Such is our age.  Moralists call for a search for meaning, politicians have made good governance their leitmotif and the priests of globalisation are concerned only with profit – education is henceforth depicted as an investment in “human capital”. 

A very recent terminology cloaks education in politics, the speeches of politicians and the reports of technocrats.  Everyone now knows that education is something that is “managed”.  Let’s have a look. 

Privatisation, marketing, good practices, skills, benchmarking, the “PPPs” (public-private partnerships), decision-making, efficient classroom management, educational contracts, the “educational client”, total quality, products, accountability, answerability, performance . . . these terms, which are part of the daily fare of educational administration, are all more or less borrowed from the world of business. 

This new vocabulary is not innocent.  It standardizes educational thinking, and makes the core of education the vassal of business perspectives, thus reducing it to the “capability” to produce the expected “skills” for a better “investment” in the future.

It is this vocabulary which at the moment controls educational objectives and advertises the correct thinking of a politics of education that aims at a mastery of the knowledge and skills that will enable students to later integrate into the job market, participate in collective growth, and act as good corporate citizens and informed consumers.  Such is the project of a society defined by profit, yield, conformity to rules and purchasing power. 

Education as a market

It appears that this view of education as another commodity is a significant trend that will be difficult to reverse, at least in the short term.  All the same, the obligation to do so is strong if we consider education to be a public good, belonging to all without discrimination in the same way as water, itself threatened by the sweep of privatization and an excess of commercialisation.  A vast operation to deprive populations of their common possessions is taking place under our very eyes. 

Regarding education, Mrs. Tomasevsky underlines that the need to agree on a worldwide human rights policy has emerged with greater force since the recommencement of negotiations on free trade in educational services.  Exporters of educational services have set the tone, she adds, in realigning education as a service leading to international business.  She argues that it is thus more important than ever to define the nature and extent of education, which should remain a free public service above and beyond the world of business.

According to Mrs. Uvalic-Trumbic, the trend towards the commercialisation of education, culture and information, which is now regarded as a public good, endangers the existing control mechanisms in these areas and calls for new approaches in order to protect human rights.  UNESCO’s representative concludes that unless such new rules see the light of day, the poor will be deprived of access to the benefits of globalisation. 

In light of this trend to subordinate education to the demands of the market, what is primarily at stake is the preparation for active life carried out by education, which involves a healthy and legitimate questioning of the dominant values that drive this insistence on the utility of knowledge.  It is in this context that it seems to us particularly urgent to introduce large-scale training programmes for teachers and in classrooms, involving public debate and a critical spirit, in order to prevent schools from becoming mere activities at the mercy of the vagaries of the market. 

References

Human Rights Features ( 2004 ) « Education has become a traded service »
http://www.right-to-education.org/
Internationale de l’éducation. « L'OMC et le cycle du millénaire : les enjeux pour l'éducation publique »
http://www.ei-ie.org/main/french/index.html
« L’eau, ce bien commun de l’humanité » Groupe eau, Attac, 2003.
http://www.france.attac.org/IMG/pdf/eau_bien_commun_
humanite.pdf
ONU ( 2005 ). « Les inégalités dans le monde sont plus prononcées qu’il y a 10 ans. »
http://www.un.org/News/fr-press/docs/2005/SOC4681.doc.htm
ONU. (2002). « Rapport annuel présenté par Mme Katarina Tomasevski, Rapporteuse spéciale sur le droit à l'éducation, en application de la résolution 2001/29  de la Commission des droits de l'homme ».
http://www.unhchr.ch/Huridocda/Huridoca.nsf
/TestFrame/ 396c9c8baae3dec1c 1256b81005949dc
UNESCO. « Higher education for sale »
http://www.unesco.org/education/index.shtml