Globalization and the Neoliberal Schoolhouse

Book excerpt: 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!