Neoliberalism in Education: What you need to know

The world of educational reform overflows with methods and strategies to solve perennial challenges. Classroom behavior problems? Try a new classroom “management” strategies. Struggling with student disengagement? Reach for “personalized learning.”

But for certain “reformers,” classroom interventions merely tinker at the edges, failing to target the perceived root of the problem: public education itself.

Welcome to neoliberalism.

Neoliberalism is a worldview grounded in the principles of free markets, limited governmental intervention, meritocracy, and personal responsibility. As an economic philosophy, neoliberalism is seen in policies such as free trade or the weakening of environmental and labor regulations—practices that gained ground in the 1980s in response to decades of Keynesian policies that favored more governmental intervention. Today, neoliberalism reigns today as the dominant global economic paradigm.

Neoliberal Influences on Education

When applied to public education, neoliberal logic sounds like this: “Public schools are inherently inefficient because they limit choice and reward mediocrity by accepting any kid who walks in the door. It’s time to revolutionize the stultifying, factory-model education that is crippling global competitiveness. To save public education from itself, we must throw open the doors to the private sector: “edupreneurs,” venture capitalists, and multinational corporations.”

At first glance, it sounds kind of appealing. Who doesn’t like innovation? Who hasn’t been bored stiff by the rote learning and compliance too many of us have experienced in our educational careers? But when we dig a little deeper, we see questionable impacts on key facets of schooling, including its purpose, governance and accountability, and curriculum:

• The purpose of school: In neoliberalism, the educational system’s primary purpose is to prepare students (“consumers”) to be competitive in the global economy. The larger goals of preparing students to be empathetic individuals, critical thinkers, and citizens are tangential or even contrary to neoliberalism’s focus on economic growth. For example, asking critical questions about the carrying capacity of the environment calls into question the primacy of raising the GDP.

• Governance and accountability: Neoliberalism’s disdain for the public sector is seen in the form of vouchers, for-profit charter schools, and other schemes that direct public funding to private actors. The logic here is that competition will inject much-needed motivation and innovation in a system that’s being smothered by its own bloated bureaucracy. If schools were responsible to shareholders, not the public, we’d have real accountability.

• Views of inequality: Neoliberalism hinges on an unquestioned belief in meritocracy. In this view, high-stakes testing serves as sound policy because it sorts winners from losers. Disparities in outcomes based on race or socioeconomic status are simply proof that “those people” don’t value education or are inherently (dare we say genetically?) inferior. In this mindset, solutions for improving achievement should focus on raising the bar, clear rewards and punishments, and fixing faulty character and morals.

• Curriculum: Neoliberal shows up in curriculum in both overt and subtle ways. Examples:

• Economic textbooks that present only conventional models--models that externalize environmental impacts as “externalities” or “market failures.”

• Coded language about “developed” and “undeveloped” countries that champions Western industrialization, whitewashes its colonial roots, and marginalizes indigenous perspectives.

• A narrow focus on tested subjects (primarily math and English) at the expense of arts, physical education, or anything else deemed dispensable or peripheral to “real” learning.

• Efforts to eliminate world language courses and replace them computer coding.

Keeping the “Public” in Public Education

It goes without saying that jobs are important and that businesses, like all sectors of society, have a stake in our educational system. Moreover, bureaucracy in any sector is burdensome and frustrating. But neoliberalism isn’t just about improving management; it’s about changing the very nature of public education. Neoliberalism’s creeping influence is eroding the civic mission of schools and redirecting it to serve ever-narrower ends. The case here is thus not against improving education, but for changes that preserve public accountability and the commitment to equitably serving all students.

Here are the questions we need to be asking ourselves: To what extent will society be able to meet civic goals if schools only prepare children to meet economic ones? The answer may lie in the questions we pose of our educational system: What do communities need from citizens? This question will yield a very different response than, What does the economy need from its workers?

Interested in learning more? Check out my book, other blog entries, or free classroom resources.

Equity and Equality: What's the difference?

Equality and equity: Two familiar terms often used interchangeably. But the words have distinct (and sometimes contested) meanings. Let’s examine a few definitions.

The terms equal and equality both refer to sameness. For example, equal rights means having the same rights, such as the right to vote.. By this definition, inequality means differences and disparities among (or within) populations, such as unequal access to opportunities and resources.   

