Conflict as ‘ethnocide’ a denial of education. Links between masculinity and conflict. Conflict maintained by education reproducing the status quo. Gender parity playing a role in state stability.
For education to have transformatory value it has to clean up its act and stop reinforcing causes of conflict e.g ethnic and gender stereotypes, acceptance of unequal opportunity.
Useful for validation or challenge of some assumptions re the intentions vs outcomes of development education.
Development education as a reflection of donor politics and a mechanism for social control. Winner politics (e.g. USA in post cold war world) – no need to listen. Local education authorities reduced to marketers of opportunities in such terms as to attract conditional funding. Connected world does not democratise information since most of it is sourced within the prejudices of the North. Little evidence of attempts to develop critical faculty or citizenship or other nationally valuable skills. Tendency to reinforce established formal structures which perpetuate elites.
Generally destructive of established assumptions and challenging rather than offering an alternate point of view.
An extended discussion on the interaction of conflict and education and the contribution of education to causes of conflict. A useful discussion of 3 theories of the causes of conflict in the developing world – clash of civilizations (Huntingdon), structural inequalities and insecurity (Duffield) and rational choice/greed based motivations (Collier). Examples of education contributing to or causing violence as well as suffering from it Differentiation between an internal ‘education politics’ agenda and a more external ‘politics of education’ point of view.
Useful but very theoretical and contextual in the broadest sense.
Bonal is a more recent and more practical paper than those previous in Case File 2. He sets out to challenge the assumption that education will combat poverty by demonstrating the limitations of poor people in acquiring ‘useful’ education – of a level and quality sufficient to give them earning power above poverty levels.
The elasticity of required level and quality – rising as the average level rises – is shown as a major hindrance. It also shows the way the already powerful sustain their power by changing the rules to maintain their advantage – a way to sustain the poverty trap despite increasing education. Factors other than education – political social and economic – also need to be in place to achieve social mobility.
Targeting strategies generally had only a local and temporary effect.
The overall conclusion is that policies have been simplistic, non-interactive and therefore ineffective. The concept of educability sounds horribly eugenic but realistically ‘places the emphasis on ‘precisely those factors associated with poverty that prevent the poor from taking advantage of educational opportunities.’
Quite a useful paper in understanding why policy has failed though not coming up with much in terms of alternative strategy approaches.
Both these paper are dated – Castells from 1999, Kellner from 2002. They both take a broad philosophical sweep over the changing world as a result of IT and network technologies.
Castells focuses on networks – power being in the network, isolation if out of the network. He identifies the opportunity for slower adopters to leapfrog the early stages and go straight to fully networked access. He identifies the transformation of relationship between capital and labour when labour is remote and invisible in an information society. He identifies cost lowering as the thin end of the wedge for poorer countries in a globalised world. However, he lapses into idealism “The disassociation between economic growth and social development in the information age is not only morally wrong, but also impossible to sustain.” “It will take a dramatic investment in overhauling the educational system everywhere, through co-operation between national and local governments, international institutions and lending agencies, international and local business, and families.” I wonder if he really expected that to happen?
Kellner is even more idealistic. He focuses on the need to gain new literacies rather than on the acquisition of IT and networks. However his conclusions are simplstic and impractical. ” The disconnect and divides can be overcome, however, by more actively and collaboratively bringing students into interactive classrooms or learning situations in which they are able to transmit their skills and knowledges to fellow students and teachers alike.” ” In much of the world, the struggle for daily existence is paramount and meeting unmet human and social needs is a high priority. Yet everywhere education can provide the competencies and skills to improve one’s life, to create a better society, and a more civilized and developed world.” “The time is ripe to take up the challenge and to move to reconstruct education and society so that groups and individuals excluded from the benefits of the economy, culture, and society may more fully participate and receive opportunities not possible in earlier social constellations “. Again one wonder if he is really serious regarding this as a possibility>
Both papers are comprehensive and analytically sound. However their conclusions either reflect the misplaced optimism of the dawn of networked society or are just academically tidy ways to end their papers!
I enjoyed Leach and found the evidence of value-added from ICT in rural education convincing in subjective terms. However, the paper raises many issues and resolves few.
There was however, a lot of good information. Certainly the evidence that people, however unsophisticated, could use and get value from technology was useful to rout the Luddite arguments. The evidence that goods would be protected from theft and damage if they were sufficiently valued was also interesting.
The most convincing argument seemed to be the last – that technology was shrinking the world, so making these remote people less remote and enabling them to access education otherwise unavailable to them.
Overall, the paper is convincing that ICT in education, if done well – with the right equipment, the right content, the right pedagogy and some access to support – can produce improved educational results. However, with all those qualifications I am not sure the arguments would convince the doubters. There is so much alternative evidence of technology-led initiatives which have failed to have much impact that these beacons of isolated good practice may be seen as only that, not evidence of general opportunity.
My process of commentary is first to highlight and extract those parts of a paper which “speak to me” and seem most likely to be the parts I will retain and may use for future reference. Then, based on those extracts, I will publish my own reactions to the paper in this blog – which reactions may be subjective (whether I like the paper or style) or objective (commenting on particular points made or views taken).
Thomas 2000 is a sobering return to study. As the first paper in a new module it is long, complex and somewhat intimidating in attempting to define development through multiple perspectives. I guess my main takeaway is that development reflects at least as much about the developer as the developee. I retain most strongly the (negative) ideas of development being a way to manage the disorder arising from development of capitalism (spontaneously or intentionally) or the colonial attempt to impose established European (class system) or US (money = class) attitudes on the rest of the world, as if such attitudes were automatically aspirational.
Various cuts of development definition are presented –