vast complex of concepts.
My particular focus: the political shape
of the new order
• Europe (mainly, the EU)
• In a long moment of crisis (post-2008)
• The relationships between states and global
policy-making entities
• The consequences of these relationships for
internal political relationships, within national
states.
Taking issue with
Depictions of the ‘European Educational Space’
as a smooth space:
“Capital tends towards a smooth space defined
by … flexibility, continual modulation, and
tendential equalization." (Hardt and Negri
2001: 327)
The European Educational Space
‘(We may be facing) a permanent orientation in which a
suprastate bureaucracy will predominate and put into place a
strategy based on criteria of economic rationality that tends
to transform politics into a problem of administration and
management’. Novoa 2001: 254
The European Educational Space (2)
• Lawn: (2013) - governance [of education] in Europe is
developed through … public-private partnerships,
knowledge-based organizations, agencies, associations
and markets …. This activity is often out of sight and
excludes politics. It thrives among a new elite of
technocrats, professionals and academics, with expert
knowledge or skills … They meet in associations or
through projects or networks. They are solving problems,
problems in the governing of Europe, through the
collection, classification, and analysis of data, the parallel
creation of standards or the accumulation of knowledge
about problems and development.’ (Lawn 2013).
Distinguish between
The self-representation of ‘Europe’ – in policy
documents.
and
The critique of this self-representation, in some
academic analysis.
and
Another dimension of policy-making in Europe, in
which questions of force and coercion (particularly
through economic power) are significant.
In this talk
I emphasise the third of these elements:
- it tends to be neglected in accounts of
European policy-making.
- post-2008, it has emerged as a powerful
influence – constraining some kinds of policy,
enabling others.
Three organisations
OECD
IMF
EU (European Commission)
The latter two part of the ‘troika’ that has
supervised the consequences of financial crisis
in the European South.
OECD to Greece
• “Greece must move from a highly centralised and
fragmented system of input controls toward a more
flexible system in which the Ministry of Education,
Lifelong Learning and Religious Affairs focuses on
responsibility and accountability for performance.
• Changes in the education system must be made within
the framework of overall national directions.
Fundamental changes in budgeting and finance, as well
as in the structure of national, regional and local
governments, are likely to accelerate as a consequence
of the economic crisis. This, in turn, will affect the
government’s human resource capacity at the school,
institution, regional and national levels.” (OECD 2011)
Christine Lagarde angers Spain with repeat
prescription of austerity. (Guardian 3rd March)
IMF head urges Madrid to keep on shaking up
the labour market, raising taxes and
deregulating business.
European Commission: memo to
Portugal (2011)
“Reduce costs in the area of education, with
the aim of saving EUR 195 million by
rationalising the school network by creating
school clusters; lowering staff needs;
centralising procurement; and reducing and
rationalising transfers to private schools in
association agreements. …”
Greece, Spain, Portugal
Suggest that the European Educational Space
needs to be understood as organised through
conflict, in a period when ‘crisis’ is utilised as
an opportunity for restructuring.
A second problem of representation:
‘convergence’
• ‘The crisis of 2008 represented a break in the long-run
convergence trends in the European Union, with a
loss of convergence dynamics, as parts of Europe
began to drift away from each other … This divergence
with regard to key variables for promoting the
fundamental objectives of European integration, such
as economic progress, increased economic and social
cohesion, and the creation and maintenance of an
economic and monetary union, is of great concern as
these variables are inherent in all the aspirations and
thinking relating to European integration to date’.
(European Trade Union Institute 2013).
From this perspective
1. ‘Crisis’ and ‘austerity’ interrupt a long-term
process of convergence around norms of
educational and social provision.
2. There is a problem of uneven development
that the EU has dealt with through various
policy instruments – the Open Method of Coordination, the meetings of experts
described by Lawn, meetings of Education
Ministers through the European Council.
A different perspective
“The space of Europe needs to be thought in
terms of relationships of domination and
subordination, as power over macro-economic
policy is force-migrated from the national level to
the conference rooms of Brussels and Strasbourg.
In this context, it is possible to speak of a process
of uneven development which is antagonistic and
competitive: the advantages accruing to some
member states in the process of Europeanisation
are gained at the expense of others.” (Jones
2013)
In this context
• There is policy convergence, as national
educational frameworks are remade to
EU/OECD specifications.
• At the same time, there are fractures and
conflicts within national states, as significant
social forces experience the negative effects of
‘reform’.
The educational politics of the neoliberal period
- Are thus those of uneven and combined
development
- ‘Uneven’ because policies developed at a
European level have differential effects on
European states – e.g. fiscal policy, in relation to
Greece.