But sameness is not always fair. Consider a building with access only via a flight of stairs. Imagine two people trying to get into the building: a person who can walk and a person in a wheelchair. While both have the same entry method (the stairs), the sameness creates a barrier for one person. This shows us that the well-intentioned phrase “treating people the same” can actually result in inequality.

This brings us to the meaning of equity.

Equity encompasses a “moral dimension” of fairness, i.e., equal access and opportunity. But this can look different for different people. Returning to our example, the addition of a ramp results in two different entryways, but it’s this very difference that provides equity.

Gender issues provide another example. Globally, the under-representation of women in governmental leadership positions is an example of gender inequality (a disparity between men and women). But this inequality is created by gender inequity: women’s lack of access to the education, rights, and opportunities that lead to such positions.

It’s critical that educators know the difference between the equity and equality and the implications for their use/misuse. Calls for “equal funding” for all schools mask the fact that the children within these school have different needs. This means we must pursue equitable funding to ensure that each student has access to opportunities to be successful. It’s about giving students what they need. Equity thus requires that we rectify the well-documented pattern of unequal access to advanced coursework and challenging learning for students of color and low-income students. This is just one step in addressing a host of inequities in disciplinary policies, expectations, and much more.

The United Nations Development Program sums this up nicely: “Inequalities in outcomes are largely the product of unequal access.” To meet the needs of a diverse population, we must replace the rhetoric of “sameness” with a commitment to opportunity and access. What are steps you can take to make this happen?

Clear-cutting the Paper Mache Rainforest and Other Earth Day Teaching Ideas

Earth Day is here again, and kids around the country may well be busy making endangered species posters or constructing a paper mache rainforest. Such projects—mainstays of what I call Environmental Ed Lite—can be fun. But focusing on exotic animals and ‘wild’ places sends the message that the environment is a place both far away and without people. That keeps kids from understanding a vital and basic scientific fact: humans are part of the environment.

“Green” learning that prioritizes stereotypical topics such as rainforests and endangered species—however important—doesn’t advance the more complex critical thinking and civic engagement goals of sustainability literacy. Can the student who draws a rainforest toucan identify a bird that’s native to the local ecosystem? Can the student who made an Amazonian kapok tree name an indigenous tribe that inhabits the forest? I wonder. Perhaps most significant, presenting the environment as external to students can inadvertently reinforce the idea that the natural world is at our disposal—an anthropocentric mindset that is not innate but learned.

Place-based Education

How can we change the story? One approach is place-based education (PBE). PBE situates environmental literacy in the actual places students inhabit, making the community the starting point for investigating environmental, cultural, political, and social phenomena. PBE views the world as it truly is—a system—by using local environment conditions, cultural perspectives, and historical events to teach concepts in practically any discipline. PBE can happen inside, outside, or both.

Place-based education is not simply about (for example) interviewing local residents as a point of interest. Rather, PBE cultivates students’ identities as members of ecological and civic communities with a shared stake in common issues. PBE fosters students’ capacity to solve real problems, and used as the basis for project-based learning, PBE provides immediate relevance. Because students engage with issues right outside their doors, they naturally raise questions complex enough to support meaningful projects.

For example, in a rural community in Oregon, students in an interdisciplinary STEM course focused on the redevelopment of a “brownfield” (a contaminated site) located on school property. Working with state and local agencies, students investigated the history of the site, soil and water quality, and associated health risks. As a final project, students created redevelopment proposals and presented them at a state brownfields conference. In addition to impressive academic gains, the course also provided student exposure to career pathways in STEM, law, public policy, and more.

Global learning starts at home

Place-based education doesn’t discard a global perspective, but rather gets there by starting at home. For example, to bridge local ecosystems and the Brazilian rainforest, students might compare the two ecosystems and (as age-appropriate) learn about indigenous tribes, the impacts of industrialization, revitalization movements, and ways our own consumption habits affect it all. Including social justice themes ensures that place-based education doesn’t neglect—or even reinforces—colonial mindsets by remaining silent on the cultural or ecological ramifications of “development.”

Is it time to clear-cut the paper mache rainforest? Not necessarily. But let’s raise the bar. Environmental literacy is an essential 21st century skill that will determine life in the 22nd century. Our kids deserve the best we can give them.

You can learn more about place-based education in my book, Reframing the Curriculum.