- ‘Combined’ because changes in law and policy at
the level of the national state activate significant
counter-mobilisations.
In a situation of uneven development
• Elements with different provenances do not
simply co-exist. They overlap, fuse and merge
in dynamic ways, generating socially explosive
situations. (Bieler 2013).
• How does this principle work in contemporary
Europe, and contemporary conflicts over
European education?
A narrative (1)
•
The ‘pacts’ between transnational
institutions and national political classes
willing to carry out their programme have had
the effect of cancelling the gains won in the
period since the fall of fascist or authoritarian
regimes in the 1940s and the 1970s:
opportunity through higher education,
curriculum and pedagogic reform.
A narrative (2)
• Responses of national governments to
international economic regimes call into
question issues of national sovereignty, and
provoke oppositional responses on the part of
large sections of the population.
• the politics of European education,
particularly in the South, are shaped by such
conflicts
Anna Diamontopoulou: ‘We can
change Greece’
‘The multifaceted and multi-layered crisis that
we experience can become the catalyst for
change of our timeless problems. I am deeply
convinced that the time has come. The Prime
Minister has put education as the dominant
priority of the national plan for the
regeneration of the country.’ Minister of
Education: statement in OECD (2011)
Responses (1)
Responses (2): ‘Greek Education
system on the brink of collapse’
• “By 2016, education spending will have been cut by 47 per
cent …
• The ETUCE also calls on the government of Greece to improve
social dialogue in the education sector. “At present, provisions
are passed without proper consultation with social partners.
This harsh and authoritarian approach cannot continue.”
• The ETUCE is protesting against the surge in privatisation in
vocational education in Greece and reminds the Greek
government that free, high quality public education with
equal access is the most effective path towards a prosperous
society.
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(European Trade Union Committee on Education 2013)
A second protagonist
• If the first significant response to the remaking
of European education is that of education
workers, a second is that of youth.
• Unemployment
• Underemployment [‘Denied the promise of a
certain kind of social position’ (Mikko Aro)]
Youth unemployment: ‘the scariest
graph in the world just got scarier’
Atlantic
Monthly May 2013
Political consequences, include
French protests against youth employment law
(2005)
L’Onda (Italy 2008-2009)
Los indignados (Spain 2011 - )
Involvement of both ‘precarious’ groups, and public
sector workers. (Jones 2009, Durgan and Sans
And
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A delegitimation of mainstream political
parties.
The emergence of Syriza in Greece,
the Bloco de Esquerda in Portugal
the indignados, and other mass protests
the populist 5 Star movement’and ‘forconi’
movements in Italy.
Moving, finally, to the north
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Britain’s uneven and combined development
Deindustrialisation and financialisation
London - a ‘world city’ and ‘the rest’
Educational effects – ‘world class’ and the ‘long
tail of underachievement’.
• The most ‘advanced’ and among the most
backward.
• England and Scotland: the politics of uneven
development.
In summary
• What are the global and national politics of
neo-liberalism?
• How should we understand the European
Educational Space?
• How do we explain, interpret and predict
educational and social conflicts?
Bibliography
•
Bieler, A. (2013) ‘ The EU, Global Europe, and processes of uneven and combined development: the problem of
transnational labour solidarity’ Review of International Studies, 39, pp 161-183
•
Jones, K. (2009) ‘Patterns of Conflict in Education: France, Italy, England’ in A. Green (ed) ‘Blair’s Educational
Legacy: 13 Years of New Labour’ New York, Palgrave
•
Jones, K. (2013) ‘Introduction’ to K. Jones (ed) ‘Education in Europe: the politics of austerity’ London, RadicalEd
•
Novoa, A. (2000) ‘The Restructuring of the European Educational Space’ in Lewis et al ‘Rethinking European
Welfare’ London, Sage
•
Lawn, M. (2013) ‘The Understories of Education: the contemporary life of experts and professionals’ Sisyphus –
Journal of Education 1(1) 18-35.
•
Banas, E. (2014) ‘It’s the instrumentalism, stupid’ LSE Blog
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2014/01/27/its-the-neoliberalism-stupid-kansa/
•
Hardt, M. and Negri, T (2000) ‘Empire’ Harvard University Press
•
OECD (2011) Strong Performers and Successful Reformers in Education: Education Policy Advice for GREECE, Paris,
OECD
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European Commission (2011) Portugal: memorandum of understanding on specific economic policy conditionality.
http://ec.europa.eu/economy_finance/eu_borrower/mou/2011-05-18-mou-portugal_en.pd
•
Aro, M. (2013) ‘Educational inflation and social justice’ Paper for Nordic Centre of Excellence, Justice through
Education in the Nordic Countries